Appsby

Full-stack, server-less apps that are fast to build ⏰ and run everywhere 🏃‍.

npm i appsby

Why build this?

• Building Lambdas for JAMStack apps can feel archaic when you’re used to using beautiful, declarative tools everywhere else.
• Traditional Node frameworks like Express aren’t built for Lambda environments, and don’t include cloud functionality out of the box.
• Using Netlify or Vercel to create any non-trivial backend currently requires a stupid amount of time and a tonne of your own tooling.
• Serverless Framework is great to build with, but introduces a lot of extra complexity.
• Give startups and small orgs a framework that’s fast to execute, and faster to build with than anything currently available.

What can I do with this?

• Build your Lambda-based NodeJS back-end fast
• Build your front-end fast (and with any React-based framework)
• Avoid dealing with databases
• Avoid the expenses of Firebase or AppSync
• Avoid implementing typical boilerplate

What does it do?

• Replaces ExpressJS and other similar frameworks for server-less Lambda-based environments
• Gives you a super simple way to implement common app features (auth, views, apis, search, file upload/download)
• Automatically implements your database from your code, using Fauna Cloud NoSQL DB as your backing store
• Takes care of requests, caching, invalidation on the front-end (you can probably ditch your Global State Manager)

How do I do it?

• ES6 Classes that work like React Components, plus a few lines in your Lambda Function Handler
• Use the in-built front-end functions to handle your requests
• Deploy to any Lambda-based Cloud Provider (AWS, Serverless.com, Netlify, Vercel, probably more)

I use GCP/Cloudflare/other function provider…

• Appsby doesn’t use any tech specific to AWS, but it expects requests to be delivered in AWS Lambda Format
• You’ll need to build a function to remap your function provider’s request object to AWS Lambda format
• File operations are locked to S3 format. Feel free to use any provider that uses an S3-style API.

Deciding between AWS/Serverless.com and Netlify/Vercel:

• Appsby can optionally use S3 bucket triggers for running your code
• This is usually done post-upload if you have some data crunching to do
• Netlify/Vercel don’t give you ability to trigger functions in this manner
• There is a client-triggered event that will run post-upload, so many workflows won’t need this

Roadmap to v1:

• Introduce compatibility with other UI Frameworks
• Slim down the dependency list to only essentials
• Reduce package size further
• Refactors for tidying
• Starter projects for Gatsby, Next and Serverless as API
• Write guides

Acknowledgements:

Dicky Suryadi / DotNetify: This project draws substantial inspiration from Dicky’s fantastic ASP.NET package, especially the view creation and state hydration system.

Things you'll need...

• FaunaDB account, with a new database and an API key
• AWS access/secret keys for managing S3 file operations
• SMTP mail account, if you want to use built in Nodemailer
• Some sort of infra that can run Lambdas