Basic Tutorial

In this section you will learn how to deploy a Python function to AWS using Slam.

Installing the Tutorial Project

To do this tutorial, you need to download a small Python project that consists of two files:

Download these two files by right-clicking on the links above and selecting “Save link as...” to write them to your disk. Please put the files in a brand new directory.

This project is a version of the popular Fizz Buzz coding exercise. To become familiar with this application, you can run it as follows:

$ python3 fizzbuzz.py 2
2
$ python3 fizzbuzz.py 12
fizz
$ python3 fizzbuzz.py 15
fizz buzz
$ python3 fizzbuzz.py 5
buzz

If you prefer, you can also use Python 2.7 to run this function.

Configuration

To prepare to deploy this application to Lambda, begin by installing the Slam utility with pip in a brand new virtual environment:

$ python3 -m venv venv
$ . venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ pip install slam

This will add a slam command to your virtual environment. You can use slam --help to see what are all the available options.

The slam init command can be used to create a starter configuration file:

(venv) $ slam init fizzbuzz:fizzbuzz
The configuration file for your project has been generated. Remember to add slam.yaml to source control.

The above command generates a slam.yaml configuration file, with some initial settings. When you are working on a real project, you would want to add this file to source control, along with your own files. As your project evolves, you will hand edit this configuration file to make changes to your deployment.

The fizzbuzz:fizzbuzz argument tells Slam that the function is located in a module named fizzbuzz (the one on the left of the colon), and that the function that we want to deploy from that module is also named fizzbuzz (the one on the right of the colon).

Note that up to this point your AWS account has not been touched. All that has happened so far is configuration.

AWS Credentials

Slam expects AWS credentials for your account to be installed in your system. As explained here, there are many possible sources of configuration, including environment variables or credential files.

If you are familiar with how AWS stores credentials, then feel free to use your preferred way. The following instructions use the AWS command-line utility to store credentials in configuration files in your home directory.

To be able to access AWS service from the command line, you first need to set up access keys on the AWS Console. If you are not familiar with AWS account security, it is highly recommended that you read the AWS Security Credentials section of the AWS documentation.

Once you have obtained your access and secret keys on the AWS Console, you can use the AWS command-line utility to store them in your system.

Install the AWS command-line utility with pip:

(venv) $ pip install awscli

Then use the aws configure command to enter your credentials. The command will prompt you to type them one by one:

(venv) $ aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [None]:
AWS Secret Access Key [None]:
Default region name [None]:
Default output format [None]:

The first two prompts are for your access keys. For the third prompt you have to pick one of the AWS regions. If you have no preference, use us-east-1, or pick the region closest to where you are located. In the screencast above, the us-west-2 region is used.

Deployment

With the AWS credentials installed, you can now proceed to deploy this project to AWS with the slam deploy command:

(venv) $ slam deploy
Building lambda package...
Deploying fizzbuzz:dev...
fizzbuzz is deployed!
  Function name: fizzbuzz-Function-1CUMOX2834PA0
  S3 bucket: fizzbuzz-J5FTHI40
  Stages:
    dev:$LATEST

The deployment process will take between about a minute. After the command finishes, you will have the function deployed and ready to be used!

The output from the deploy command indicates that the function was deployed to a dev stage, and that its version is $LATEST. Do not worry about this for this tutorial, stages and versioning will be covered in the second tutorial.

Invoking your Lambda Function

The slam invoke command can be used to quickly test that the function hosted on AWS Lambda. If you look at the code of the function, you’ll notice that the input is an argument named number. Below you can see how to invoke the function and pass a value for this argument using the invoke command:

(venv) $ slam invoke number:=2
2
(venv) $ slam invoke number:=12
fizz
(venv) $ slam invoke number:=15
fizz buzz
(venv) $ slam invoke number:=5
buzz

The invoke command needs to know the correct type of the arguments you are passing to your function. For each argument, you have to include the name of each argument and its value. For string arguments, you can use the argument=value syntax. If the argument is not a string, use argument:=value to have the argument intrepreted as JSON.

Cloudformation Template

The deployment that you just finished was done through Cloudformation, the AWS orchestration service. If you are curious to see what resources were created, you can go to the Cloudformation section of the AWS console and view the stack that corresponds to this deployment.

You can also use the slam template command to view the Cloudformation template that was used for the deployment.

Deleting the Project

A deployment orchestrated with Slam contains two high-level resources:

  • A Cloudformation stack
  • A S3 bucket with the Lambda zip file package inside

Every other resource allocated for the deployment is owned by the Cloudformation stack, which is very convenient, as this prevents resources to inadvertently be left behind or orphaned.

When you are done experimenting with this example project, you may want to remove it from your AWS account. If you want to perform a manual delete, you can just delete the Cloudformation stack and the S3 bucket, and that will leave your account clean of this deployment.

As a convenience to users, there is a slam delete command that performs the above two tasks for you:

(venv) $ slam delete
Deleting fizzbuzz...
Deleting logs...
Deleting files...

Congratulations! You have reached the end of this first tutorial. The second tutorial covers more advanced usages that include the deployment of a REST API project.