Infra as GitHub Actions - AWS Serverless Functions for nodejs

Let's deploy a nodejs backend writing less than 50 lines and in under a minute 🏎️

In the last post we talked about the need to simplify infra while also moving it back to the application repo

As I started to work on the next infra as GitHub actions, which was a secured website with authentication@edge. It became clear that AWS lambda was a fundamental building block in the journey

Introducing actions-aws-function-node 🎉
Now with very few dependencies, you can provision your node backend in literally a minute 🏎️

Getting started

Let's start with familiar code

// src/index.js
exports.handler = async (event, context) => {
    return {
        "statusCode": 200,
        "headers": {
            "Content-Type": "*/*"
        },
        "body": "hello world"
    }
}

Next, add the Github Workflow

# .github/workflows/on-push-main.yml
name: sample
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
jobs:
  deploy:
    environment:
      name: main
      url: ${{ steps.backend.outputs.url }}
    permissions: 
      id-token: write
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Check out repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
        with:
          aws-region: us-east-1
          role-to-assume: ${{ secrets.ROLE_ARN }}
          role-session-name: ${{ github.actor }}
      - uses: alonch/actions-aws-backend-setup@main
        with: 
          instance: sample
      - uses: alonch/actions-aws-function-node@main
        with: 
          name: actions-aws-function-node-sample
          entrypoint-file: index.js
          entrypoint-function: handler
          artifacts: src
          allow-public-access: true

Add the secret ROLE_ARN with access to AWS and that's it, after pushing to main you have a GitHub deployment with you backend running 🎉

You can clone this sample from Github too

Of course, there are a lot more options

Permissions

You can allow access to services by adding the resource name and the access, either read or write
For example:

      - uses: alonch/actions-aws-function-node@main
        with: 
          name: actions-aws-function-node-demo
          entrypoint-file: index.js
          entrypoint-function: handler
          artifacts: src
          allow-public-access: true
          permissions: |
            s3: read
            dynamodb: write 

This configuration will attach AmazonS3ReadOnly and AmazonDynamoDBFullAccess managed policies to the function's role

Environment Variables

Similar to permissions, you can attach function variables as follow:

      - uses: alonch/actions-aws-function-node@main
        with: 
          name: actions-aws-function-node-demo
          entrypoint-file: index.js
          entrypoint-function: handler
          artifacts: src
          allow-public-access: true
          env: |
            DD_ENV: production 
            DD_SERVICE: demo
            DD_VERSION: ${{ github.sha }}

The rest of the options are standard attributes like memory, timeout or selecting ARM architecture

The best part is that it takes a minute to provision it and even less time to destroy 👏

I’m excited about the future developments and improvements that can be made to this workflow. If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below or reach out directly. Let’s continue this journey of simplifying infrastructure together!

Thank you for reading and happy coding!