AWS SNS Push Notifications

Matt McCandless AWS, Cloud, Java, Problem Solving, Technology Snapshot Leave a Comment

Have you ever received endless notifications from the latest application you just downloaded? For example, a bank application that tells you your balance is less than $50. It is likely a message sent directly to your phone through Apple Push Notification Service, Firebase Cloud Messaging, or some other like service.

While you can use any of these services directly, there is a lot to gain by using something like AWS SNS to manage, send, and organize your notifications.

In this post, we show an example of the Push Notification feature of Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) using Firebase to handle the iOS and Android messages. Code examples are in Java using Eclipse.

Do note that this blog is solely focused on Push Notification feature of SNS. Keep in mind that SNS can be used for email and SMS messaging, but for brevity, we will steer clear of those.

Building a Node.js Service with AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, and Serverless Framework

Matthew Brown AWS, Cloud, JavaScript, Node, Tutorial 3 Comments

My favorite new technology as a developer is serverless computing. The convenience and cost make it a very compelling choice for running options in the cloud. Especially for proof of concepts or quick ways to prove out ideas. Using serverless computing to get up and running takes very little effort and the costs of running an application in the cloud are minimal. Serverless really empowers developers to act on ideas as quickly as possible.

In this post, I’m going to briefly touch on what serverless computing is and the pros and cons of using it. Then I will build a Node.js service to do CRUD operations using AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, and the Serverless Framework. You can view the finished product on Github.

Generate Strongly Typed React Components with GraphQL

Mat Warger AWS, GraphQL, JavaScript, Programming, Technology Snapshot 1 Comment

When developing in React, using a type system (like Typescript or Flow) can be a great help. You can be sure that your props and state are what you expect, at build-time, and code your components to match.

But what happens when you’re calling to an API to fetch some data, and the shape of that data is what really matters? Maybe the data get passed as props to a child component? You can create types for this, sure, but are they correct? Probably not! Or at least, probably not for long! Things change. Wouldn’t it be great if your types changed too?

In this post, we’re going to take a simple component from zero type awareness to fully typed, with local variables and GraphQL queries included, with a simple workflow. Grab a cup of coffee and a snack, and let’s see how this we can use GraphQL to generate type-safe components in React.

Using Amazon ElastiCache for Redis To Optimize Your Spring Boot Application

Brandon Klimek AWS, Java, Spring, Spring Boot, Technology Snapshot 4 Comments

Has your project gotten to the point when big data sets and/or time-consuming calculations have begun to affect performance? Or are you struggling to optimize your queries and need to cache some information to avoid continually hitting your database? Then caching could be your solution.

For this article, I will demonstrate how to utilize Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to speed up areas of your application. The example application we will build uses Spring Boot 2.x and is available on Github.

AWS AppSync with Lambda Data Sources

Mat Warger AWS, GraphQL, JavaScript, Technology Snapshot, Tutorial Leave a Comment

The power of GraphQL lies in its flexibility. That is especially the case regarding resolvers, where any local or remote data can be used to fulfill a GraphQL query or mutation.

In this post, I’m going to demo a quick example of what this looks like, and a couple gotchas that were apparent in working with Lambdas as a data source for AppSync. Let’s gooooo!