1. Serverless in
Action
Getting serious with serverless and GraphQL

2. Who am I?
Assaf Gannon
Full Stack Developer since 2000
Work @ Tikal
assaf@tikalk.com

4. The Challenge
Implement a shopping cart for an
e-commerce site
Infinite scale
Easy to maintain

5. Bonus Requirements
Easy and fun to develop
Easy to maintain
Cheap setup costs

6. Required Functionality
Add and Store Items the user is
interested in
Remove Items
Display the cart at checkout

7. Possible Solution:
Function-Based
Serverless System

8. Why Serverless?

10. A Plethora of Possibilities
• Processing / Business logic (Functions)
• Storage
• DataBase
• Authentication
• Logging
• Monitoring
• Machine Learning
• CI/CD

11. Cheap Setup Costs
Most services have a Free-Tier
Pay as you go
No commitment required

12. What can I do with
it?

14. Literally anything…
Stream processing
CRUD operations
BigData analysis
High scale serving

15. Architecture
Considerations
Reactive Distributed Architecture
Stateless execution
Short computation periods

16. How do I get it
Done?

17. Decision Checklist
Cloud Provider
Required Services
Service Providers

18. Decision Checklist
Cloud Provider - Google Cloud
Required Services - API Gateway,
DB
Service Providers - Google Cloud
Functions, Atlas MongoDB

19. The Chosen Stack

20. serverless.com
A Framework for developing &
deploying serverless architecture
Supports: AWS, Google Cloud
Platform, Azure, OpenWhisk, Kubless,
Cloudflare

21. Apollo
A set of frameworks to make GraphQL more
accessible
Apollo Server
Apollo Client
Apollo Engine
https://www.apollographql.com

22. Atlas MongoDB
Hosted MongoDB Cloud Service
Supported on Google Cloud, Azure
and AWS
Free tier for sandbox and
development

23. Let’s get started..

25. 1. Install Serverless
CLI
npm i -g serverless

26. 2. Create a service
template
serverless create
--template google-nodejs
--path gql-endpoint

27. Set Google Cloud
Credentials
https://serverless.com/framework/doc
s/providers/google/guide/credentials/

28. First Deploy

29. First Deploy

33. Offline work
fast to run and test changes
Easy to debug and log
Cheap :)

34. // Used for local development only - keep clear of any logic
const express = require('express');
const { ApolloServer } = require('apollo-server-express');
const typeDefs = require('./schema');
const resolvers = require('./resolvers');
const server = new ApolloServer({
typeDefs,
resolvers,
playground: true,
introspection: true,
});
const app = express();
server.applyMiddleware({ app });
app.listen({ port: 4000 }, () =>
console.log(`🚀 Server ready at http://localhost:4000${server.graphqlPath}`)
);
// Google-Cloud-Function handlers
const { ApolloServer } = require('apollo-server-cloud-functions');
const typeDefs = require('./schema');
const resolvers = require('./resolvers');
const server = new ApolloServer({
typeDefs,
resolvers,
playground: true,
introspection: true,
});
exports.graphql = server.createHandler();
Local server (Express)
Serverless function handler
Using an Express
Server

36. Things to prepare
for production

37. Add Deployment
Stages
> serverless deploy --state prod

38. Service Configuration
Use .env file to keep sensitive
information
Use variables inside serverless.yml
for fine grained configurations - see
docs for more details.

39. Secure Your Endpoint
Enable limited `cors`
Add Authentication
exports.handler = server.createHandler({
cors: {
origin: ‘your-domain.com’,
credentials: true,
},
});

40. Test Your Code
Separate logical code from platform
specific code
Create Integration tests for the
endpoint

41. Other Considerations
Avoid Decision Paralysis
Be aware of Buyers Remorse
Don’t fall in love with services

42. Summary
Serverless is a powerful approach
No silver bullets - Keep an open mind
Automate as much as possible
Keep a tight monitor on costs

43. Q&A

44. Thanks For Listening!
Keep in Touch:
assaf@tikalk.com