Building a Serverless React Application with AWS Amplify

Building a Serverless React Application with AWS Amplify

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the process of building a serverless React application using AWS Amplify. Serverless applications are becoming increasingly popular because they allow you to build and run applications and services without having to worry about infrastructure. This can save you time and money, as you only pay for the resources you consume.

AWS Amplify is a set of tools and services that makes it easy to build and deploy serverless applications. It includes a CLI, a library of pre-built components, and integrations with other AWS services. In this tutorial, we’ll use Amplify to build and deploy a simple React application with user authentication and backend logic.

Let’s get started!

Setting up your development environment

The first thing you’ll need to do is install the Amplify CLI and create an AWS account. The Amplify CLI is a command-line tool that you’ll use to create and manage your Amplify projects. To install it, open a terminal and run the following command:

Next, create an AWS account if you don’t already have one. You’ll need an AWS account to use Amplify and other AWS services.

With the Amplify CLI installed and your AWS account set up, you’re ready to create a new React project. For this tutorial, we’ll use create-react-app to set up a new project. If you don’t already have create-react-app installed, run the following command to install it:

With create-react-app installed, run the following command to create a new React project:

This will create a new directory called “my-amplify-app” with a basic React application set up.

Adding user authentication

One of the key features of AWS Amplify is its ability to add user authentication to your application with just a few lines of code. In this section, we’ll use Amplify to add a login and signup form to our React application.

First, navigate to the root directory of your React project and run the following command to configure Amplify:

This will guide you through the process of setting up your Amplify project. When prompted, sign in to your AWS account and select the region where you want to host your application.

Next, run the following command to add the Auth category to your Amplify project:

This will create a new Cognito user pool in your AWS account and configure your Amplify project to use it. A user pool is a database of user identities that you can use to manage authentication for your application.

With the user pool set up, you can use Amplify to add a login and signup form to your React application. To do this, open the file src/App.js and import the withAuthenticator higher-order component from the aws-amplify-react library:

Then, wrap the default export of the App component with the withAuthenticator higher-order component:

This will add a login and signup form to your React application. When a user signs up, their information will be stored in the Cognito user pool. You can use the user pool to manage user data and handle authentication for your application.

Implementing serverless backend logic

In addition to user authentication, AWS Amplify also makes it easy to implement backend logic for your application using AWS Lambda. Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without having to worry about infrastructure. You can use it to build and deploy custom logic for your application, such as processing data or triggering events.

To add a Lambda function to your Amplify project, run the following command:

This will guide you through the process of creating a new Lambda function and connecting it to your Amplify project. You can choose the runtime and the function trigger, such as an HTTP request or a database event.

Once your Lambda function is set up, you can use Amplify to invoke it from your React application. To do this, import the API class from the aws-amplify library and use the post method to send a request to your Lambda function:

This will send a POST request to your Lambda function with a body of { foo: 'bar' }. You can use the Lambda function to process the request and return a response.

Deploying your application

With your serverless backend logic implemented, you’re ready to deploy your application. To do this, run the following command in the root directory of your Amplify project:

This will build your React application and deploy it to the cloud using AWS Amplify. It will also deploy your Lambda function and any other resources that you’ve added to your Amplify project.

Once the deployment is complete, you can test your application to make sure it’s working correctly. Navigate to the URL provided by Amplify and try logging in and invoking your Lambda function.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we’ve walked through the process of building a serverless React application with AWS Amplify. We’ve set up our development environment, added user authentication, implemented backend logic with Lambda functions, and deployed the application to the cloud.

There are many ways you can expand and improve your serverless React application with AWS Amplify. You can add a database to store and retrieve data, use GraphQL to specify exactly what data you need, add storage for user-generated content, and add analytics and machine learning capabilities.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful and has given you a good understanding of how to build a serverless React application with AWS Amplify. Happy coding!