by Janaka Bandara

Running around the block: a beginner meets AWS Lambda

jqo4TaSYwpLkxHEDY-opAYb3mWSvB8D4Mvi3

Computing! It sure has a very long, vivid (and sometimes awkward) history. Some key milestones include:

hoYHWyXUX5ppgnDovNpEddn3A3KXHcRr5f66
DSKY: NASA’s Apollo Guidance Computer

In line with all this, software application paradigms also have shifted dramatically. Starting from pure hardware-based programming, to monoliths, modularity, SOA, cloud, and now… serverless.

At this point in time, “serverless” generally means FaaS (functions-as-a-service). And FaaS literally means AWS Lambda, both from popularity and adoption points of view.

Hence, it is not an exaggeration to claim that the popularity of serverless development may be related to the ease of use of Lambdas. Or is it?

dEyp2I-t39wUc79cPSMfjjCeJZFx-yZKUjkI
Lambda: leading the Serverless Revolution

Well, Lambda has been around since 2015. It is already integrated into much of the AWS ecosystem, and is in production use at hundreds (if not thousands) of companies. So, Lambda should be pretty intuitive and easy to use, right?

Well, in my case, it seemed not.

And since “my case” was one of the official AWS examples, I’m not quite convinced Lambda is friendly enough for newbies to the picture.

For a start, I wanted to implement AWS’s own thumbnail creation use case without following their own guide, to see how far I could get.

As a programmer, I naturally started with the Lambda management console. The code had already been written by the generous AWS devs, so why reinvent the wheel? Copy, paste, save, run. Ta-da!

Hmm, looks like I need to grow up a bit.

The “Create function” wizard was eye-catching, with so many ready-made blueprints. Too bad it didn’t already have the S3 thumbnail generation example, or this story could have ended right here!

So I just went ahead with the “Author from scratch” option, using the name s3-thumbnail-generator.

Oh wait, what’s this “Role” thing? It’s required, too. Luckily, it has a “Create new role from template(s)” option, which would save my day.

Take it easy. “Role name”: s3-thumbnail-generator-role. But how about the "policy template"?

Perhaps I should find something S3-related, since my Lambda is all-S3.

Surprise! The only thing I get when I search for S3, is “S3 object read-only permissions”. Having no other option, I just snatched it. Let’s see how far I can get before I fall flat on my face!

Time to hit “Create function”.

XdeQrkR8r8OAwSBszA5z8p8skAQRtoOdmgF7
Create Function wizard

Wow, their Lambda designer looks really cool!

2hFWFUF2f8ES5o0jh3FT74gRGCmBXweaiOg5
AWS Lambda editor
“Congratulations! Your Lambda function “s3-thumbnail-generator” has been successfully created. You can now change its code and configuration. Click on the “Test” button to input a test event when you are ready to test your function.”

Okay, time for my copy-paste mission. “Copy” on the sample source code, Ctrl+A and Ctrl+V on the Lambda code editor. Simple!

All green (no reds). Good to know.

“Save”, and “Test”.

rc48wc7TF-bUFZrHVxrHZTMR1Khe9YXmiKmw
Configure test event

Oh, I should have known better. Yup, if I am going to “Test”, I need a “Test input”. Obviously.

I knew that testing my brand-new Lambda would not be as easy as that. But I didn’t expect having to put together a JSON-serialized event by hand.

Thankfully, the AWS devs had done a great job here as well, providing a ready-made “S3 Put” event template. So what else would I select?

2Lr9YKQQT2Rctf-j5NCF2kKbE4FK1bHXhyOv
S3 Put test event

As expected, the first run was a failure:

{  "errorMessage": "Cannot find module 'async'",  "errorType": "Error",  "stackTrace": [    "Function.Module._load (module.js:417:25)",    "Module.require (module.js:497:17)",    "require (internal/module.js:20:19)",    "Object. (/var/task/index.js:2:13)",    "Module._compile (module.js:570:32)",    "Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:579:10)",    "Module.load (module.js:487:32)",    "tryModuleLoad (module.js:446:12)",    "Function.Module._load (module.js:438:3)"  ]}

Damn, I should have noticed those require lines.

And, either way, it's my bad. The page where I copied the sample code had a big fat title "Create a Lambda Deployment Package", and clearly explained how to bundle the sample into a Lambda-deployable zip.

So, I created a local directory containing my code, and the package.json, and ran an npm install (good thing I had node and npm preinstalled!).

Building, zipping and uploading the application was fairly easy, and hopefully I would not have to go through a zillion and one such cycles to get my Lambda working.

(BTW, I wish I could do this in their built-in editor itself. Too bad I could not figure out a way to add the dependencies.)

Anyway, time is ripe for my second test.

{  "errorMessage": "Cannot find module '/var/task/index'",  "errorType": "Error",  "stackTrace": [    "Function.Module._load (module.js:417:25)",    "Module.require (module.js:497:17)",    "require (internal/module.js:20:19)"  ]}

index? Where did that come from?

Wait… my bad, my bad.

sLDKR-O5FjrSBwAJ5L-daSbmVbaLgwpt-cTe
‘index.js not found’ warning

Seems like the Handler parameter still holds the default value index.handler. In my case it should be CreateThumbnail.handler (filename.method).

Let’s give it another try.

WtyzRR53Dw1APp5Yv-qOF-cm76Gn4eWrhW7N
Success!?

Seriously? No way!

Ah, yes. The logs don’t lie.

2018-02-04T17:00:37.060Z	ea9f8010-09cc-11e8-b91c-53f9f669b596  Unable to resize sourcebucket/HappyFace.jpg and upload to  sourcebucketresized/resized-HappyFace.jpg due to an error:  AccessDenied: Access DeniedEND RequestId: ea9f8010-09cc-11e8-b91c-53f9f669b596

Fair enough. I don’t have sourcebucket or sourcebucketresized, but probably someone else does. Hence the access denial. Makes sense.

So I created my own buckets, s3-thumb-input and s3-thumb-inputresized, edited my event input (thanks to the "Configure test event" drop-down) and tried again.

2018-02-04T17:06:26.698Z	bbf940c2-09cd-11e8-b0c7-f750301eb569  Unable to resize s3-thumb-input/HappyFace.jpg and upload to  s3-thumb-inputresized/resized-HappyFace.jpg due to an error:  AccessDenied: Access Denied

Access Denied? Again?

Luckily, based on the event input, I figured out that the 403 could actually be indicating a 404 (not found) error, since my bucket did not really contain a HappyFace.jpg file.

Hold on, dear reader, while I rush to the S3 console and upload my happy face into my new bucket. Just a minute!

Okay, ready for the next test round.

2018-02-04T17:12:53.028Z	a2420a1c-09ce-11e8-9506-d10b864e6462  Unable to resize s3-thumb-input/HappyFace.jpg and upload to  s3-thumb-inputresized/resized-HappyFace.jpg due to an error:  AccessDenied: Access Denied

The exact same error? Again? Come on!

It didn’t make sense to me. Why on Earth would my own Lambda running in my own AWS account not have access to my own S3 bucket?

Wait, could this be related to that execution role thing? The part where I blindly assigned S3 read-only permissions?

A bit of Googling led me to the extremely comprehensive AWS IAM docs for Lambda. There, I learned that the Lambda executes under its own IAM role. I would have to manually configure the role based on what AWS services I would be using.

Worse still, in order to configure the role, I have to go all the way to the IAM management console. Fortunately, this is already linked from the execution role drop-down menu. More importantly, it opens in a new tab.

aednBBq8WoMpscVnm-pqURKv5yJyHOL6hxVj
Custom role drop-down option

Fingers crossed, till the custom role page loads.

c1cXURfAUkhYWFo2mgOwKAu35Ce18aT2zUlq
Custom role creation

Oh no… More JSON editing?

In the original guide, AWS devs seemed to have nailed the execution role part as well. But it was strange that there was no mention of S3 in there (except in the name). Did they miss something?

Okay, for the first time in history, I am going to create my own IAM role!

Bless those AWS engineers, a quick Googling revealed their policy generator jewel. Just the thing I need.

But getting rid of the JSON syntax solves only a little part of the problem. How can I know which permissions I need?

Google, buddy? Anything?

Ohh… Back into the AWS docs? Great…

Well, it wasn’t that bad, thanks to the S3 permissions guide.

Although it was somewhat overwhelming, I guessed what I needed was some permissions for “object operations”. Luckily, the doc had a nice table suggesting that I needed s3:GetObject and s3:PutObject (consistent with the s3.getObject(...) and s3.putObject(...) calls in the code).

alTqcEqaCt7u9pAwTYGk2e8IzYS9GjowaKZu
AWS policy generator

After some thinking, I ended up with an “IAM Policy” with the above permissions on my bucket (named with the tedious syntax arn:aws:s3:::s3-thumb-input):

{  "Version": "2012-10-17",  "Statement": [    {      "Sid": "Stmt1517766308321",      "Action": [        "s3:PutObject"      ],      "Effect": "Allow",      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::s3-thumb-inputresized"    },    {      "Sid": "Stmt1517766328849",      "Action": [        "s3:GetObject"      ],      "Effect": "Allow",      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::s3-thumb-input"    }  ]}

I pasted and saved it on the IAM role editor (which automatically took me back to the Lambda console page — how nice!)

Try again…

Same error?!

Looking back at the S3 permissions doc, I noticed that the object permissions seem to involve an asterisk (/* suffix, probably indicating the files) under the resource name. So let's try that as well, with a new custom policy:

{  "Version": "2012-10-17",  "Statement": [    {      "Sid": "Stmt1517766308321",      "Action": [        "s3:PutObject"      ],      "Effect": "Allow",      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::s3-thumb-inputresized/*"    },    {      "Sid": "Stmt1517766328849",      "Action": [        "s3:GetObject"      ],      "Effect": "Allow",      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::s3-thumb-input/*"    }  ]}

Again! (this is starting to sound like Whiplash):

2018-02-04T17:53:45.484Z	57ce3a71-09d4-11e8-a2c5-a30ce229e8b7  Successfully resized s3-thumb-input/HappyFace.jpg and uploaded to  s3-thumb-inputresized/resized-HappyFace.jpg

WOO-HOO!!!

Believe it or not, a resized-HappyFace.jpg file had just appeared in my s3-thumb-inputresized bucket! Oh yeah!

Now, how can I configure my Lambda to automatically run when I drop a file into my bucket?

Thankfully, the Lambda console (with its intuitive “trigger-function-permissions” layout) made it crystal clear that what I wanted was an S3 trigger. So I added one, with “Object Created (All)” as the “Event Type” and “jpg” as the suffix, saved everything, and dropped a JPG file into my bucket right away.

R0zipGO8gM3-2mPVxuy1w4TiUHqjLP7U5F8N
Trigger added

Yup, works like a charm.

To see how long the whole process took (in actual execution, as opposed to the “tests”), I clicked the “logs” link on the (previous) execution result pane, and went into the newest “log stream” shown there. Nothing!

And more suspiciously, the last log in the newest log stream was an “access denied” log, although I had gotten past that point and even achieved a successful resize.

Maybe my latest change broke the logging ability of the Lambda?

Thanks to Google and StackOverflow, I found that my execution role needs to contain some logging related permissions as well.

Now, I remember there were some permissions in the permission editor text box when I started creating my custom role. Once again I was ignorant enough to paste my S3 policies right over them.

Another round of policy editing:

{  "Version": "2012-10-17",  "Statement": [    {      "Sid": "Stmt1517766308321",      "Action": [        "s3:PutObject"      ],      "Effect": "Allow",      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::s3-thumb-inputresized/*"    },    {      "Sid": "Stmt1517766328849",      "Action": [        "s3:GetObject"      ],      "Effect": "Allow",      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::s3-thumb-input/*"    },    {      "Action": [        "logs:CreateLogGroup",        "logs:CreateLogStream",        "logs:PutLogEvents"      ],      "Effect": "Allow",      "Resource": "arn:aws:logs:*:*:*"    }  ]}

Another file drop, and this time both the resize and the logs worked flawlessly… Finally!

Now that everything is straightened out, and my thumbnail is waiting in my destination bucket, I fired up my browser, typed http://s3-thumb-inputresized.s3.amazonaws.com/resized-HappyFace.jpg (in accordance with the S3 virtual hosting docs). I hit Enter, expecting a nice thumbnail in return.

<Error>  <Code>AccessDenied</Code>  <Message>Access Denied</Message>  <RequestId>C8BAC3D4EADFF577</RequestId>  <HostId>PRnGbZ2olpLi2eJ5cYCy0Wqliqq5j1OHGYvj/          HPmWqnBBWn5EMrfwSIrf2Y1LGfDT/7fgRjl5Io=</HostId></Error>

Already tired of that “AccessDenied” message!

Apparently, although my code generates the file, it does not make the file publicly accessible (but what good would a private thumbnail be, huh?)

Digging through the AWS docs, I soon discovered the ACL parameter of the putObject operation, which allows the S3 uploaded file to be public. Hoping this would solve all problems on the planet, I quickly upgraded my code to set the file's ACL to public-read:

                s3.putObject({                  Bucket: dstBucket,                  Key: dstKey,                  Body: data,                  ContentType: contentType,                  ACL: 'public-read'                },                next);              }

Saved the function, and hit Test:

2018-02-04T18:06:40.271Z	12e44f61-19fe-11e8-92e1-3f4fff4227fa  Unable to resize s3-thumb-input/HappyFace.jpg and upload to  s3-thumb-inputresized/resized-HappyFace.jpg due to an error:  AccessDenied: Access Denied

Again?? Are you kidding me?!

Fortunately, this time I knew enough to go straight into the S3 permissions guide, which promptly revealed that I also needed to have the s3:PutObjectAcl permission in my policy, in order to use the ACL parameter in my putObject call.

So another round trip to the policy editor, to the IAM dashboard, and back to the Lambda console.

2018-02-04T18:15:09.670Z	1d8dd7b0-19ff-11e8-afc0-138b93af2c40  Successfully resized s3-thumb-input/HappyFace.jpg and uploaded to  s3-thumb-inputresized/resized-HappyFace.jpg

And this time, to my great satisfaction, the browser happily showed me my happy face thumbnail when I fed the hosting URL http://s3-thumb-inputresized.s3.amazonaws.com/resized-HappyFace.jpg into it.

All in all, I’m satisfied that I was finally able to solve the puzzle on my own, by putting all the scattered pieces together.

But I cannot help imagining how cool it would have been if I could build my Lambda in freestyle, with AWS taking care of the roles, permissions and whatnot, on its own, without getting me to run around the block.

Maybe I should have followed that official guide, right from the start…

… but, then again, where’s the fun in that?! :)