Faast.js: Serverless Batch Computing Made Simple

Faast.js

Faast.js makes regular functions callable as serverless functions on AWS Lambda and Google Cloud. It handles the details of uploading your code, creating cloud infrastructure, and cleaning up. Scale up your functions to a thousand cores in seconds :rocket:

Faast.js is a pure library with no service dependencies, operational overhead, or unnecessary complexity.

Installation

Faast.js requires node version 8+.

$ npm install faastjs

Example

First write the functions you want to run in a serverless function. Make sure to export them:

// functions.ts
export function hello(name: string) {
    return "hello " + name;
}

Use faast.js to turn this into a serverless function:

// main.ts
import { faast } from "faastjs";
import * as funcs from "./functions";

(async () => {
    const m = await faast("aws", funcs);
    const { hello } = m.functions;
    const result = await hello("world!");
    console.log(result);
    await m.cleanup();
})();

Make 1000 concurrent calls if you like:

const promises: string[] = [];
for (let i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
    promises.push(hello(`world ${i}!`));
}
await Promise.all(promises);

How much did that cost...?

const cost = await m.costSnapshot();
console.log(`$${cost.total()}`);

Relax. It's just half a penny:

$0.00420858

Features

• Frictionless. Faast.js takes care of packaging your code, setting up IAM roles, and other infrastructure complexity. Run your code on a thousand cores in seconds. All you need is an AWS or GCP account.
• Scalable. Use serverless functions to scale your batch jobs up to thousands of cores.
• Cost-effective. Understand and optimize your workload costs in real time. Pay only for compute time actually used.
• Ephemeral. No clusters or services to manage. Faast.js creates the infrastructure it uses on the fly and cleans up when it's done.
• Productive. First class support for TypeScript and JavaScript. Type safety, documentation, and extensive testing are part of our DNA.
• Multi-cloud: Built-in support for AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions, as well as local processing mode when you don't have network access. Switch with one line of code.

Ready to learn more?

Check out our getting started documentation.

Work through some examples

Review the detailed API documentation.

Join our discord channel.

Follow us on twitter.

Contributing

See contributing.

Download Details:

Author: faastjs
Source Code: https://github.com/faastjs/faast.js 
License: Apache-2.0 license

#serverless #javascript #library #typescript 

What is GEEK

Buddha Community

NBB: Ad-hoc CLJS Scripting on Node.js

Nbb

Not babashka. Node.js babashka!?

Ad-hoc CLJS scripting on Node.js.

Status

Experimental. Please report issues here.

Goals and features

Nbb's main goal is to make it easy to get started with ad hoc CLJS scripting on Node.js.

Additional goals and features are:

• Fast startup without relying on a custom version of Node.js.
• Small artifact (current size is around 1.2MB).
• First class macros.
• Support building small TUI apps using Reagent.
• Complement babashka with libraries from the Node.js ecosystem.

Requirements

Nbb requires Node.js v12 or newer.

How does this tool work?

CLJS code is evaluated through SCI, the same interpreter that powers babashka. Because SCI works with advanced compilation, the bundle size, especially when combined with other dependencies, is smaller than what you get with self-hosted CLJS. That makes startup faster. The trade-off is that execution is less performant and that only a subset of CLJS is available (e.g. no deftype, yet).

Usage

Install nbb from NPM:

$ npm install nbb -g

Omit -g for a local install.

Try out an expression:

$ nbb -e '(+ 1 2 3)'
6

And then install some other NPM libraries to use in the script. E.g.:

$ npm install csv-parse shelljs zx

Create a script which uses the NPM libraries:

(ns script
  (:require ["csv-parse/lib/sync$default" :as csv-parse]
            ["fs" :as fs]
            ["path" :as path]
            ["shelljs$default" :as sh]
            ["term-size$default" :as term-size]
            ["zx$default" :as zx]
            ["zx$fs" :as zxfs]
            [nbb.core :refer [*file*]]))

(prn (path/resolve "."))

(prn (term-size))

(println (count (str (fs/readFileSync *file*))))

(prn (sh/ls "."))

(prn (csv-parse "foo,bar"))

(prn (zxfs/existsSync *file*))

(zx/$ #js ["ls"])

Call the script:

$ nbb script.cljs
"/private/tmp/test-script"
#js {:columns 216, :rows 47}
510
#js ["node_modules" "package-lock.json" "package.json" "script.cljs"]
#js [#js ["foo" "bar"]]
true
$ ls
node_modules
package-lock.json
package.json
script.cljs

Macros

Nbb has first class support for macros: you can define them right inside your .cljs file, like you are used to from JVM Clojure. Consider the plet macro to make working with promises more palatable:

(defmacro plet
  [bindings & body]
  (let [binding-pairs (reverse (partition 2 bindings))
        body (cons 'do body)]
    (reduce (fn [body [sym expr]]
              (let [expr (list '.resolve 'js/Promise expr)]
                (list '.then expr (list 'clojure.core/fn (vector sym)
                                        body))))
            body
            binding-pairs)))

Using this macro we can look async code more like sync code. Consider this puppeteer example:

(-> (.launch puppeteer)
      (.then (fn [browser]
               (-> (.newPage browser)
                   (.then (fn [page]
                            (-> (.goto page "https://clojure.org")
                                (.then #(.screenshot page #js{:path "screenshot.png"}))
                                (.catch #(js/console.log %))
                                (.then #(.close browser)))))))))

Using plet this becomes:

(plet [browser (.launch puppeteer)
       page (.newPage browser)
       _ (.goto page "https://clojure.org")
       _ (-> (.screenshot page #js{:path "screenshot.png"})
             (.catch #(js/console.log %)))]
      (.close browser))

See the puppeteer example for the full code.

Since v0.0.36, nbb includes promesa which is a library to deal with promises. The above plet macro is similar to promesa.core/let.

Startup time

$ time nbb -e '(+ 1 2 3)'
6
nbb -e '(+ 1 2 3)'   0.17s  user 0.02s system 109% cpu 0.168 total

The baseline startup time for a script is about 170ms seconds on my laptop. When invoked via npx this adds another 300ms or so, so for faster startup, either use a globally installed nbb or use $(npm bin)/nbb script.cljs to bypass npx.

Dependencies

NPM dependencies

Nbb does not depend on any NPM dependencies. All NPM libraries loaded by a script are resolved relative to that script. When using the Reagent module, React is resolved in the same way as any other NPM library.

Classpath

To load .cljs files from local paths or dependencies, you can use the --classpath argument. The current dir is added to the classpath automatically. So if there is a file foo/bar.cljs relative to your current dir, then you can load it via (:require [foo.bar :as fb]). Note that nbb uses the same naming conventions for namespaces and directories as other Clojure tools: foo-bar in the namespace name becomes foo_bar in the directory name.

To load dependencies from the Clojure ecosystem, you can use the Clojure CLI or babashka to download them and produce a classpath:

$ classpath="$(clojure -A:nbb -Spath -Sdeps '{:aliases {:nbb {:replace-deps {com.github.seancorfield/honeysql {:git/tag "v2.0.0-rc5" :git/sha "01c3a55"}}}}}')"

and then feed it to the --classpath argument:

$ nbb --classpath "$classpath" -e "(require '[honey.sql :as sql]) (sql/format {:select :foo :from :bar :where [:= :baz 2]})"
["SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE baz = ?" 2]

Currently nbb only reads from directories, not jar files, so you are encouraged to use git libs. Support for .jar files will be added later.

Current file

The name of the file that is currently being executed is available via nbb.core/*file* or on the metadata of vars:

(ns foo
  (:require [nbb.core :refer [*file*]]))

(prn *file*) ;; "/private/tmp/foo.cljs"

(defn f [])
(prn (:file (meta #'f))) ;; "/private/tmp/foo.cljs"

Reagent

Nbb includes reagent.core which will be lazily loaded when required. You can use this together with ink to create a TUI application:

$ npm install ink

ink-demo.cljs:

(ns ink-demo
  (:require ["ink" :refer [render Text]]
            [reagent.core :as r]))

(defonce state (r/atom 0))

(doseq [n (range 1 11)]
  (js/setTimeout #(swap! state inc) (* n 500)))

(defn hello []
  [:> Text {:color "green"} "Hello, world! " @state])

(render (r/as-element [hello]))

Promesa

Working with callbacks and promises can become tedious. Since nbb v0.0.36 the promesa.core namespace is included with the let and do! macros. An example:

(ns prom
  (:require [promesa.core :as p]))

(defn sleep [ms]
  (js/Promise.
   (fn [resolve _]
     (js/setTimeout resolve ms))))

(defn do-stuff
  []
  (p/do!
   (println "Doing stuff which takes a while")
   (sleep 1000)
   1))

(p/let [a (do-stuff)
        b (inc a)
        c (do-stuff)
        d (+ b c)]
  (prn d))

$ nbb prom.cljs
Doing stuff which takes a while
Doing stuff which takes a while
3

Also see API docs.

Js-interop

Since nbb v0.0.75 applied-science/js-interop is available:

(ns example
  (:require [applied-science.js-interop :as j]))

(def o (j/lit {:a 1 :b 2 :c {:d 1}}))

(prn (j/select-keys o [:a :b])) ;; #js {:a 1, :b 2}
(prn (j/get-in o [:c :d])) ;; 1

Most of this library is supported in nbb, except the following:

• destructuring using :syms
• property access using .-x notation. In nbb, you must use keywords.

See the example of what is currently supported.

Examples

See the examples directory for small examples.

Also check out these projects built with nbb:

• c64core: retrocompute aesthetics twitter bot
• gallery.cljs: script to download walpapers from windowsonearth.org.
• nbb-action-example: example of a Github action built with nbb.

API

See API documentation.

Migrating to shadow-cljs

See this gist on how to convert an nbb script or project to shadow-cljs.

Build

Prequisites:

• babashka >= 0.4.0
• Clojure CLI >= 1.10.3.933
• Node.js 16.5.0 (lower version may work, but this is the one I used to build)

To build:

• Clone and cd into this repo
• bb release

Run bb tasks for more project-related tasks.

Download Details:
Author: borkdude
Download Link: Download The Source Code
Official Website: https://github.com/borkdude/nbb 
License: EPL-1.0

#node #javascript

Serverless Applications - Pros and Cons to Help Businesses Decide - Prismetric

In the past few years, especially after Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced its Lambda platform, serverless architecture became the business realm’s buzzword. The increasing popularity of serverless applications saw market leaders like Netflix, Airbnb, Nike, etc., adopting the serverless architecture to handle their backend functions better. Moreover, serverless architecture’s market size is expected to reach a whopping $9.17 billion by the year 2023.

Global_Serverless_Architecture_Market_2019-2023

Why use serverless computing?
As a business it is best to approach a professional mobile app development company to build apps that are deployed on various servers; nevertheless, businesses should understand that the benefits of the serverless applications lie in the possibility it promises ideal business implementations and not in the hype created by cloud vendors. With the serverless architecture, the developers can easily code arbitrary codes on-demand without worrying about the underlying hardware.

But as is the case with all game-changing trends, many businesses opt for serverless applications just for the sake of being up-to-date with their peers without thinking about the actual need of their business.

The serverless applications work well with stateless use cases, the cases which execute cleanly and give the next operation in a sequence. On the other hand, the serverless architecture is not fit for predictable applications where there is a lot of reading and writing in the backend system.

Another benefit of working with the serverless software architecture is that the third-party service provider will charge based on the total number of requests. As the number of requests increases, the charge is bound to increase, but then it will cost significantly less than a dedicated IT infrastructure.

Defining serverless software architecture
In serverless software architecture, the application logic is implemented in an environment where operating systems, servers, or virtual machines are not visible. Although where the application logic is executed is running on any operating system which uses physical servers. But the difference here is that managing the infrastructure is the soul of the service provider and the mobile app developer focuses only on writing the codes.

There are two different approaches when it comes to serverless applications. They are

Backend as a service (BaaS)
Function as a service (FaaS)

1. Backend as a service (BaaS)
   The basic required functionality of the growing number of third party services is to provide server-side logic and maintain their internal state. This requirement has led to applications that do not have server-side logic or any application-specific logic. Thus they depend on third-party services for everything.

Moreover, other examples of third-party services are Autho, AWS Cognito (authentication as a service), Amazon Kinesis, Keen IO (analytics as a service), and many more.

2. Function as a Service (FaaS)
   FaaS is the modern alternative to traditional architecture when the application still requires server-side logic. With Function as a Service, the developer can focus on implementing stateless functions triggered by events and can communicate efficiently with the external world.

FaaS serverless architecture is majorly used with microservices architecture as it renders everything to the organization. AWS Lambda, Google Cloud functions, etc., are some of the examples of FaaS implementation.

Pros of Serverless applications
There are specific ways in which serverless applications can redefine the way business is done in the modern age and has some distinct advantages over the traditional could platforms. Here are a few –

🔹 Highly Scalable
The flexible nature of the serverless architecture makes it ideal for scaling the applications. The serverless application’s benefit is that it allows the vendor to run each of the functions in separate containers, allowing optimizing them automatically and effectively. Moreover, unlike in the traditional cloud, one doesn’t need to purchase a certain number of resources in serverless applications and can be as flexible as possible.

🔹 Cost-Effective
As the organizations don’t need to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on hardware, they don’t need to pay anything to the engineers to maintain the hardware. The serverless application’s pricing model is execution based as the organization is charged according to the executions they have made.

The company that uses the serverless applications is allotted a specific amount of time, and the pricing of the execution depends on the memory required. Different types of costs like presence detection, access authorization, image processing, etc., associated with a physical or virtual server is completely eliminated with the serverless applications.

🔹 Focuses on user experience
As the companies don’t always think about maintaining the servers, it allows them to focus on more productive things like developing and improving customer service features. A recent survey says that about 56% of the users are either using or planning to use the serverless applications in the coming six months.

Moreover, as the companies would save money with serverless apps as they don’t have to maintain any hardware system, it can be then utilized to enhance the level of customer service and features of the apps.

🔹 Ease of migration
It is easy to get started with serverless applications by porting individual features and operate them as on-demand events. For example, in a CMS, a video plugin requires transcoding video for different formats and bitrates. If the organization wished to do this with a WordPress server, it might not be a good fit as it would require resources dedicated to serving pages rather than encoding the video.

Moreover, the benefits of serverless applications can be used optimally to handle metadata encoding and creation. Similarly, serverless apps can be used in other plugins that are often prone to critical vulnerabilities.

Cons of serverless applications
Despite having some clear benefits, serverless applications are not specific for every single use case. We have listed the top things that an organization should keep in mind while opting for serverless applications.

🔹 Complete dependence on third-party vendor
In the realm of serverless applications, the third-party vendor is the king, and the organizations have no options but to play according to their rules. For example, if an application is set in Lambda, it is not easy to port it into Azure. The same is the case for coding languages. In present times, only Python developers and Node.js developers have the luxury to choose between existing serverless options.

Therefore, if you are planning to consider serverless applications for your next project, make sure that your vendor has everything needed to complete the project.

🔹 Challenges in debugging with traditional tools
It isn’t easy to perform debugging, especially for large enterprise applications that include various individual functions. Serverless applications use traditional tools and thus provide no option to attach a debugger in the public cloud. The organization can either do the debugging process locally or use logging for the same purpose. In addition to this, the DevOps tools in the serverless application do not support the idea of quickly deploying small bits of codes into running applications.

#serverless-application #serverless #serverless-computing #serverless-architeture #serverless-application-prosand-cons

Faast.js: Serverless Batch Computing Made Simple

Faast.js

Faast.js makes regular functions callable as serverless functions on AWS Lambda and Google Cloud. It handles the details of uploading your code, creating cloud infrastructure, and cleaning up. Scale up your functions to a thousand cores in seconds :rocket:

Faast.js is a pure library with no service dependencies, operational overhead, or unnecessary complexity.

Installation

Faast.js requires node version 8+.

$ npm install faastjs

Example

First write the functions you want to run in a serverless function. Make sure to export them:

// functions.ts
export function hello(name: string) {
    return "hello " + name;
}

Use faast.js to turn this into a serverless function:

// main.ts
import { faast } from "faastjs";
import * as funcs from "./functions";

(async () => {
    const m = await faast("aws", funcs);
    const { hello } = m.functions;
    const result = await hello("world!");
    console.log(result);
    await m.cleanup();
})();

Make 1000 concurrent calls if you like:

const promises: string[] = [];
for (let i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
    promises.push(hello(`world ${i}!`));
}
await Promise.all(promises);

How much did that cost...?

const cost = await m.costSnapshot();
console.log(`$${cost.total()}`);

Relax. It's just half a penny:

$0.00420858

Features

• Frictionless. Faast.js takes care of packaging your code, setting up IAM roles, and other infrastructure complexity. Run your code on a thousand cores in seconds. All you need is an AWS or GCP account.
• Scalable. Use serverless functions to scale your batch jobs up to thousands of cores.
• Cost-effective. Understand and optimize your workload costs in real time. Pay only for compute time actually used.
• Ephemeral. No clusters or services to manage. Faast.js creates the infrastructure it uses on the fly and cleans up when it's done.
• Productive. First class support for TypeScript and JavaScript. Type safety, documentation, and extensive testing are part of our DNA.
• Multi-cloud: Built-in support for AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions, as well as local processing mode when you don't have network access. Switch with one line of code.

Ready to learn more?

Check out our getting started documentation.

Work through some examples

Review the detailed API documentation.

Join our discord channel.

Follow us on twitter.

Contributing

See contributing.

Download Details:

Author: Faastjs
Source Code: https://github.com/faastjs/faast.js 
License: Apache-2.0 license

#typescript #javascript #library #serverless 

Faast.js: Serverless Batch Computing Made Simple

Faast.js

Faast.js makes regular functions callable as serverless functions on AWS Lambda and Google Cloud. It handles the details of uploading your code, creating cloud infrastructure, and cleaning up. Scale up your functions to a thousand cores in seconds :rocket:

Faast.js is a pure library with no service dependencies, operational overhead, or unnecessary complexity.

Installation

Faast.js requires node version 8+.

$ npm install faastjs

Example

First write the functions you want to run in a serverless function. Make sure to export them:

// functions.ts
export function hello(name: string) {
    return "hello " + name;
}

Use faast.js to turn this into a serverless function:

// main.ts
import { faast } from "faastjs";
import * as funcs from "./functions";

(async () => {
    const m = await faast("aws", funcs);
    const { hello } = m.functions;
    const result = await hello("world!");
    console.log(result);
    await m.cleanup();
})();

Make 1000 concurrent calls if you like:

const promises: string[] = [];
for (let i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
    promises.push(hello(`world ${i}!`));
}
await Promise.all(promises);

How much did that cost...?

const cost = await m.costSnapshot();
console.log(`$${cost.total()}`);

Relax. It's just half a penny:

$0.00420858

Features

• Frictionless. Faast.js takes care of packaging your code, setting up IAM roles, and other infrastructure complexity. Run your code on a thousand cores in seconds. All you need is an AWS or GCP account.
• Scalable. Use serverless functions to scale your batch jobs up to thousands of cores.
• Cost-effective. Understand and optimize your workload costs in real time. Pay only for compute time actually used.
• Ephemeral. No clusters or services to manage. Faast.js creates the infrastructure it uses on the fly and cleans up when it's done.
• Productive. First class support for TypeScript and JavaScript. Type safety, documentation, and extensive testing are part of our DNA.
• Multi-cloud: Built-in support for AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions, as well as local processing mode when you don't have network access. Switch with one line of code.

Ready to learn more?

Check out our getting started documentation.

Work through some examples

Review the detailed API documentation.

Join our discord channel.

Follow us on twitter.

Contributing

See contributing.

Download Details:

Author: faastjs
Source Code: https://github.com/faastjs/faast.js 
License: Apache-2.0 license

#serverless #javascript #library #typescript 

Serverless Computing vs Cloud Computing

See the definitions of serverless computing and cloud computing and explore the peculiarities and pros and cons of each one.

The abundance of terms makes you feel confused and wonder how to differentiate one concept from another. The statistics show that people aren’t aware of these terms. Only one of the four customers may thoroughly explain the difference between cloud computing vs serverless.

This article will define the terms and briefly explain the peculiarities of each one.

Cloud Computing and Its Main Features

Let’s start with defining the term cloud computing. Generally speaking, this phrase is used when we talk about the data centers available to many users all over the Internet. Basically, it saves the space of your computer’s hard drive as it stores the data over the net.

The funny thing is that this term can be explained in various ways by different people. Some describe it as a bought-in computer service, while others view it as IT outsourcing. Still, we all use it on a regular basis even though the majority of us don’t think about it.

For instance, when you prepare a document over the net, or write web-based emails, or type a query into Google. All these cases are examples of cloud computing and show that it is inevitable nowadays. Moreover, it has plenty of advantages as it helps to lower IT costs, scale more easily, and improve agility.

There are three main types of cloud computing:

• IaaS
• PaaS
• SaaS

Well, as you can see, this term isn’t as complicated as it seems. But what is serverless, and how does it work?

#cloud #cloud computing #serverless #serverless computing