Making Static Sites More Dynamic

With Serverless B y Rouven Weßling

Rouven Weßling Web Developer, lover of APIs, cake and whisky @RouvenWessling

Don’t let a CMS get in the way of

shipping software. Contentful provides a content infrastructure that enables

teams to power content in any digital product.

What we’ll do today • A brief history of static website • Why static sites are awesome • Why and how to combine static sites and serverless

Websites

Static A brief history

THE FIRST WEBSITE   WAS A STATIC SITE

• Every website was static • Layout wasn’t a thing - everything was one vertical flow. • Link management was manual LET’S DEVELOP LIKE ITS 1991

Developer Workstation Webserver Browser

FIRST WEBSEARCH

FIRST WEBCOMIC

Photo by Pamela Saunders on Unsplash • CGI was introduced in 1994 • Rasmus Lerdorf releases his “Personal Home Page Tools ” in 1995 • Brendan Eich writes the prototype for JavaScript in 1995 THINGS   GOT DYNAMIC

Developer Workstation Webserver Browser Database

E-COMMERCE IS TAKING OFF

YOUR OWN SPACE

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash • Microsoft ASP was releases in 1996, Sun JSP in 1999 • Hosting a dynamic, CMS, based website became easy

• Microsoft FrontPage and Marcomedia Dreamweaver released in 1996 and 1997 IT’S A   BUSINESS NOW

Developer Load balancer Browser Database Application server Editors SCM

APPS ON THE WEB

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash • XMLHttpRequest was part of IE5 in 1999 • SPA have been discussed since 2003 • jQuery was published in 2006, AngularJS in 2009 I GOT THE POWER

Modern static site builders

GITHUB

Static Site Host Browser Build server Developers SCM Editors

Middleman Hexo

IT JUST MAKES YOUR LIFE EASIER CDNs are trivial to set up. Since every file gets delivered to every user as-is, no complex logic is necessary. Trivial caching Shuffling bytes from storage to the network is what servers are great at. Great performance Without a server-side application or database the attack surface is minimal. No Security issues No random 500 errors, no dropped database connections. Easy maintenance

“This project is too complex. A static site won’t do.“

Common requirements 01 “Our editors don’t know git, they need a GUI.” 0 2 “We have a lot of content, we need full-text search.” 04 “We’re running an online shop. You can’t do that with a static site.” 03 “Our contact forms needs to send an email.” Photo by Š tefan Š tefan č ík on Unsplash

• AWS got started in 2002,   Lambda added in 2014 • Roy Fielding defines REST in his 2000 PhD dissertation • Twilio was founded in 2007; Stripe in 2011 A CLOUD AND AN   API WALK INTO   A BAR Photo by Stanford Smith on Unsplash

Serverless Architectures

Source: h ttps://martinfowler.com/bliki/Serverless.html

A NEW BREED OF STATIC SITE GENERATORS Seamlessly combining static sites and single page applications Blazing-fast static site generator for React Universal Vue.js Applications

How does that solve anything?

With great services

3 WAYS OF ACCESSING A SERVICE Browser Build Function

A content infrastructure service - or a headless CMS - gives editors the graphical interface they need. You content becomes just an API. 01 “Our editors don’t know git, they need a GUI.” Browser Build Function

Static Site Host Browser Build server Developers SCM Editors Content Infrastructure

Using a Search-as-a-Service provider not only saves you from running your own search infrastructure but also allows integrating multiple content providers into one search. 0 2 “We have a lot of content, we need full-text search.” Browser Build

Static Site Host Browser Build server Developers SCM Editors

Cloud email services are a de facto standard in modern architectures but they’re not accessible from the client. A tiny bit of glue code hosted on a FaaS platform bridges the gap. 03 “Our contact forms needs to send an email.” Browser Function AWS Lambda

const sendGridConfig = {api_user: 'SENDGRID_USERNAME' , api_key: 'SENDGRID_PASSWORD' }; const transporter = nodemailer. createTransport ( sgTransport ({auth: sendGridConfig})); const sendMail = pify (transporter.sendMail); exports. handler

function (event, context) {

const templateDir = path. join (__dirname, 'templates' , event.template);

const template = new

EmailTemplate (templateDir);

const render = pify (template.render); template. render (event.context) . then (result => { event.text = result.text; event.html = result.html;

return

sendMailAsync (event); }) . then (() => context. done ( null , {message: 'Yaay success' }))) . catch (() => context. done ( new

Error ( 'Something went wrong!' ))); }; HOW TINY?

Static Site Host Browser Build server Developers SCM Editors Sendgrid AWS Lambda

Combing a payment processing service and a shopping cart platform allows you to run your entire business off a static site. 04 “We’re running an online shop. You can’t do that with a static site.” Browser Build Function

Static Site Host Browser Build server Developers SCM Editors Snipcart

Bringing it all together

Static Site Host Browser Build server Developers SCM Editors Content Infrastructure Sendgrid AWS Lambda Snipcart

AND MANY MORE

COMBINING STATIC SITES AND SERVERLESS Dynamic resources are hidden behind APIs and well defined routes - everything else can be cached. Easy caching Static things are instant; dynamic things are fast. Great performance Every dynamic function is a limited service with only the necessary permissions. Isolated services improve security Most services can be handled by 3rd parties requiring no maintenance. Easy maintenance

Visit our booth and win Daily End-of-show

ROUVEN WEßLING Twitter: @ RouvenWessling Email: rouven @contentful.com

GitHub: @realityking