Tell Firebase

to Go Fly A Kite:

 

Leveraging FaunaDB + Serverless Functions to add persistence to your React app on Netlify & Vercel.

Brett Haymaker, UI Engineer, Consultant & Instructor

I am not an expert in serverless architectures

🙅‍♂️

 

The point/question:

 

How can I very quickly add persistence services to my front end application?

 

 

firebase

vs

faunaDB

😒

The honeypot

🍯

Career value of faunaDB:

  • first-class GraphQL support

  • Netlify/Vercel integration

  • POE for Serverless functions

 

First Steps:

  1. Sign up for Netlify Account

    • authorize GitHub integration
  2. Sign up / register FaunaDB account

    • Can use Netlify OAuth

 

Within our React App, we need to install the following:

 

  • faunadb (dependency)

  • netlify-cli (dev-dependency)

 

 

npx netlify init

 

netlify.toml

 

[build]
  functions = "functions"
  # This will be run within Netlify to build the application
  command = "npm run build"
  # This is the directory that is published to netlify's CDN
  publish = "build"

[dev]
  # Local dev command. A.k.a npm start
  # used by netlify-dev
  command = "react-scripts start"

 

Text

Text

"start": "netlify dev"

 

 

A number of ways to create a FaunaDB instance exist:


  - FaunaDB console (online dashboard)
  - fauna-shell cli
  - using the netlify fauna addon integration (we are going to opt to use this path)

 

 

npx netlify addons:create fauna
npx netlify addons:auth fauna

 

/* bootstrap database in your FaunaDB account */
const faunadb = require('faunadb');
const chalk = require('chalk');
const insideNetlify = insideNetlifyBuildContext();
const q = faunadb.query;

console.log(chalk.cyan('Creating your FaunaDB Database...\n'));

// 1. Check for required enviroment variables
if (!process.env.FAUNADB_SERVER_SECRET) {
  console.log(chalk.yellow('Required FAUNADB_SERVER_SECRET enviroment variable not found.'));
  console.log(`Make sure you have created your Fauna databse with "netlify addons:create fauna"`);
  console.log(`Then run "npm run bootstrap" to setup your database schema`);
  if (insideNetlify) {
    process.exit(1);
  }
}

// Has var. Do the thing
if (process.env.FAUNADB_SERVER_SECRET) {
  createFaunaDB(process.env.FAUNADB_SERVER_SECRET).then(() => {
    console.log('Fauna Database schema has been created');
    console.log('Claim your fauna database with "netlify addons:auth fauna"');
  });
}

/* idempotent operation */
function createFaunaDB(key) {
  console.log('Create the fauna database schema!');
  const client = new faunadb.Client({
    secret: key,
  });

  /* Based on your requirements, change the schema here */
  return client
    .query(q.Create(q.Ref('classes'), { name: 'todos' }))
    .then(() => {
      return client.query(
        q.Create(q.Ref('indexes'), {
          name: 'all_todos',
          source: q.Ref('classes/todos'),
        })
      );
    })
    .catch((e) => {
      // Database already exists
      if (e.requestResult.statusCode === 400 && e.message === 'instance not unique') {
        console.log('Fauna already setup! Good to go');
        console.log('Claim your fauna database with "netlify addons:auth fauna"');
        throw e;
      }
    });
}

/* util methods */

// Test if inside netlify build context
function insideNetlifyBuildContext() {
  if (process.env.DEPLOY_PRIME_URL) {
    return true;
  }
  return false;
}

 

"bootstrap": "netlify dev:exec node ./scripts/bootstrap-fauna-database.js"

 

npm run bootstrap

 

 

Create / apply schema:

Creating serverless functions



exports.handler = function(event, context, callback) {
    // your server-side functionality
}

// the handler receives an event object with details about the request itself like headers

// The context parameter includes information about the context in which the serverless function was called, like certain Identity user information, for example.

// The callback works much like the same parameter in an AWS Lambda function. Your handler should use the callback to return either an error (as the first parameter) or a response object, such as:

Example todos-create.js

/* Import faunaDB sdk */
const faunadb = require('faunadb');
const q = faunadb.query;

/* export our lambda function as named "handler" export */
exports.handler = async (event, context) => {
  /* configure faunaDB Client with our secret */
  const client = new faunadb.Client({
    secret: process.env.FAUNADB_SERVER_SECRET,
  });
  /* parse the string body into a useable JS object */
  const data = JSON.parse(event.body);
  console.log('Function `todo-create` invoked', data);
  const todoItem = {
    data: data,
  };
  /* construct the fauna query */
  return client
    .query(q.Create(q.Ref('classes/todos'), todoItem))
    .then((response) => {
      console.log('success', response);
      /* Success! return the response with statusCode 200 */
      return {
        statusCode: 200,
        body: JSON.stringify(response),
      };
    })
    .catch((error) => {
      console.log('error', error);
      /* Error! return the error with statusCode 400 */
      return {
        statusCode: 400,
        body: JSON.stringify(error),
      };
    });
};

Testing our functions locally:

npx netlify functions:invoke todos-create --port 62631 --payload "{\"text\": \"react talk\", \"complete\": false}"
npm run start

Using our functions in our app:

// util api methods

const create = (data) => {
  return fetch('/.netlify/functions/todos-create', {
    body: JSON.stringify(data),
    method: 'POST',
  }).then((response) => {
    return response.json();
  });
};

 

Thank you.

🙏

 

@brettHaymaker

 

 

Serverless functions + Netlify

By Brett Haymaker

Serverless functions + Netlify

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