Amplify

Tim Lavreniuk

(feedback)

Me

AWS Certified Solution Architect
10+ years in software development
5 years with Flutter

GDG Hannover co-organizer
Speaking at conferences

My amplify projects

Online Education platform (Flutter Web, 2 years)
Kid educational apps (Flutter, 2 months)
News app pet project (Flutter, 2 months)

Why?

AWS has over 200 fully featured services

Amplify sandbox - amazing

GraphQL transformer - killer feature

Scaling

AWS Amplify, Amplify Studio and Amplify CLI

Hosting - only AWS Amplify
Functions - only CLI
Auth hooks - only CLI

Client side

Data store

Cool idea
Cant imagine how to use it in projects more complex than a todo list

GraphQL API requests

With Amplify codegen schemas

With custom schema generation

Amplify codegen schemas

clean, no additional libraries/files
graphql request without validation
only one model will be parsed per request

Custom schema generation

amplify pull without backend editing - doesn't work

when you want to split amplify backend and client app

Auth with migration lambdas

Lambdas

No typescript support

rollup.config.js

import commonjs from '@rollup/plugin-commonjs';
import typescript from 'rollup-plugin-typescript2';
import autoExternal from 'rollup-plugin-auto-external';
import json from '@rollup/plugin-json';
import path from "path";

export default {
    input: 'index.ts',
    output: {
        dir: '.',
        format: 'cjs'
    },
    plugins: [ autoExternal({
        builtins: true,
        dependencies: true,
        packagePath: path.resolve('./package.json'),
        peerDependencies: false,
    }), json(), commonjs(), typescript()],
};

Local development

Lambda layers doesn't work

Another lambda invoke doesn't work

20+ lambdas - poor performance

Auth hooks

DynamoDB triggers

DB operations

1) Use graphql api (easy, slow)

2) Write your own CRUD methods for each table

It was amazing to have utilities like DataStore but for DB table manipulation directly

AWS SDK v3 usage

{
  "Role": {
    "Fn::GetAtt": [
      "LambdaExecutionRole",
      "Arn"
    ]
  },
  "Runtime": "nodejs18.x",
  "Layers": [],
  "Timeout": 25
}

NO possibility to select default version of nodejs for lambdas

Working with API

Amplify studio - mostly unusable

It's amazing, until..

Content screen also doesn't work

no types for graphql directives

# https://docs.amplify.aws/cli-legacy/graphql-transformer/model/
directive @model(
    queries: ModelQueryMap
    mutations: ModelMutationMap
    subscriptions: ModelSubscriptionMap
    timestamps: TimestampConfiguration
) repeatable on OBJECT
input ModelMutationMap {
    create: String
    update: String
    delete: String
}
input ModelQueryMap {
    get: String
    list: String
}
input ModelSubscriptionMap {
    onCreate: [String]
    onUpdate: [String]
    onDelete: [String]
    level: ModelSubscriptionLevel
}
enum ModelSubscriptionLevel {
    off
    public
    on
}

n+1 problem

BatchInvoke is limited

File storage

User need additional knowledge about Bucket policies to make a public bucket

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "MakeItPublic",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": "*",
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::some-bucket-prod/public/*"
        }
    ]
}