With emerging serverless technology, plugins have become a staple of serverless framework development. The plugins incorporate numerous packages that can be integrated into the pipeline to handle multiple deployment environments and architectures.
The plugin repository offers flexibility in the developmental pipeline, allowing developers to quickly deliver the required features and add value to the users.
Nine must-have serverless framework plugins
Python Requirements Serverless Plugin
Python is an elite and robust web development language driving numerous applications on the web. Python developers are familiar with preferred PyPI packages that simplify the daily process.
Uploading the dependencies to a directory will help to build these capabilities within AWS Lambda functions, and it is essential to remember that this needs to be created for every deployment. The Python requirements serverless plugin addresses the pain point of Python serverless function deployment with third-party dependencies to AWS Lambda.
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The plugin makes the package requirements available in the PYTHONPATH environment variable by actively gathering the requirements from requirements.txt, allowing the developers to broaden the Python-language Lambda functions’ scope. This enables the developers to express the range of functionality in a serverless manner.
IAM Roles Per Function
Growing organizations focus on implementing robust application security and user data protection. These functions house the core legislations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) in the US. The success or failure of businesses seeking IPO or acquisition depends on the ability to comply with these specifications and other legal requirements and restrictions under the jurisdiction.
The IAM Roles Per Function plugin allows businesses to allocate specific IAM roles to every serverless function. This allocation ensures that appropriate individuals access the application components that contain confidential user data. Furthermore, integrating this process with a solid security management process will allow the developers to control who can access the functional characteristics of the live code and user data related to the execution.
Step Functions
Finite-State Automata are simple and familiar control flow mechanisms in computer science. Most applications operate on the principles of these state machines. However, serverless functions find it challenging to maintain the automata. Since the execution of the Lambda functions occurs in isolation, developers find it hard to persist data between each function’s execution.
This pitfall makes the tracking state problematic in the serverless application. Serverless step functions address these challenges by providing ties into AWS Step Functions from the developer’s serverless application.
These finitely stated machines independently retain their state from the main application execution context and address issues caused by the transitory hardware of the code’s execution environment. These step functions minimize the complexity of the codebase and offer a straightforward and configurable control flow mechanism that bundles numerous serverless functions coherently.
Serverless WSGI
Python development frameworks commonly utilize Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) with a web focus—frameworks like Flask, Django, and Pyramid support WSGI. The Serverless WSGI plugin simplifies the deployment of these WSGI-compliant applications. It effectively handles complex tasks like API Gateway and application load balancers configurations of the architecture, allowing execution of WSGI-compliant correctly in a serverless environment.
Serverless Webpack
Webpack is a flexible build system created to ease the deployment production of web applications built on JavaScript. The serverless Webpack plugin enhances the serverless framework to integrate with Webpack, allowing the developer to maintain the lambda function infrastructure and the current tasks that build and deploy the applications.
This controlled centralization simplifies the infrastructure maintenance processes by enabling the serverless function definitions as code building the hardware in the way the software is constructed.
Reqvalidator
Requesting parameter validation is a crucial component of application security. This common task is duplicated across all the functions that deal with similar request objects in the presence of serverless functions. The Reqvalidator plugin resolves this issue by allowing the developers to utilize the tools available in the API Gateway.
At the same time, this plugin lets the developers set a static API Gateway to request validator for every serverless function deployed. This offers the validation needed for the serverless application without duplication and attendant code complexity.
Serverless Offline
Factor 10 application states that the developer and production environments must consistently minimize issues from call patterns and hardware differences. The Serverless Offline project efficiently supports this statement by offering developers a local environment that imitates AWS Lambda and AWS API Gateway.
By offering consistency in both call paths and execution, the Serverless Offline plugin will provide the required tools that the code needs to behave uniformly in development and production.
Lumigo Serverless
The primary challenges of developing and maintaining serverless applications are monitoring and debugging. A key to gaining the required observability to run serverless in production is -distributed tracing. This allows developers to validate the working of the functionality and allows proactive troubleshooting.
The serverless-lumigo plugin works for Python functions and Node.js. This plugin automatically downloads and applies the Lumigo tracer to the function deployment after installation. It efficiently eases the effort of procuring end-to-end visibility over the AWS serverless application.
Serverless AWS Alerts
A key challenge in serverless applications is tracking and resolving errors. The application’s infrastructure is divided within the servers for a short period, while the indications of issues are diminished when the developer spots it. The absence of a dedicated monitoring effort can cause these events to move past the development team, critically affecting the user base.
A powerful Serverless AWS Alerts Plugin provides the required tools to set up real-time alerts, allowing developers to rapidly add CloudWatch alarms to the functions.
This establishes the monitoring and warning systems you need to ensure your application runs smoothly. It also offers multiple features that simplify collaboration with CloudWatch in serverless applications.
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The serverless framework has gained traction in cloud function developments by transforming application development by diminishing the need for provision and management of the infrastructure.
As per a recent report by Global Market Insights, “Serverless Architecture Market Size and Forecast, 2023 – 2032”, the serverless architecture market size is anticipated to reach USD 90 billion in 2032 with a CAGR of 25%. The growing market demands a successful application deployment pipeline. Hence, developers must choose the right plugin extension for the serverless framework that enables easy deployment changes with a usable and iterable architecture.
