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Daniel Krook edited this page Feb 22, 2017 · 19 revisions

OpenWhisk 101: Creating Serverless REST APIs

This wiki contains the getting started content posted to both Bluemix and the Accelerate developer advocacy site.

Bluemix tile title and description

Build serverless REST API handlers Create actions that execute logic to execute in response to HTTP REST API calls.

Accelerate intro

Serverless platforms like Apache OpenWhisk provide a runtime that scales automatically in response to demand, resulting in a better match between the cost of cloud resources consumed and business value gained. One of the key use cases for OpenWhisk is to map HTTP REST API calls to business logic functions that create, read, update, and delete entities.

Accelerate overview

This project shows the power of serverless, event-driven architectures to execute code that scales automatically in response to demand from HTTP REST API calls. No resources are consumed until the API endpoints are called. When they are called, resources are provisioned to exactly match the current load.

It shows four OpenWhisk actions (written in JavaScript) that write and read data in a MySQL database. This demonstrates how actions can work with supporting data services and execute logic in response to HTTP requests.

One action is mapped to HTTP POST requests. It inserts the supplied cat name and color parameters into the database. A second action is mapped to PUT requests to update those fields for an existing cat. A third action is mapped to GET requests that return specific cat data. A fourth action deletes a given cat data.

The Node.js runtime on Bluemix provides a pre-built set of NPM modules. This demo also highlights how additional Node.js dependencies - such as the MySQL client - can be packaged in a ZIP file along with custom actions to provide a high level of extensibility.

Accelerate flow and diagram

  1. The developer uploads the first action and maps a route to it. When invoked with a POST request, this connects to MySQL and inserts cat data.
  2. The developer uploads the second action and maps a route to it. When invoked with a PUT request, this connects to MySQL and updates the cat data.
  3. The developer uploads the third action and maps a route to it. When invoked with a GET request, this connects to MySQL and retrieves the cat data.
  4. The developer uploads the fourth action and maps a route to it. When invoked with a DELETE request, this connects to MySQL and deletes the cat data.

Accelerate components

  • OpenWhisk
  • MySQL from Compose

Accelerate technology

  • OpenWhisk
  • MySQL from Compose

Accelerate links

  • What makes serverless architectures so attractive? - Serverless architectures are one of the hottest trends in cloud computing this year, and for good reason. There are several technical capabilities and business factors coming together to make this approach very compelling from both an application development and deployment cost perspective.

  • Build a cloud native app with Apache OpenWhisk - At this live coding event, Daniel Krook provides an overview of serverless architectures, introduces the OpenWhisk programming model, and then deploys an OpenWhisk application on IBM Bluemix, while you watch, step-by-step.

Accelerate blog post

Creating Serverless REST APIs with OpenWhisk Building Serverless REST APIs – Responding to HTTP calls in an event-driven architecture

Computing has fundamentally changed as the Internet shifts away from human driven, request/response web applications. New cloud-native microservices are more and more likely to respond to machine or system initiated events than they are to human driven HTTP requests. This trends will continue as "things" outnumber humans on the Internet.

New computing models are emerging to address this trend, one of the most interesting is called "serverless."

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