Building a simple API on AWS

In order to do something practical, let's build a super simple API on AWS. This will allow you to understand how different services can communicate together. It can also serve as a good testing environment for putting the examples in the rest of the book to the test.

You will use the following components of the AWS framework.

API Gateway in AWS

This is an AWS service that handles API requests for you. You specify the type of request that you expect to receive, and you specify the action that should be taken upon reception of a request. When building an API using API Gateway, this will automatically generate an IP address or link to which you can send your API requests.

Lambda in AWS

Lambda is a serverless execution environment for code. This means that you can write Python code, plug it to the API Gateway, and not think about how to set up servers, firewalls, and all that. This is great for decoupling systems, and it is fast enough for...