As a consultant, our clients often need us to be high-trust partners who solve not only immediate problems but also optimize and improve systems we interact with along the way. For this particular client engagement, we functioned as the engineering team and source of technical expertise for a multi-hundred-employee business.
In one corner of their business, they had a number of legacy applications functioning as APIs and background jobs to facilitate internal tooling and data synchronization. These weren’t immediately problematic but were finicky to maintain and a constant source of fire-fighting for our team and the business.
Given these were low-traffic services, the infrastructure remained idle the majority of the time. However, when they were required, they needed to be able to perform in a timely manner. Furthermore, we were responsible for managing and operating the infrastructure: software updates, security patches, monitoring infrastructure, and so forth. As a small team, a lot of our effort in owning these services translated to operational overhead instead of business impact. So - as the problem solvers we are - we wanted to make this better.
Given this context, our team opted to begin migrating this functionality using serverless technologies. Our APIs would be developed using API Gateway, and our API handler and background job logic would be developed using Lambda functions.
AWS offers an easy-to-begin on-ramp to provision this infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code and develop functionality with it via the AWS Serverless Application Model. Using this superset on top of CloudFormation templates, we would manage our infrastructure and our application code within the same software development lifecycle.
This has met our needs and is still in place as a solution today.
A common problem
Nothing is perfect, however.
During this transition, as we added more functionality, it soon became time to perform some refactoring. Our root template included all of our infrastructure components and was quickly becoming burdensome to review and maintain:
# https://github.com/laaksomavrick/aws-sam-apigw-lambda-decomposition-example/blob/main/template.yaml
...
Resources:
ApiGateway:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Api
Properties:
StageName: v1
HelloWorldFunction:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
Properties:
PackageType: Image
Architectures:
- x86_64
Events:
HelloWorld:
Type: Api
Properties:
RestApiId: !Ref ApiGateway
Path: /hello
Method: get
Metadata:
DockerTag: nodejs18.x-v1
DockerContext: ./hello-world
Dockerfile: Dockerfile
...
...a lot of other stuff for the client infrastructure...So, to solve this problem, we wanted to extract common infrastructure components into their own stacks: our root template would be decomposed to reference nested stacks such as Api, Lambda, IAM, and so on. This would reduce the cognitive burden of navigating the codebase and help us DRY up our declarations for common infrastructure components.
So, naturally, we began by separating common components into separate files, for example:
# https://github.com/laaksomavrick/aws-sam-apigw-lambda-decomposition-example/blob/refactoring-error/template.yaml
...
Resources:
ApiGateway:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Api
Properties:
StageName: v1
Lambdas:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Application
Properties:
Location: lambdas.yaml
Parameters:
ApiGateway: !Ref ApiGateway
...
# https://github.com/laaksomavrick/aws-sam-apigw-lambda-decomposition-example/blob/refactoring-error/lambdas.yaml
...
Parameters:
ApiGateway:
Type: String
Description: The ApiGateway identifier
Resources:
HelloWorldFunction:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
Properties:
PackageType: Image
Architectures:
- x86_64
Events:
HelloWorld:
Type: Api
Properties:
RestApiId: !Ref ApiGateway
Path: /hello
Method: get
Metadata:
DockerTag: nodejs18.x-v1
DockerContext: ./hello-world
Dockerfile: Dockerfile
...
...However, on attempting to build this template via sam build, the following error was observed:
Error: [InvalidResourceException('HelloWorldFunction', "Event with id [HelloWorld] is invalid. RestApiId must be a valid reference to an 'AWS::Serverless::Api' resource in same template.")]Uh-oh.
It appeared that we couldn’t separate the API Gateway declaration from the Lambda declarations that backed any API endpoint logic.
So, this meant that we couldn’t DRY up our Lambda declarations, and it would disrupt our efforts to compartmentalize our infrastructure declarations. Furthermore, there is a resource limit of 500 for CloudFormation templates, meaning we would eventually encounter this problem again.
So - did we simply have to live with everything being in one template file?
The official non-solution
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Before conceding defeat and moving on to a different strategy, we wanted to make sure we understood the problem and evaluate whether any workarounds existed.
First, we looked at the documentation for the AWS::Serverless::Api resource. As written, the RestApiId “…must contain an operation with the given path and method…” and in its absence, “…AWS SAM creates a default AWS::Serverless::Api resource using a generated OpenAPI document. That resource contains a union of all paths and methods defined by API events in the same template that do not specify a RestApiId”.
Hmm, okay.
So, there was some code generation internal to AWS SAM that generated a path and method mapping via an OpenAPI document. Presumptively, that OpenAPI document is used as metadata to map API Gateway endpoints to their respective Lambda function handler.
Digging deeper, we found the following Github issue that mirrored our problem dating back to 2018 (and remains unresolved today). Moreover, we found an explanation of why this error occurs (and why it probably won’t be addressed in an official capacity).
An unofficial solution
From both the official documentation on AWS and the community discussion on Github, the core blocker centered around generating an OpenAPI specification to bind endpoints to their respective handlers. Doing some documentation spelunking, it seemed like we could provide an OpenAPI specification manually via the DefinitionBody property on an AWS::Serverless::Api resource.
Further, using CloudFormation’s macros to transform and include the specification, we could template this file with the appropriate parameters (AWS region, AWS account id, Lambda function name) and have it uploaded to S3 as part of our deployment process.
This meant, in theory, we could avoid hardcoding any parameters into the OpenAPI specification and retain our existing deployment process without the for of additional tooling (e.g., a separate OpenAPI generation or templating tool).
A walkthrough of the implementation
So - we moved from ideation to implementation in order to validate whether we could work around this long-standing issue with our proposed solution.
All code is visible from the given repository and branch should you wish to walk through it independently.
Template root
# https://github.com/laaksomavrick/aws-sam-apigw-lambda-decomposition-example/blob/refactoring-fix/template.yaml
---
Resources:
Api:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Application
Properties:
Location: api.yaml
Parameters:
HelloWorldFunctionArn: !GetAtt Lambdas.Outputs.HelloWorldFunctionArn
Lambdas:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Application
Properties:
Location: lambdas.yamlThe root template now referenced the two nested stacks: one for the Api related components and the other for the Lambda related components. The Api layer required a reference to the Lambda function ARN for interpolation in the OpenAPI specification.
Api template
# https://github.com/laaksomavrick/aws-sam-apigw-lambda-decomposition-example/blob/refactoring-fix/api.yaml
---
Resources:
ApiGateway:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Api
Properties:
StageName: v1
DefinitionBody:
"Fn::Transform":
Name: "AWS::Include"
Parameters:
Location: openapi.yaml
ApiGatewayExecutionRole:
Type: AWS::IAM::Role
Properties:
AssumeRolePolicyDocument:
Version: "2012-10-17"
Statement:
- Effect: Allow
Principal:
Service:
- apigateway.amazonaws.com
Action:
- "sts:AssumeRole"
Policies:
- PolicyName: ApiGatewayExecutionPolicy
PolicyDocument:
Version: "2012-10-17"
Statement:
- Action: lambda:*
Effect: Allow
Resource:
- Ref: HelloWorldFunctionArnThe Api template required unraveling and making explicit some of the implicit infrastructure provisioned for us previously. We had to explicitly define the IAM role for the API Gateway and the OpenAPI specification. Using Transform and Include did allow us to upload and template the OpenAPI specification as we had suspected. This was the trick that allowed us to preserve our existing development and deployment practices (i.e., running sam build and sam deploy) without introducing new dependencies or complicating the existing practices we had standardized.
OpenAPI specification
# https://github.com/laaksomavrick/aws-sam-apigw-lambda-decomposition-example/blob/refactoring-fix/openapi.yaml
openapi: 3.0.1
info:
title: sam-app
version: "1.0"
servers:
- url: /v1
paths:
/hello:
get:
security:
- {}
x-amazon-apigateway-integration:
credentials:
Fn::GetAtt:
- ApiGatewayExecutionRole
- Arn
type: aws_proxy
httpMethod: POST
uri:
Fn::Sub: arn:aws:apigateway:${AWS::Region}:lambda:path/2015-03-31/functions/${HelloWorldFunctionArn}/invocations
passthroughBehavior: when_no_matchThere was enough AWS-specific technobabble in this specification to make discovering it naturally untenable.
In order to create a working example, we scaffolded an API using the GUI and then exported the specification from that API. From there, we adapted the specification to suit our application and added templating parameters via CloudFormation’s interpolation syntax, the visible parameters in our stack, and the visible pseudo parameters.
Defining an x-amazon-apigateway-integration per endpoint binds the API endpoint to a Lambda function, which was the aforementioned code generation being taken care of for us behind the scenes.
Lambda template
# https://github.com/laaksomavrick/aws-sam-apigw-lambda-decomposition-example/blob/refactoring-fix/lambdas.yaml
---
Resources:
HelloWorldFunction:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
Properties:
PackageType: Image
Architectures:
- x86_64
Metadata:
DockerTag: nodejs18.x-v1
DockerContext: ./hello-world
Dockerfile: Dockerfile
Outputs:
HelloWorldFunctionArn:
Value: !GetAtt HelloWorldFunction.ArnOur Lambda template remained generally the same aside from the absence of the previous Events block per Lambda function. This was redundant, given the binding between an endpoint and a function was now defined at the Api layer of our stack.
Samconfig update
# https://github.com/laaksomavrick/aws-sam-apigw-lambda-decomposition-example/blob/refactoring-fix/samconfig.toml
...
[default.deploy.parameters]
capabilities = "CAPABILITY_IAM CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND"
...Last but not least, since we utilized macros in our CloudFormation templates, we had to explicitly declare the CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND capability in order to create and update our stack.
The result
The moment of anticipation. We were able to successfully build and deploy our stack. Furthermore, we were able to observe that it was functioning correctly:
$ curl https://$SOME_ID.execute-api.$SOME_REGION.amazonaws.com/v1/hello
{"message":"hello world"}Woohoo!
Reflection
After having made this change, we observed some key takeaways.
Our CloudFormation templates became more modular and encapsulated behaviours common to them. Swapping the implementation of some infrastructure components wasn’t a problem as long as the change was conformant to the interfaces we set up between stacks. With the same reasoning as object-oriented design, this made change management easier and more localized.
Resource limits were no longer a concern in our templates. If we ever begin to reach the upper bound in a template, refactoring the template now has prior art to learn from and guide the execution.
We gained new capabilities to manage and configure the bindings between API Gateway and Lambda functions. Defining, for example, mapping templates or integrations with other AWS services (e.g. SQS) was explicit in our OpenAPI specification.
However, one caveat is that debugging failed deployments became more difficult as a result of authoring more nested stacks. Root stacks only indicate a failure happening somewhere and not the reason for the failure itself. Finding the cause of an error felt like manually walking a dependency graph - I think there is room for improvement (via tooling or otherwise) here.
On reflection, solving the impossible is my favourite thing about working in technology, and this exercise proved a good experience in that respect. As a team, we learned a lot about the internals of our chosen tooling and found a solution to a problem many users were and continue to experience. Furthermore, our client has benefitted from us investing in our tools and being forward-thinking in our approach.
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