🐍 Serverless Django APIs with AWS Lambda and Zappa

📚 Learn how to develop serverless Django RESTful APIs, use Zappa to deploy them to AWS and add #authentication with Auth0.

TL;DR: In this article, you will see how to build and deploy a serverless Django API with Zappa.

Introduction

Serverless technology was developed from the idea of allowing developers to build and run applications without server management. Servers, of course, still exist, but developers and administrators don't need to manage them. This concept was heralded by AWS when it open-sourced its Serverless Application Model (SAM) framework. It then went on to release Chalice, a flask-like Python framework for building serverless applications. You can learn about building Chalice applications and APIs in this article.

With all the goodness that we are presented with, deploying serverless applications can be difficult when using frameworks like Django. Debugging in production environments can be hard too. Hence, there is a need for a way to deploy painlessly and also provide a means to debug and also monitor logs in production.

Zappa is an open-source Python tool created by Rich Jones of Gun.io for developers to create, deploy and manage serverless Python software on API Gateway and AWS Lambda infrastructure. Zappa allows you to carry out deployment with speed and ease in the most cost-efficient way possible.

In this article, you will learn how to develop serverless Django RESTful APIs, use Zappa to deploy them to AWS, and add authentication with Auth0.

Features and Benefits of Zappa

Some of the benefits provided by Zappa include:

Automated deployment: With a single command, you can package and deploy your Python project as an AWS serverless app. You can also update and destroy your app with a single command in the different staging environments. You can even deploy your application in different AWS regions.
No server maintenance: in compliance with the serverless ecosystem, Zappa takes away the maintenance of your servers from your list of tasks.
Out-of-the-box Scalability: Zappa enables quick infrastructure scaling.
Great Usability: Zappa provides a single settings file where you can do all your configuration as well as environment variables. It can be stored in JSON or YAML format.
SSL certificates: Zappa provides a dedicated certify command which grants you an access to SSL certificates from different provides such as let's Encrypt and AWS