Introduction to AWS

_{Amazon Web Services offers a broad set of global cloud-based products including compute, storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, IoT, security, and enterprise applications: on-demand, available in seconds, with pay-as-you-go pricing.  From data warehousing to deployment tools, directories to content delivery, over 175 AWS services are available.}

_{In 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began offering IT infrastructure services to businesses as web services—now commonly known as cloud computing. One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity to replace upfront capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scale with your business. With the cloud, businesses no longer need to plan for and procure servers and other IT infrastructure weeks or months in advance. Instead, they can instantly spin up hundreds or thousands of servers in minutes and deliver results faster.}

Services Overview

AWS is a comprehensive, easy to use computing platform offered Amazon. The platform is developed with a combination of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following installed:

• Node.js v10.x or later
• npm v5.x or later
• git v2.14.1 or later

Steps to Create AWS Free-Tier Account

AWS Amplify

The Amplify Command Line Interface (CLI) is a unified toolchain to create AWS cloud services for your app. Let’s go ahead and install the Amplify CLI.

Option 1: Watch the video guide👇

Watch the video above to learn how to install and configure the Amplify CLI.

Option 2: Follow the Instructions

npm install -g @aws-amplify/cli                          

Now it’s time to setup the Amplify CLI. Configure Amplify by running the following command:

Once you’re signed in, Amplify CLI will ask you to create an IAM user.

Amazon IAM (Identity and Access Management) enables you to manage users and user permissions in AWS. You can learn more about Amazon IAM here.

Create a user with AdministratorAccess to your account to provision AWS resources for you like AppSync, Cognito etc.

Once the user is created, Amplify CLI will ask you to provide the accessKeyId and the secretAccessKey to connect Amplify CLI with your newly created IAM user.

Next, we’ll set up the app and initialize Amplify!

Set up fullstack project

Create a new React App

To set up the project, we’ll first create a new React app with create-react-app, a CLI tool used to bootstrap a React app using current best practices. We’ll then add Amplify and initialize a new project.

From your projects directory, run the following commands:

This creates a new React app in a directory called react-amplified and then switches us into that new directory.

Now that we’re in the root of the project, we can run the app by using the following command:

This runs a development server and allows us to see the output generated by the build, you can see the running app by navigating to http://localhost:3000.

Initialize a new backend

Now that we have a running React app, it’s time to set up Amplify so that we can create the necessary backend services needed to support the app.

From the root of the project, run:

When you initialize Amplify you’ll be prompted for some information about the app:

When you initialize a new Amplify project, a few things happen:

• It creates a top level directory called amplify that stores your backend definition. During the tutorial you’ll add capabilities such as a GraphQL API and authentication. As you add features, the amplify folder will grow with infrastructure-as-code templates that define your backend stack. Infrastructure-as-code is a best practice way to create a replicable backend stack.
• It creates a file called aws-exports.js in the src directory that holds all the configuration for the services you create with Amplify. This is how the Amplify client is able to get the necessary information about your backend services.
• It modifies the .gitignore file, adding some generated files to the ignore list
• A cloud project is created for you in the AWS Amplify Console that can be accessed by running amplify console. The Console provides a list of backend environments, deep links to provisioned resources per Amplify category, status of recent deployments, and instructions on how to promote, clone, pull, and delete backend resources

Install Amplify libraries

The first step to using Amplify in the client is to install the necessary dependencies:

Setup Frontend

Next, we need to configure Amplify on the client so that we can use it to interact with our backend services.

Open src/index.js and add the following code below the last import:

Now that our React app is set up and Amplify is initialized, we’re ready to add an API.