Easy API Gateway

Create REST APIs with AWS Lambda with grace.

Features

This library provides the following functionality out of the box:

• Handle different return types of lambda implementations.
• Handle errors thrown by lambda implementations.
• A local development server using express.

Basic usage

lambda.ts

import {
  parseLambdaFrameworkOptionsFromEnv,
  LambdaFramework,
} from "easy-apigateway";

export const lambda = new LambdaFramework(
  // parse the options from well-known environment variables
  parseLambdaFrameworkOptionsFromEnv()
);

some-lambda.ts

import { lambda } from "./lambda";
import { pathParams, required } from "easy-apigateway";
import { getOrganization } from "./service";

export const handler = lambda.authorized(async (event, context) => {
  const { workspaceId, organizationId } = pathParams(event, [
    "workspaceId",
    "organizationId",
  ]);
  return required(await getOrganization(workspaceId, organizationId, context));
});

service.ts

import { organizationPermission, workspacePermission } from "./permissions";
import { AuthContext } from "easy-apigateway";

export async function getOrganization(
  workspaceId: string,
  orgId: string,
  context: AuthContext
): Promise<Organization | undefined> {
  await context.assertAnyPermission(
    organizationPermission(workspaceId, orgId, "READ"),
    workspacePermission(workspaceId, "organizations:read")
  );

  return loadOrganization(workspaceId, orgId);
}

Permissions

The framework comes with a permission evaluation framework to ease authorization in your services.

You can register permission evaluators when initializing the framework:

import { LambdaFramework, PermissionEvaluator } from "easy-apigateway";

type SomePermissionSpec = {
  type: "permission";
  permission: string;
};

const somePermissionTypeEvaluator: PermissionEvaluator<SomePermissionSpec> = (
  spec,
  context
) => context.permissions.has(spec.permission);

const lambda = new LambdaFramework({
  permissionEvaluators: {
    // map from permission spec type to evaluator
    permission: somePermissionTypeEvaluator,
  },
});

In your service methods you can now authorize using that permission spec:

import { AuthContext } from "easy-apigateway";

async function doSomething(context: AuthContext) {
  await context.assertPermissions({
    type: "permission",
    permission: "yaddayadda",
  });

  // now perform the actual service operation
}

Configuration

The framework is configured with options provided to its constructor.

For convenience, the framework options can be parsed from environment variables with a single line. This way all applications built with this framework use the same set of environment variables for configuration.

import {
  parseLambdaFrameworkOptionsFromEnv,
  LambdaFramework,
} from "easy-apigateway";

const options = parseLambdaFrameworkOptionsFromEnv();
export const lambda = new LambdaFramework(options);

Configuration Options

Environment variable	Description	Default value
STAGE	The environment in which the code is running.	development
JWT_ISSUER	The expected issuer of incoming JWT tokens.	required

Special Handlers

There's a few common special lambda handlers that you'll need in most of your applications:

Authorizer

Use this handler as the authorizer in your API Gateway.

import { createTokenAuthorizer } from "easy-apigateway";

export const handler = createTokenAuthorizer(async (authToken) => ({
  authToken,
  principalId: "test",
  permissions: ["a", "b"],
}));

For authorization with OAuth JWT tokens, you can use the following method:

import { createTokenAuthorizer, createJwtAuthorizer } from "easy-apigateway";

export const handler = createTokenAuthorizer(
  createJwtAuthorizer({
    issuer: "https://issuer.com",
    audience: "https://audience.com",
    parsePayload: (jwt) => ({
      principalId: jwt.sub,
      permissions: ["a", "b"],
    }),
  })
);

Options

Use this handler to allow OPTIONS request to enable CORS.

import { lambda } from "../lambda";

export const handler = lambda.createOptionsLambda();

Caching

The frameworks adds helpers to apply standard HTTP caching behavior to your handlers.

import { lambda } from "../lambda";
import { extractLastModifiedFromProperty } from "easy-apigateway";

export const handler = lambda.authorized(
  async () => {
    // return a simple object for demonstration
    return { updatedAt: Date.now() };
  },
  {
    caching: {
      cacheControl: "private",
      getLastModified: extractLastModifiedFromProperty("updatedAt"),
      maxAge: 3600000,
    },
  }
);

With this configuration the handler will apply the following additional operations on your response:

• Add the response header Cache-Control: private.
• Add the response header ETag: ... based on the response body.
• If the request contains a header If-None-Match and the value matches the ETag: Send a 304 Not Modified response without a body.
• If the response object contains a field updatedAt:
  • Add a Last-Modified response header.
  • Add an Expires response header using the value provided as maxAge.
  • If the request contains a header If-Modified-Since and the resource was not modified after the requested time: Send a 304 Not Modified response without a body.

Local Development Server

This framework provides helpers to run your API locally in a fashion that tries to resemble API Gateway as closely as possible.

First, install additional dependencies:

npm i -D express body-parser ts-node

Then, create the local server, eg. in src/local.ts:

import * as express from "express";
import { createLocalExpressAPI, HandlerMap, Route } from "easy-apigateway";

// Import your lambdas created by the framework.
import { handler as optionsHandler } from "../lambdas/options";
import { handler as getOrganization } from "../lambdas/getOrganization";

const app = express();

// Important: disable automatic generation of ETag headers, because we add them ourselves.
app.set("etag", false);

// Map from `handlerId` to actual lambda handler.
const handlers: HandlerMap = {
  getOrganization,
};

const routes: Array<Route> = [
  {
    method: "GET",
    // Use API Gateway path variables with curly braces.
    // They will automatically be converted to the express
    // way with a leading colon.
    path: "/organizations/{orgId}",
    // There needs to be a corresponding entry in the hanlder map.
    handlerId: "getOrganization",
  },
];

// Mount the API at the root.
app.use(
  createLocalExpressAPI({
    handlers,
    routes,
    // If an `optionsHandler` is provided, every route will automatically
    // get an additional `OPTIONS` route with this handler.
    optionsHandler,
  })
);

// Start the server.
const port = process.env.PORT || 3001;
app.listen(port, () => console.log("listening on port %d", port));

You can now start the server with ts-node src/local.ts.

Hint: If you store your route configuration in a JSON file, you can use the same file to configure your infrastructure deployment, eg. with Pulumi. This way the local server and your actual deployment are always in sync.

Helpers

The library provides a few helper methods to ease your day-to-day life:

Common Responses

There's helpers to return common successful HTTP responses.

import { lambda } from "./lambda";
import { created } from "easy-apigateway";

export const handler = lambda.authorized(async () => {
  const resource = await createResource();
  const location = `/resource/${resource.id}`;
  return created(location);
});

Common Error Responses

There's helpers to throw errors for all common non-success HTTP status codes.

import { lambda } from "./lambda";
import { badRequestError } from "easy-apigateway";

export const handler = lambda.authorized(() => {
  if (validationFailed) throw badRequestError();
  return { message: "ok" };
});