In this example we will look at how to use PostgreSQL in our serverless app using Serverless Stack (SST). We’ll be creating a simple hit counter using Amazon Aurora Serverless.

Requirements

Create an SST app

Let’s start by creating an SST app.

$ npm init sst -- typescript-starter rest-api-postgresql
$ cd rest-api-postgresql

By default our app will be deployed to an environment (or stage) called dev and the us-east-1 AWS region. This can be changed in the sst.json in your project root.

{
  "name": "rest-api-postgresql",
  "region": "us-east-1",
  "main": "stacks/index.ts"
}

Project layout

An SST app is made up of two parts.

  1. stacks/ — App Infrastructure

    The code that describes the infrastructure of your serverless app is placed in the stacks/ directory of your project. SST uses AWS CDK, to create the infrastructure.

  2. backend/ — App Code

    The code that’s run when your API is invoked is placed in the backend/ directory of your project.

Adding PostgreSQL

Amazon Aurora Serverless is an auto-scaling managed relational database that supports PostgreSQL.

Replace the stacks/MyStack.ts with the following.

import { Api, RDS, StackContext } from "@serverless-stack/resources";

export function MyStack({ stack }: StackContext) {
  const DATABASE = "CounterDB";

  // Create the Aurora DB cluster
  const cluster = new RDS(stack, "Cluster", {
    engine: "postgresql10.14",
    defaultDatabaseName: DATABASE,
    migrations: "migrations",
  });
}

This creates an RDS Serverless cluster. We also set the database engine to PostgreSQL. The database in the cluster that we’ll be using is called CounterDB (as set in the defaultDatabaseName variable).

Setting up the API

Now let’s add the API.

Add this below the cluster definition in stacks/MyStack.ts.

// Create a HTTP API
const api = new Api(stack, "Api", {
  defaults: {
    function: {
      environment: {
        DATABASE,
        CLUSTER_ARN: cluster.clusterArn,
        SECRET_ARN: cluster.secretArn,
      },
      permissions: [cluster],
    },
  },
  routes: {
    "POST /": "functions/lambda.handler",
  },
});

// Show the resource info in the output
stack.addOutputs({
  ApiEndpoint: api.url,
  SecretArn: cluster.secretArn,
  ClusterIdentifier: cluster.clusterIdentifier,
});

Our API simply has one endpoint (the root). When we make a POST request to this endpoint the Lambda function called handler in backend/functions/lambda.ts will get invoked.

We also pass in the name of our database, the ARN of the database cluster, and the ARN of the secret that’ll help us login to our database. An ARN is an identifier that AWS uses. You can read more about it here.

We then allow our Lambda function to access our database cluster. Finally, we output the endpoint of our API, ARN of the secret and the name of the database cluster. We’ll be using these later in the example.

Reading from our database

Now in our function, we’ll start by reading from our PostgreSQL database.

Replace backend/functions/lambda.ts with the following.

import client from "data-api-client";

const db = client({
  database: process.env.DATABASE,
  secretArn: process.env.SECRET_ARN,
  resourceArn: process.env.CLUSTER_ARN,
});

export async function handler() {
  const { records } = await db.query(
    "SELECT tally FROM tblcounter where counter='hits'"
  );

  let count = records[0].tally;

  return {
    statusCode: 200,
    body: count,
  };
}

We are using the Data API. It allows us to connect to our database over HTTP using the data-api-client.

For now we’ll get the number of hits from a table called tblcounter and return it.

Let’s install the data-api-client in the backend/ folder.

$ npm install data-api-client

And test what we have so far.

Starting your dev environment

SST features a Live Lambda Development environment that allows you to work on your serverless apps live.

$ npm start

The first time you run this command it’ll take a couple of minutes to deploy your app and a debug stack to power the Live Lambda Development environment.

===============
 Deploying app
===============

Preparing your SST app
Transpiling source
Linting source
Deploying stacks
manitej-rest-api-postgresql-my-stack: deploying...

 ✅  manitej-rest-api-postgresql-my-stack


Stack manitej-rest-api-postgresql-my-stack
  Status: deployed
  Outputs:
    SecretArn: arn:aws:secretsmanager:us-east-1:087220554750:secret:CounterDBClusterSecret247C4-MhR0f3WMmWBB-dnCizN
    ApiEndpoint: https://u3nnmgdigh.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
    ClusterIdentifier: manitej-rest-api-postgresql-counterdbcluster09367634-1wjmlf5ijd4be

The ApiEndpoint is the API we just created. While the SecretArn is what we need to login to our database securely. The ClusterIdentifier is the id of our database cluster.

Before we can test our endpoint let’s create the tblcounter table in our database.

Creating our table

To create our table we’ll use the SST Console. The SST Console is a web based dashboard to manage your SST apps. Learn more about it in our docs.

Go to the RDS tab and paste the below SQL code in the editor.

CREATE TABLE tblcounter (
 counter text UNIQUE,
 tally integer
);

INSERT INTO tblcounter VALUES ('hits', 0);

Hit the Execute button to run the SQL query. The above code will create our table and insert a row to keep track of our hits.

running-sql-query-inside-the-editor

Test our API

Now that our table is created, let’s test our endpoint with the SST Console.

Go to the API tab and click Send button to send a POST request.

Note, The API explorer lets you make HTTP requests to any of the routes in your Api construct. Set the headers, query params, request body, and view the function logs with the response.

API explorer invocation response

You should see a 0 in the response body.

Writing to our table

So let’s update our table with the hits.

Add this above the return statement in backend/functions/lambda.ts.

await db.query(`UPDATE tblcounter set tally=${++count} where counter='hits'`);

Here we are updating the hits row’s tally column with the increased count.

And now if you head over to your console and make a request to our API. You’ll notice the count increase!

api-explorer-invocation-response-after-update

Running migrations

You can run migrations from the SST console, The RDS construct uses Kysely to run and manage schema migrations. The migrations prop should point to the folder where your migration files are. you can read more about migrations here.

Let’s create a migration file that creates a table called todos.

Create a migrations folder inside the backend/ folder.

Let’s write our first migration file, create a new file called first.ts inside the newly created backend/migrations folder and paste the below code.

module.exports.up = async (db) => {
  await db.schema
    .createTable("todos")
    .addColumn("id", "text", (col) => col.primaryKey())
    .addColumn("title", "text")
    .execute();
};

module.exports.down = async (db) => {
  await db.schema.dropTable("todos").execute();
};

update the cluster definition like below in stacks/MyStack.ts.

const cluster = new RDS(stack, "Cluster", {
  engine: "postgresql10.14",
  defaultDatabaseName: DATABASE,
  migrations: "backend/migrations", // add this line
});

This creates an infrastructure change, open the terminal and hit enter when it asks.

Now to run the migrations we can use the SST console. Go to the RDS tab and click the Migrations button on the top right corner.

It will list out all the migration files in the specified folder.

Now to apply the migration that we created, click on the Apply button beside to the migration name.

list-of-migrations-in-the-stack

To confirm if the migration is successful, let’s display the todos table by running the below query.

select * from todos

successful-migration-output

You should see the empty table with column names.

Note, to revert back to a specific migration, re-run its previous migration.

Deploying to prod

To wrap things up we’ll deploy our app to prod.

$ npm run deploy -- --stage prod

This allows us to separate our environments, so when we are working in dev, it doesn’t break the API for our users.

Run the below command to open the SST Console in prod stage to test the production endpoint.

npm run console -- --stage prod

Go to the API tab and click Send button to send a POST request.

api-explorer-invocation-response-prod

Cleaning up

Finally, you can remove the resources created in this example using the following commands.

$ npm run remove
$ npm run remove -- --stage prod

Conclusion

And that’s it! We’ve got a completely serverless hit counter. And we can test our changes locally before deploying to AWS! Check out the repo below for the code we used in this example. And leave a comment if you have any questions!