Quickstart: Java

Now that you have Gordon installed, let’s create our first project. Before doing so, you need to understand how Gordon projects are structured.

A Gordon project consists of one or more applications. The term application describes a directory that provides some set of features. Applications may be reused in various projects.

Requirements for Java lambdas:

Creating a project

From the command line, cd into a directory where you’d like to store your code, then run the following command:

$ gordon startproject demo

This will create a demo directory in your current directory with the following structure:

demo
└── settings.yml

As you can imagine that settings.yml file will contain most of our project-wide settings. If you want to know more, Settings will tell you how the settings work.

Creating an application

Now that we have our project created, we need to create our first app. Run the following command from the command line:

$ gordon startapp firstapp --runtime=java

Note

You can create lambdas in any of the AWS supported languages (Python, Javascript and Java) and you can mix them within the same project and app. By default startapp uses the python runtime, but you can pick a different one by adding --runtime=py|javascript to it.

This will create a firstapp directory inside your project with the following structure:

firstapp/
├── helloworld
│   ├── build.gradle
│   └── src
│       └── main
│           └── java
│               └── helloworld
│                   └── Hello.java
└── settings.yml

Note

If you pick python or js as runtime, the layout will not be 100% the same, but pretty similar.

These files are:

  • helloworld.java : File where the source code of our first helloworld lambda will be. By default gordon creates a function called handler in this file.
  • build.gradle : Gradle file gordon will use to build your lambda.
  • settings.yml : Configuration related to this application. By default gordon registers a helloworld lambda the function within Hello.java.

Once you understand how everything works, and you start developing your app, you’ll rename/remove this function, but to start with we think this is the easiest way for you to understand how everything works.

Give it a look to firstapp/settings.yml and firstapp/helloworld/src/main/java/helloworld/Hello.java files in order to get a better understanding of what gordon just created for you.

Now that we know what these files does, we need to install this firstapp. In order to do so, open your project settings.yml and add firstapp to the apps list:

---
project: demo
default-region: us-east-1
code-bucket: gordon-demo-5f1fb41f
apps:
  - gordon.contrib.lambdas
  - firstapp

This will make Gordon take count of the resources registered within the firstapp application.

Build your project

Now that your project is ready, you need to build it. You’ll need to repeat this step every single time you make some local changes and want to deploy them to AWS.

From the command line, cd into the project root, then run the following command:

$ gordon build

This command will have an output similar to:

$ gordon build
Loading project resources
Loading installed applications
  contrib_lambdas:
    ✓ version
  firstapp:
    ✓ helloworld
Building project...
  ✓ 0001_p.json
  ✓ 0002_pr_r.json
  ✓ 0003_r.json
What is all this? Well, without going into much detail, gordon has just decided that deploying you application implies three stages.
  • 0001_p.json gordon is going to create a s3 bucket where the code of your lambdas will be uploaded.
  • 0002_pr_r.json gordon will upload the code of your lambdas to S3.
  • 0003_r.json gordon will create your lambdas.

But, should I care? No you should not really care much at this moment about what is going on. The only important part is that you’ll now see a new _build directory in your project path. That directory contains everything gordon needs to put your lambdas live.

If you want to read more about the internals of gordon project, you read more in the Project page.

Deploy your project

Deploying a project is a as easy as using the apply command:

$ gordon apply

Note

It is important that you make your AWS credential available in your terminal before, so gordon can use them. For more information: Setup AWS Credentials

This command will have an output similar to:

$ gordon apply
Applying project...
0001_p.json (cloudformation)
  CREATE_COMPLETE waiting... -
0002_pr_r.json (custom)
  ✓ code/contrib_lambdas_version.zip (c3137e97)
  ✓ code/firstapp_helloworld.zip (c7ec05a8)
0003_r.json (cloudformation)
  CREATE_COMPLETE

Your lambdas are ready to be used! Navigate to AWS: Lambdas to test them.

What next?

You should have a basic understanding of how Gordon works. We recommend you to dig a bit deeper and explore:

  • Project Details about how you can customize your projects
  • Lambdas In-depth explanation of how lambdas work.
  • Event Sources List of all resources and integrations you can create using Gordon.