Building cloud applications by harnessing the power of serverless technology is predominant in the software industry. However, implementing continuous integration and continuous development must be straightforward.

Let us understand the need for AWS Amplify and the various tools. Let us think of a scenario of building an application, where the developer needs to take care of many things from hardware requirements to software configurations, setting up the frontend, backend and connecting them both. It is a time-consuming process, and if you are doing it on a cloud, you would require knowledge of all the services needed for the application.

AWS Amplify does more than leverage the setup and building of the application; let us dive deep into the many benefits of AWS Amplify and the tools.

1. AWS Amplify

AWS Amplify is a set of purpose-built tools and features that lets front-end web and mobile developers quickly and easily build full-stack applications on AWS, with the flexibility to leverage the breadth of AWS services as your use cases evolve.

In simple terms, it is a service that helps build entire apps quickly. This contains frontend to backend, full-stack applications, and many options available.

For example, here are some of the available options for building a full-stack application.

With AWS Amplify, you can configure a web or mobile app backend, connect your app in minutes, visually build a web frontend UI, and easily manage app content outside the AWS console. As a result, ship faster and scale effortlessly—with no cloud expertise needed.

2. AWS Amplify used to…

1. Build 
2. Ship 
3. Scale and Manage 

3. AWS Amplify Tools

1. Amplify Studio: Visually build a full-stack app with both frontend UI and backend.
2. Amplify Libraries: Connect an app to existing AWS services (Cognito, S3, and more).
3. Amplify CLI: Configure an app backend with a guided CLI workflow.
4. Amplify Hosting: Host secure, reliable, fast web apps or websites via the AWS content delivery network.

AWS Amplify is primarily used as a CLI, but a limited UI allows us to do day-to-day admin tasks.

Some of the Amplify modules are listed below, that can be implemented in applications

• Auth
• Analytics
• Storage
• API
• Caching
• UI Components.

Amplify quickly adds some of the components like Storage, Auth, Pubsub, and it doesn’t need to know what Amplify is provisioning behind the scenes. It focuses on delivering functionality instead of relying on knowing what AWS service to use to achieve that. Behind the scenes, it is all Cloud Formation that does it for us. Cloud Formation is IAAS (infrastructure as a code) which allows us to write code to deploy the infrastructure out to the cloud.

These are some of the services that you can integrate into your application.

Example:

• Functions – uses Lambda functions to run your code
• Datastore – uses AWS DynamoDB
• Authentication – uses AWS Cognito
• API – it uses the combination of AppSync and API Gateway
• Storage – uses S3
• PubSub – uses SNS
• Custom Domain – uses Route 53
• Monitoring – uses AWS CloudWatch

Usage:

Primarily we will be interacting with CLI. First, we need to configure our project simply by using ‘amplify configure’ then, we must follow the wizards, and then we can start adding our functionality. For example, we can add an API by using “amplify add API” which launches a wizard where we need to fill out some required details like technology (graphQL or rest) and other details after finishing which will add a bunch of code to our project directory. We can modify that code accordingly, once we are done with the changes, we can run a “deploy” command which will launch the code in the cloud and the result will be the API gateway attached to a lambda with the configurations we specified in the wizard.

4. Benefits of AWS Amplify

1. It helps get things started quickly; using the CLI and setting things up is very easy and fast.
2. It is excellent for prototyping; you can do trial and error of the things before completely committing to it.
3. It has a very Fast Development cycle if you want any feature you can make it quickly and test it, if it is not that much of an use to you, you can quickly tear it down.
4. It helps you focus on the app and saves your time of learning, understanding the complexities of AWS services, and allows you to focus on the application by leveraging the services rather than understanding how it is implemented.

5. AWS Amplify Challenges

1. Since AWS Amplify does most of the things for you, you don’t learn AWS; using amplify often makes you good at using Amplify, but it doesn’t help you to understand how the things work at the backside.
2. We can’t integrate some of the things we want in our application which Amplify does not support, even if AWS offers it.
3. We need to be aware of the feature we use in apps as there are linked some services behind which may charge up the bills if we are ignorant while creating it. For example, let’s take Auth. It creates Cognito in the back end, which charges some money (based on user count); if we are not aware of that, we can get huge bills.

6. Conclusion

CloudThat is Microsoft Gold Partner, AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, and a Google Cloud Partner and has successfully led many migration projects for our esteemed clients. So get in touch with us for quick results. Feel free to drop a comment or any queries that you have regarding cloud migration, and we will get back to you quickly. To get started, go through our Expert Advisory page and Managed Services Package that is CloudThat’s offerings. Then, you can quickly get in touch with our highly accomplished team of experts to carry out your migration needs.

Feel free to drop a comment or any queries that you have regarding cloud migration, and we will get back to you quickly.

7. Frequently Asked Questions

• Why do we use AWS amplify?

AWS Amplify is useful for front-end web developers and mobile developers for deploying full-stack applications on AWS with ease. Basically, AWS amplify is a purpose-built tool offering flexibility to utilize the AWS services to their full potential.

• Is AWS amplify stable?

AWS Amplify is considered to have more stable features than competitors and is suitable for more mature and large-scale enterprises because of its more stable features.

• Is AWS amplify only for frontend development?

No, Amplify Studio comes with a simplified view of the features that can be employed for both the backend and frontend UI development. Additionally, Amplify Studio provides easy access for non-programmers like Test engineers and Project Managers to manage the app content and users without requiring developers to figure out the right IAM roles and policies.

• Is AWS amplify expensive?/ What is AWS Amplify pricing?

AWS Amplify console comes in two variants 1) build & deploy 2) hosting. The build & deploy feature costs $0.01 per build minute. The hosting feature costs $0.15 per GB served and $0.023 per GB stored. Also, with AWS free usage tier we can get started for free.

You can get answers to more FAQs here: https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/faqs/

WRITTEN BY Subramanya Datta