Serverless, FaaS

azure-functions.md

Azure Functions (release 2, beta)

PROS

• the only "big" provider supporting node.js LTS 8 (aws and gcp still on 6.x)
• automated deploy using git (tested w bitbucket), use different function apps per env (dev, stage, prod etc) and map against branches
• local dev environment

CONS

• cli deploy very unstable
• "function host not running" errors
• long cold starts with just a few deps
• Azure/azure-functions-nodejs-worker#49
• Azure/azure-functions-host#2136
• Azure/azure-functions-core-tools#352
• Azure/Azure-Functions#163
• Azure/azure-functions-core-tools#363
• Azure/azure-functions-pack#21

stdlib.md

Stdlib

PROS

• intuitive-ish, most things work as expected
• faaslang standard
• env.json file read by code as standard process.env.KEY

CONS

• hard to google (<stdlib.h>)
• many outdated articles/tutorials
• scheduling requires "release"
• limited options for scheduling
• "release" means published in registry, might not be for everyone

webtask.io.md

Webtask.io (Auth0)

PROS

• The editor is rather full featured, simple functions could do without wt cli

CONS

• no environment variables, uses "secrets" editable from editor and read by code as context.secrets.KEY which also means you can't use secrets outside of your function, e.g one-off inits.
• need to use "bundle" feature of wt-cli to deploy (it builds a new output file of your files) any local dependencies, e.g anything you require('./yourdep').

Gotcha

• webtask function parameter list will impact parsing of request data body; (context, cb) body will be parsed and stored in the context.body, (ctx, req, res) requst body will be left unread.