Triggering AWS Lambda from Amazon SQS to store data into a DynamoDB Table

AWS Cloud Hands on Lab Practice Series

Project Overview —

To trigger a AWS Lambda function using Amazon SQS. This Lambda function will process messages from the SQS queue and insert the message data as records into a DynamoDB table.

SOLUTIONS ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW -

First Let's understand the real world use case -

• E-commerce platform: A Lambda function can be triggered by an SQS queue containing incoming orders, and store them in DynamoDB for later processing. This can help ensure that orders are processed in a timely manner and can help track sales data.

• Data pipeline: You might have a data pipeline where you’re ingesting large amounts of data from different sources. Using SQS to queue up data to be processed and a Lambda function to process the data and store it in DynamoDB can help simplify the pipeline and make it more efficient.

• IoT applications: In an IoT application, you may have devices that send data to an SQS queue, such as temperature readings from sensors. A Lambda function can be triggered by the SQS queue to process the data and store it in DynamoDB for analysis.

• Social media platforms: A Lambda function triggered by an SQS queue can help you process incoming posts, comments or messages in real-time, and store them in DynamoDB for later analysis or processing. This can help provide insights into user engagement, sentiment analysis or trending topics.

Overall, the solution of using a Lambda function triggered by an SQS queue to store records in DynamoDB is a common pattern in building scalable and fault-tolerant distributed systems.

STEP BY STEP GUIDE -

we walk through on how to create the Lambda function and configure it to trigger from SQS. We then use a Python script on an EC2 instance to send a high volume of messages to an SQS queue. We also verify the Lambda function is being invoked and the messages are being saved in DynamoDB.

PREREQUISITE —

• AWS Account with Admin Access.

• Linux EC2 Instance with Admin IAM role.

AWS Services Usage —

Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB, EC2, IAM, CloudWatch

STEP 1:

• Navigate to AWS IAM.

• Create a IAM role with name lambda-execution-role

• Attach below mentioned policies to the role

• AmazonSQSFullAccess

• AmazonDynamoDBFullAccess

• CloudWatchLogsFullAccess

• AWSLambdaExecute

• Trust Relationships is for Lambda

STEP 2:

• Navigate to AWS SQS.

• Create standard SQS Queue & Name it “Messages”

• Keep other settings as default.

STEP 3:

• Navigate to AWS DynamoDB.

• Go Tables -> Create Table.

• Table Name = Message

• *Partition Key *= MessageId (String)

• Table settings = Customize settings

• Table Class = DynamoDB Standard

• Read/Write capacity settings = On-demand

• Encryption at rest = Owned by Amazon DynamoDB

• Click the Create Table button.

STEP 4:

• Navigate to AWS Lambda.

• Create the Lambda Function.

• On the Create function page, select Author from scratch.

• Under Basic Information, set the following parameters for each field:

• Function name: Enter SQS-DDB.

• Runtime: Select Python 3.9 from the dropdown menu.

• Architecture: Select x86_64.

• Under Permissions, Select Use an existing role.

• Under Existing role, select lambda-execution-role from the dropdown menu.(created in step 1)

• Click the Create function button.

STEP 5:

• On the Lambda Console our function SQS-DDB is created.

• Click the + Add trigger button to add SQS Trigger.

• Under SQS queue, click the search bar and select Messages.(step 2)

• Ensure that the checkbox next to Activate trigger is checked.

• Click Add button.

STEP 6:

• Double-click on lambda_function.py from under the Code tab section.

• Copy the Source Code into the Lambda Function from My GitHub Repo.

• Replace the code contents of the function you copied from Github Repo.

• After that click the Deploy button.

STEP 7:

• Log In to the Linux EC2 Instance which is part of prerequisite.

• Copy the python script to create fake messages from my Github Repo.

• Create a generate_fake_message.py file & paste the code in the file.

• Now run the script as follows to create fake messages which will be pushed to SQS Queue & eventually invoking Lambda Function.

• ./generate_fake_message.py -q Messages -i 0.1

• After a few seconds, hit Control + C to stop the command from continuing to run.

STEP 8:

• Confirm Messages Were Inserted into the DynamoDB Table.
• Select the Message table.

• Click Explore table items and review the list of items that were inserted from our script.

• We should soon see a spike in the table Number of Messages Received in SQS Queue Monitoring.

• Congratulations on successfully completing this hands-on AWS lab!

• Source code & detailed steps can be found at My Github Repo.

• IMP NOTE — This DEMO/POC might incur some charges if kept active for long time. So please make sure to clean up the environment once done.

I am Kunal Shah, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, helping clients to achieve optimal solutions on the Cloud. Cloud Enabler by choice, DevOps Practitioner having 7+ Years of overall experience in the IT industry.

I love to talk about Cloud Technology, DevOps, Digital Transformation, Analytics, Infrastructure, Dev Tools, Operational efficiency, Serverless, Cost Optimization, Cloud Networking & Security.

aws #community #builders #devops #lambda #dynamodb #sqs #serverless #infrastructure

You can reach out to me @ acloudguy.in