Serverless Lift - Serverless Framework: Plugins

Lift is a plugin that leverages the AWS CDK to expand the Serverless Framework beyond functions.

Deploy production-ready websites, queues, storage buckets and more with a few lines in serverless.yml.

⚡️ For developers - No AWS knowledge required
⚡️ Production-ready - Built by AWS experts, optimized for production
⚡️ Not invasive - Integrates with existing projects
⚡️ No lock-in - Eject to CloudFormation at any time

Installation

Lift is a Serverless Framework plugin, install it in your project:

serverless plugin install -n serverless-lift

If you prefer, you can install Lift via NPM: npm install --save-dev serverless-lift. Then, register the serverless-lift plugin in serverless.yml (see the example below).

Quick start

Once installed, start using Lift constructs in serverless.yml:

service: my-app
provider:
    name: aws
plugins:
    - serverless-lift
functions:
    # ...
constructs:
    # Include Lift constructs here
    landing-page:
        type: static-website
        path: 'landing/dist'
    avatars:
        type: storage

Constructs

The AWS CDK is extremely powerful, but it is very complex and cannot be used in serverless.yml. Lift changes that: use the best of the CDK in Serverless, without having to learn about it!

Lift provides components, aka "constructs", specifically selected for serverless applications. They are all built using the CDK and its best practices, with unique features to provide an awesome developer experience.

Single page app

Deploy single-page applications, for example React, VueJS or Angular apps.

constructs:
    landing:
        type: single-page-app
        path: dist

Static website

Deploy static websites.

constructs:
    landing:
        type: static-website
        path: dist

Storage

Deploy preconfigured S3 buckets to store files.

constructs:
    avatars:
        type: storage

Queue

Deploy SQS queues and workers for asynchronous processing.

constructs:
    my-queue:
        type: queue
        worker:
            handler: src/report-generator.handler

Webhook

Deploy webhooks to receive notifications from 3rd party applications.

constructs:
    stripe-webhook:
        type: webhook
        path: /my-webhook-endpoint
        authorizer:
            handler: myAuthorizer.main

Database - DynamoDB Single Table

Deploy databases leveraging DynamoDB Single Table Design principles.

constructs:
    database:
        type: database/dynamodb-single-table

Server-side website

Deploy server-side rendered websites, for example Laravel or Symfony apps.

constructs:
    website:
        type: server-side-website
        assets:
            '/css/*': public/css
            '/js/*': public/js

More constructs are coming soon! Got suggestions? Open and upvote drafts.

Lift-specific configuration

Lift default behaviors can be override and configured as per your likings using the lift property at the root of your serverless.yml file. This property is optional as well as all the configurable options within. Configurations specified at this level affect all constructs defined within the same service file.

Ejecting

You can eject from Lift at any time: Lift is based on CloudFormation. That allows anyone to kickstart a project with Lift, and fallback to CloudFormation if you ever grow out of it.

To eject:

export the CloudFormation template via serverless lift eject
copy the parts you want to turn into CloudFormation and paste them in the resources section of serverless.yml
don't forget to remove from serverless.yml the Lift constructs you have turned into CloudFormation

Extend Lift constructs

Lift packages production-ready features in the form of highly opinionated construts with minimal configuration options in order to avoid confusion for serverless early adopters. In order to empower more advanced developers, every construct ships with an extensions property allowing overrides on the underlying Cloudformation Resources.

In the exemple below, the S3 Bucket CloudFormation Resource generated by the avatars storage construct will be extened with the new AccessControl: PublicRead CloudFormation property.

constructs:
    avatars:
        type: storage
        extensions:
            bucket:
                Properties:
                    AccessControl: PublicRead

Each construct documentation lists available underlying CloudFormation resources that can be extended using the extensions key.

TypeScript definitions

TypeScript users can use serverless.ts instead of serverless.yml. Lift provides type definitions to help.

Lift is built and maintained with love ❤️ by