Photo-sharing website

Static pre-rendered photo-sharing website to share publicly your pictures without needing to run or maintain servers.

Concept

• A static website - publicly accessible web app,
• An admin web application - password protected web application (React.js web application) used to generate the static website on demand.

The below YouTube video shows how everything works:

Architecture

1. CloudFront distribution with / path in S3 bucket as the origin
2. CloudFront distribution with /website path in S3 bucket as the origin (the static website static source code)
3. S3 Bucket which holds the all the static resources (html, css, javascript and images)
4. S3 Bucket with the initial uploaded pictures
5. AWS Lambda used to generate the static website's HTML source code
6. AWS Lambda used to generate thumbnails and to detect relevant labels for uploaded photos using Amazon Rekognition
7. Amazon Cognito to provide an authentication for admin user

Deployment

Prerequisites

• Create an AWS account
• Install the Amplify CLI
• Install npm

Instructions

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/cornelcroi/photo-sharing-website.git

2. Preliminary operations

• Admin user email

  • replace your_emailaddress@domain.com with your own email address in amplify/backend/boostrap/adminuser/parameters.json

• Image resize

  • The application resizes images using the sharp library packaged as Lambda Layer,
  • Create a sharp layer. Follow this tutorial to create a sharp layer in your desired region and then update the layer arn in amplify/backend/function/S3TriggeraXXXX/S3TriggeraXXXX-cloudformation-template.json.

3. Installs the dependencies

npm install

4. Deploy the stack to your AWS account

• Initialize your Amplify powered cloud application

  amplify init
  

• Provisions cloud resources with the local developments run

  amplify push
  

• Publish static assets to Amazon S3

  amplify publish
  

Enjoy !

⚠️ You may need to wait a couple of hours after the first deployment so the DNS name of the S3 bucket to be propagated! (if you cannot log in after the deploiment using the temporary password received by email, this must be it, just wait before trying again, there is nothing wrong with the code)

Key points

• AWS Lambda generates the static files using html templates and data stored in DynamoDB,
• React.js application built using AWS Amplify,
• there is a single admin user created at first deployment,
• the static website (with html template files) is generated on demand by a AWS Lambda,
• 4 html files are used to generate the static website,

  /albums-gallery-template.html                                       <-- template for an album gallery page
  /albums-template.html                                               <-- template for list of albums page
  /album-item-template.html                                           <-- template for one album used in list of albums page
  /photo-item-template.html                                           <-- template for one photo used on album gallery page

• each html template contains variables to be replaced by lambda like the piece of code bellow

  <div>
    <h2>{ALBUM_NAME}</h2>
    <div>{ALBUM_PHOTOS} photos · {ALBUM_DATE}</div>
  </div>

Advantages of pre-rendered static website

• pre-rendered static HTML of static sites loads much faster than the pages on a dynamic site. Fast websites are really important for a good user experience, and also for boosting your site in search engine rankings,
• static site generators reduce site complexity. That, in turn, improves speed and reliability, and smooths the developer experience,
• you don’t have to worry about database-toppling traffic spikes,
• you can host your site with a content delivery network that scales with your site’s traffic,
• lower costs,
• better SEO,
• good caching.

I used this repository to build my own website ManBehindLens.com.

Tools

• AWS Amplify JavaScript library to connect our front end to cloud resources

• Amazon Cognito to handle admin sign up authorization

• Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to store and serve as many photos as I wish to upload,, to host the React.js app assets for our app and to host the static generated website

• Amazon CloudFront to store and serve as many photos as our users care to upload, and to host the static assets for our app

• Amazon DynamoDB to provide millisecond response times to API queries for album and photo data

• AWS AppSync to host a GraphQL API for our front end

• AWS Lambda to create photo thumbnails asynchronously in the cloud & to generate the static website on demand

• Amazon Rekognition to detect 5 labels for each uploaded photo

Costs

Less than a cup of coffee per month

Credits

• Multiverse HTML template
• Lens HTML template
• Build a Photo-Sharing Web App with AWS Amplify Workshop
• Create sharp layer for AWS Lambda
• AWS Layer for Sharp