AWS re:Invent 2018 had numerous announcements of new features and services, including the new AWS Amplify Console, a continuous deployment service for mobile web applications.
The AWS Amplify Console promises support for rapidly releasing new features, avoiding downtime while deploying applications, and reducing complexity of simultaneously updating the client-side and server-side components of applications.
By connecting Amplify Console to a source code repository, both the front-end and back-end get deployed after every code commit, and an application only gets updated once the deployment gets successfully completed.
AWS Amplify Console touts itself as a scalable hosting solution for static web apps with serverless back-ends, including many features:
- Globally available with Amazon CloudFront CDN across 144 different locations worldwide
- Manage custom domains using Amazon Route 53 and free HTTPS certificates
- Simplified continuous workflows
- Feature branch and atomic deployments
- Simple sharing of future versions with password protection
AWS Amplify Console supports GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, and AWS CodeCommit for source control access, and targets blogs, static web apps, serverless web apps, and Progressive Web Apps (PWA).
At the 2017 AWS re:invent, the AWS Amplify declarative JavaScript library got introduced for application development using cloud services. As explained on the AWS Amplify GitHub project, the Amplify library gets separated into several modules:
- Authentication: APIs and building blocks to create user authentication experiences.
- Analytics: Collect analytics data for apps including user sessions and other custom events to track in apps.
- API: HTTP request solution including signing process which complies with AWS Signature Version 4.
- GraphQL Client: Interact with GraphQL server or AWS AppSync API with a GraphQL client.
- Storage: Manage user content for apps in public, protected or private storage buckets.
- Push Notifications: Integrate push notifications with Amazon Pinpoint targeting and campaign management support.
- Interactions: Create conversational bots powered by deep learning technologies.
- PubSub: Provides connectivity with cloud-based message-oriented middleware.
- Internationalization: An internationalization solution.
- Cache: Provides a generic LRU cache for JavaScript developers to store data with priority and expiration settings.
AWS Amplify Console appears to provide an environment leveraging the AWS Amplify library and various AWS servers to provide its rapid application deployment environment.
While this is a crowded space, with various continuous integration and deployment tools, and services like Now and GitHub Pages, the latter of which currently hosts the AWS Amplify library documentation, the ability to connect with AWS is certain to gain popularity.