Serverless Development with Kotlin, AWS Lambda, and MongoDB Atlas

As seen in a previous tutorial, creating a serverless function for AWS Lambda with Java and MongoDB isn’t too complicated of a task. In fact, you can get it done with around 35 lines of code!

However, maybe your stack doesn’t consist of Java, but instead Kotlin. What needs to be done to use Kotlin for AWS Lambda and MongoDB development? The good news is not much will be different!

In this tutorial, we’ll see how to create a simple AWS Lambda function. It will use Kotlin as the programming language and it will use the MongoDB Kotlin driver for interacting with MongoDB.

Serverless Development with AWS Lambda and MongoDB Atlas Using Java

So you need to build an application that will scale with demand and a database to scale with it? It might make sense to explore serverless functions, like those offered by AWS Lambda, and a cloud database like MongoDB Atlas.

Serverless functions are great because you can implement very specific logic in the form of a function and the infrastructure will scale automatically to meet the demand of your users. This will spare you from having to spend potentially large amounts of money on always on, but not always needed, infrastructure. Pair this with an elastically scalable database like MongoDB Atlas, and you’ve got an amazing thing in the works.

In this tutorial, we’re going to explore how to create a serverless function with AWS Lambda and MongoDB, but we’re going to focus on using Java, one of the available AWS Lambda runtimes.

Getting Started with MongoDB Atlas and Azure Functions using .NET and C#

So you need to build an application with minimal operating costs that can also scale to meet the growing demand of your business. This is a perfect scenario for a serverless function, like those built with Azure Functions. With serverless functions you can focus more on the application and less on the infrastructure and operations side of things. However, what happens when you need to include a database in the mix?

In this tutorial we’ll explore how to create a serverless function with Azure Functions and the .NET runtime to interact with MongoDB Atlas. If you’re not familiar with MongoDB, it offers a flexible data model that can be used for a variety of use cases while being integrated into most application development stacks with ease. Scaling your MongoDB database and Azure Functions to meet demand is easy, making them a perfect match.

Getting Started with MongoDB Atlas and Azure Functions using Node.js

So you’re building serverless applications with Microsoft Azure Functions, but you need to persist data to a database. What do you do about controlling the number of concurrent connections to your database from the function? What happens if the function currently connected to your database shuts down or a new instance comes online to scale with demand?

The concept of serverless in general, whether that be through a function or database, is great because it is designed for the modern application. Applications that scale on-demand reduce the maintenance overhead and applications that are pay as you go reduce unnecessary costs.

In this tutorial, we’re going to see just how easy it is to interact with MongoDB Atlas using Azure functions. If you’re not familiar with MongoDB, it offers a flexible document model that can be used to model your data for a variety of use cases and is easily integrated into most application development stacks. On top of the document model, MongoDB Atlas makes it just as easy to scale your database to meet demand as it does your Azure Function.

Build a Totally Serverless REST API with MongoDB Atlas

So you want to build a REST API, but you don’t want to worry about the management burden when it comes to scaling it to meet the demand of your users. Or maybe you know your API will experience more burst usage than constant demand and you’d like to reduce your infrastructure costs.

These are two great scenarios where a serverless architecture could benefit your API development. However, did you know that the serverless architecture doesn’t stop at just the API level? You could make use of a serverless database in addition to the application layer and reap the benefits of going totally serverless.

In this tutorial, we’ll see how to go totally serverless in our application and data development using a MongoDB Atlas serverless instance as well as Atlas HTTPS endpoints for our application.

Developing Your Applications More Efficiently with MongoDB Atlas Serverless Instances

If you’re a developer, worrying about your database is not necessarily something you want to do. You likely don’t want to spend your time provisioning or sizing clusters as the demand of your application changes. You probably also don’t want to worry about breaking the bank if you’ve scaled something incorrectly.

With MongoDB Atlas, you have a few deployment options to choose from when it comes to your database. While you could choose a pre-provisioned shared or dedicated cluster, you’re still stuck having to size and estimate the database resources you will need and subsequently managing your cluster capacity to best fit demand. While a pre-provisioned cluster isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it might not make sense if your development becomes idle or you’re expecting frequent periods of growth or decline. Instead, you can opt for a serverless instance to help remove the capacity management burden and free up time to dedicate to writing code. Serverless instances provide an on-demand database endpoint for your application that will automatically scale up and down to zero with application demand and only charge you based on your usage.

In this short and sweet tutorial, we’ll see how easy it is to get started with a MongoDB Atlas serverless instance and how to begin to develop an application against it.

Developing a Web Application with Netlify Serverless Functions and MongoDB

As I mentioned in a previous tutorial, I’m a big fan of Netlify and the services they offer developers—my favorite of their services being their static website hosting and serverless functions. When combining the two, you can deploy a complex website or web application with a back end, without ever worrying about infrastructure or potentially complex API design.

So how does that work with a database like MongoDB?

If you’ve ever dabbled with serverless functions before, you might be aware that they are not always available for consumption. Many serverless functions exist for a defined amount of time and then are shut down until they are executed again. With this in mind, the connection to a database might not always be available like it would be in an application built with Express Framework, for example. You could establish a connection every time a function is called, but then you risk too many connections, which might overload your database.

So what do you do?

In this tutorial, we’re going to see how to build and deploy a simple web application using Netlify Functions and MongoDB Atlas. For this particular tutorial, we’ll be using the Node.js driver for MongoDB, but both Netlify and MongoDB support the use of other languages and drivers as well.