Wow! is the first thing I wanted to write about this challenge by Forrest Brazeal on https://cloudresumechallenge.dev

I found out about this challenge in LinkedIn and I got know that I still have some time to complete this challenge.

As deadline is over for yesterday July 31st 2020, I still wanted to complete this challenge. So this blog will complete the challenge.

1. Motive

I have been learning about AWS from few months, but I have not tried any hands-on. This challenge gave me that spark to start hands-on and trust me I have learnt so much! and can't explain the happiness when you apply what you learn and when it works!

2. Preparation

I carefully checked all the instructions from https://cloudresumechallenge.dev to understand this challenge completely. I should say it is very well thought, very well instructed and executed!

3. Step by step implementation

Here's how i divided steps and implemented:

1. Creating a simple resume.
2. Hosting it in S3 bucket
3. Distributing it with CloudFront.
4. AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model)
5. Deploying with Github Actions.

4. Creating a simple resume.

Instructions from 2 to 3 mentioned that we need to create a simple webpage written in HTML, styled with CSS.
Initially i tried to create a website which can contain resume + blogs + my projects. But it was taking so much time for me as i'm new to web development. So stopped working on large project for now and concentrated only on this challenge.

Here's my experience on creating resume webpage.

Create simple cloud resume

5. Host website in S3

Instructions from 4 to 5 mentioned that our resume should be deployed online as an Amazon S3 static website. I used NameCheap to purchase a domain with less price and configure the S3 url. Which was very easy task. Checkout my small blog on this.

Host static website in S3

6. CloudFront Distribution

Instruction 6 mentioned distribution should use HTTPS for security. I struggled a while for implementing it. But finally when it worked it was all worth for!
Checkout my experience on this.

CloudFront Distribution

7. AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model)

Instructions from 7 to 12!
Ahh!! most difficult and yet beautiful steps.
Initially I tried to jump into SAM directly which made me to thinking to give-up this chlalege! Yes!! I wanted to give up when I came to this step as it was difficult for me to understand invisible infrastructure created in templates.
After few days, I thought to change the approach. so I started creating infrastructure needed manually to understand concepts better. So I followed below steps.

1. Create a sample API which returns sample JSON.
2. Access the api in the javascript of resume site.
3. Create Dynamo DB and keys. Add sample item.
4. Create a Lambda function to access DynamoDB and use boto3 SDK to access it.
5. Lambda function to update item and return an api response.
6. Then link all these 4 things together manually.

After understanding how it should work, I later started to learn how to use SAM, SAM CLI, yaml templates one by one so that I could join all the learnings in a single template.

AWS SAM

8. Deploying with CI/CD

Instructions from 13 to 16.
I should say, it is the most beautiful step in the challenge and most Satisfying one! when you see those green checkmarks!!

It's a quite easy one to get snippets from google which points to GitHub Marketplace.

Please check my learnings in this post:

GitHub Actions

9. Pending Certification.

Though this challenge gave me hands-on expertise in few services of AWS. I still need to go through the courses to prepare for exam. I have more confidence now that I will pass the exam.

10. Blog Post

I've never published a single blog before this challenge! This challenge gave me immense confidence that I could do many things. And there are tons of learnings from this challenge and and i'm really happy to participate in this challenge.

I will complete certification soon, and will post my learning here in Dev.to channel.

Thank you Forrest Brazeal for this Challenge!

Here's are the output this Challenge: Sudha Chandran.

Thank you for reading! 😊