Build your own multi-user photo album app with React, GraphQL, and AWS Amplify

Pre-requisites

An AWS account - If you don't have one yet, you'll need an account with AWS. Creating an AWS account is free and gives you immediate access to the AWS Free Tier. For more information, or to sign up for an account, see https://aws.amazon.com/free/

Node.js installed - We'll be using some JavaScript tools and packages which require Node.js (and NPM, which comes with Node.js) to be installed. You can download an installer or find instructions for installing Node.js at https://nodejs.org/en/download/

The AWS Amplify CLI installed and configured - The AWS Amplify CLI helps you quickly configure serverless backends and includes support for authentication, analytics, functions, REST/GraphQL APIs, and more. Follow the installation instructions at https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-cli

Install the SAM CLI - This app uses a tool from AWS to help with packaging and deploying AWS Lambda functions called the AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) and the SAM CLI. Please follow the installation instructions for the SAM CLI, which will also require you to install Docker: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-sam-cli/blob/develop/docs/installation.rst

Build instructions

After checking out this code, you'll need to run the following commands to get this app to work. In your terminal, from within the same directory as this README, perform these steps:

1. Initialize Amplify

Run: amplify init

Answer the questions like this:

• Choose your default editor: <anything you want>
• Choose the type of app that you're building `javascript
• Please tell us about your project
• What javascript framework are you using react
• Source Directory Path: src
• Distribution Directory Path: build
• Build Command: npm run-script build
• Start Command: npm run-script start
• Do you want to use an AWS profile? <either answer is fine, it's up to you>

Wait for amplify init to finish

2. Add authentication

Run: amplify auth add

Answer the questions like this:

• Do you want to use the default authentication and security configuration? Yes, use the default configuration.

Run amplify push, Press Enter/Return to continue, and wait for it to finish

3. Add a GraphQL API

Run: amplify api add

Answer the questions like this:

• Please select from one of the below mentioned services GraphQL
• Provide API name: <whatever you want -- I suggest 'photoAlbumsDemo'>
• Choose an authorization type for the API Amazon Cognito User Pool
• Do you have an annotated GraphQL schema? Yes
• Provide your schema file path: scripts/bootstrapping/schema.graphql

Run amplify push, Press Enter/Return to continue, and wait for it to finish

4. Add S3 file storage

Run: amplify storage add

Answer the questions like this:

• Please select from one of the below mentioned services Content (Images, audio, video, etc.)
• Please provide a friendly name for your resource that will be used to label this category in the project: photostorage
• Please provide bucket name: <accept the default value>
• Who should have access: Auth users only
• What kind of access do you want for Authenticated users read/write

Run amplify push, Press Enter/Return to continue, and wait for it to finish

5. Publish the app to the CloudFront CDN

Run amplify hosting add

Answer the questions like this:

• Select the environment setup: PROD (S3 with CloudFront using HTTPS)
• hosting bucket name <accept the default>
• index doc for the website index.html
• error doc for the website index.html

Run amplify push, Press Enter/Return to continue, and wait for it to finish

Run amplify publish and wait for it to finish

6. Run the bootstrapping script to update some of the AWS resources for this codebase

Run: npm run bootstrap

What this script does:

• Runs npm install for the React app as well as the photo_processor Lambda function
• Packages and deploys the photo_processor Lambda function, configuring it to trigger when new photos are uploaded to the S3 bucket used for storage configured by Amplify
• Updates the AppSync API schema and resolvers to be in-line with what this codebase expects (so you don't need to make manual changes in the AppSync web console).
• Adds an explicit Deny on s3:ListBucket for the IAM role associated with authenticated users in the app
• Re-creates a Global Secondary Index on the DynamoDB table used for the PhotoTable AppSync data source to allow fetching items in reverse chronological order

Notes:

• Ths script uses credentials stored in ~/.aws/credentials (macOS/Linux) or C:\Users\USER_NAME.aws\credentials (Windows).
• If you have a specific AWS credentials profile you want to use, prefix the command with AWS_PROFILE=name-of-profile
• It requires Node.js version 8 or higher and Docker to be installed

7. Start the app

Run npm start to start the app. Hopefully, everything should work at this point. :)