Introduction to Serverless PHP

APIs and microservices are how we build modern web applications and serverless technologies make this easy. This session will show you how serverless applications are built and how you can leverage your PHP skills to build APIs of all shapes and sizes. We will cover how to use your current knowledge to build applications in PHP within Apache OpenWhisk, leveraging the API Gateway to build robust APIs quickly and easily. By the end of the session, you'll be well placed to design and build your own microservices that take full advantage of the power of serverless technologies.

Presented at PHP South Wales, Cardiff, UK in July 2018 and at BrumPHP, Birmingham, UK in August 2018

Transcript

1. Introduction to Serverless PHP Rob Allen
2. Deployment options 1. Physical servers 2. Virtual machines 3. Containers Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
3. Container deployments 1. Platform (e.g. Kubernetes) 2. Application (e.g. Cloud Foundry) 3. Serverless (e.g. OpenWhisk) Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
4. Serverless? The first thing to know about serverless computing is that "serverless" is a pretty bad name to call it. - Brandon Butler, Network World Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
5. AKA: Functions as a Service • A runtime to execute your functions • No capacity planning or load balancing; just tasks being executed. • Pay for execution, not when idle Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
6. Use-cases Synchronous Service is invoked and provides immediate response (HTTP requests: APIs, chat bots) Asynchronous Push a message which drives an action later (web hooks, timed events, database changes) Streaming Continuous data flow to be processed Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
7. Benefits • No need to think about servers • Concentrate on application code • Pay only for what you use, when you use it • Language agnostic: NodeJS, Swift, Python, Java, C#, etc Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
8. Challenges • Start up latency • Time limit • State is external • DevOps is still a thing Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
9. It's about value Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
10. When should you use serverless? • Occasional server needs on a static site • Variable traffic levels • Additional compute without extending current platform • Responding to web hooks Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
11. Serverless providers Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
12. OpenWhisk Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
13. OpenWhisk OpenSource; multiple providers: IBM RedHat Adobe (for Adobe Cloud Platform APIs) &, of course, self-hosted Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
14. Invoking an action Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
15. Serverless PHP Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
16. Hello world in PHP Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
17. Hello world in PHP Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
18. Running your action $ wsk action update hello hello.php ok: updated action hello $ wsk action invoke hello --result { "msg": "Hello World" } Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
19. Dependencies Zip them up $ zip -r hello.zip hello.php vendor $ wsk action update hello hello.zip --kind php:7.1 Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
20. Web access Add the --web flag: $ wsk action update hello hello.php --web true $ curl https://openwhisk.ng.bluemix.net/api/v1/web/ \ 19FT_demo/default/hello.json Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
21. What to do in your action • Compute! • Store to database • Make API calls to other services • Store to cloud storage (S3) • Trigger other actions Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
22. Demo time! Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
23. To sum up Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
24. Resources • http://www.openwhisk.org • https://medium.com/openwhisk • https://github.com/akrabat/ow-php-ftime • https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
25. Thank you! Rob Allen ~ @akrabat