Serverless Functions with Netlify

Add Cool Features to Your Front-End Apps Without Building a Server

Welcome to Serverless Functions Course.

I guess let’s start by answering the most pressing question first. What is a serverless function and why should we care? So, here is the deal. There are times when our app needs a dynamic feature and even after that 20th google search, we inevitably come to realization that the only way do it, is by building and hosting our own server. A good example would be setting up a stripe payment flow. There is a better solution though.

Serverless Functions.

Ok, but what is a serverless function? Well, despite the name, serverless function actually does not mean that there is no server. What it simply means, is that someone else is responsible for maintaining it . We, as front-end developers only need to setup our desired functionality, and the cloud provider will take care of the rest. What also really cool, we can continue to use our favorite programming language – Javascript. Most cloud providers offer some solution of serverless functions but for this course we will hosting company by the name of Netlify. We will use Netlify because they offer generous free tier and make it very easy,  to get up and running with serverless functions.

Here are the serverless functions examples/setups were are going to cover during the course.

- Basic “Hello World”

- Basic API (with local data)

- Complex API (with Airtable)

- Survey

- Open Weather API

- Newsletter

- Send Email / Submit Form

- Stripe Payment