What it is
The Github Feed application fetches issue comments from select Github repositories, and displays the data in an easy to read format. This feed provides an easy way to keep updated on the latest issues for the repositiories I'm interested in.
How it's built
An AWS Lambda function, on a daily schedule, pulls data from the Github issues/comments API. This data is then combined and pushed to an Amazon S3 bucket. A static, React front-end, which is hosted in the same S3 bucket, then renders the data. User requests are handled by AWS Cloudfront, with DNS service provided by Route 53.
Technologies
- AWS Lambda: Fetches and combines data from Github
- Amazon S3 Cloud Storage: Stores the fetched data and hosts the static React site.
- Amazon Cloudfront CDN: Routes user requests and delivers content.
- Amazon Route 53 DNS Service: Manages domain service for the project.
- Octokit: API client for the Github REST API
- node.js: Javascript runtime environment used in Lambda function
- React: Front-end user interface library.
- Semantic UI: Front-end component framework
- marked: Markdown compiler for parsing the Github markdown
Lessons learned
- Code comments: I need to be more diligent about including comments in my code. I found myself having to re-read my code to understand what I was doing in certain areas. This was especially true for the Lambda function, which I had not touched in a few months.
- Lambda custom events: I had originally planned to use a custom event object for the Lambda function, which would have allowed me to dynamically update which Github repos were being used in the application. I ended up not using this approach, but I think it would have been a good learning experience.