News

AWS Nods to Node.js Developers

• By David Ramel
• 03/23/2017

Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) continued to court coders using its Lambda serverless computing service, announcing updated Node.js support.

Part of the hot serverless space, Lambda lets developers run code -- typically in response to events -- without provisioning or managing servers, paying only for compute time consumed. AWS has steadily added new language and other technology support to the service as it has evolved and matured, and yesterday announced support for the latest version of the Node.js JavaScript runtime, version 6.10.

As support for Node.js v4.3 remains, developers choosing the runtime for their new Lambda functions now have the options of: C#, Edge Node.js 4.3, Java 8, Node.js 4.3, Node.js 6.10 and Python 2.7.

AWS has been consistently expanding its support of languages and runtimes, adding Java support in June 2015 and C# support last December.

The Node.js upgrade means AWS Lambda developers now have access to the latest long term support (LTS) version of Node.js, called Boron, that was named an active LTS release last October. Node.js v4 (Argon) started as an LTS offering in October 2015.

The upgrade reflects the prominence of the popular JavaScript runtime. For example, in the brand-new developer survey from Stack Overflow just published yesterday, Node.js was listed as the most popular offering in the "frameworks, libraries and other technologies" category, and was also deemed the "most wanted."

"You can now develop your AWS Lambda functions using Node.js v6.10," AWS said in a post yesterday.

"You simply upload your Node code as a ZIP using the AWS CLI or Lambda console and select the Node.js v6.10 runtime. You can also use the AWS Serverless Application Model to package and deploy Lambda functions. Lambda takes care of everything required to run and scale your code with high availability."

More information about the Node.js programming model can be found in the Lambda documentation.