

AWS SDK for Node.js (Preview) - jeffbarr
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/12/aws-sdk-for-nodejs-now-available-in-preview-form.html

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rgarcia
Even if there are already about twenty AWS libraries on NPM, this is a welcome
addition. One nasty part of the Node.js ecosystem is the elevated risk that
the owner of a library you depend on goes AWOL. For some reason (maybe the low
barrier to publishing with github + npm) this risk is incredibly high with
Node.js libraries. So it's nice to see AWS put their weight behind this.

It's also nice to see a language-specific library that doesn't layer on a
bunch of opinions/abstractions on top of the underlying HTTP API. Makes it a
lot easier to grok, debug, and leverage existing documentation.

If there's anyone from AWS trolling these parts...will there ever be support
for Node.js in Beanstalk?

~~~
1SaltwaterC
Not all the owners go AWOL, especially for pieces of code that were created
for the purpose of going into production. In fact, the lack of official SDK
support is the actual cause of so many alternatives. For some of us, it
creates a proper foundation in the long run. For example, I don't have the
actual time to implement an end-to-end SDK. But hacking some code to get the
job done was possible, while others found my hacks actually useful. It isn't
ideal, but the World itself is far from that.

~~~
alessioalex
Here's a good response from such an owner:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/nodejs/W...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/nodejs/W4TeD_8Dyt4)

~~~
1SaltwaterC
Actually I am such an owner. I'm interested to see if the AWS SDK could be
used as foundation, even though my own implementation is just a thin wrapper
plus an S3 client, most of the time doing the low level plumbing (such as
request signing).

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techwraith
This is really cool, but the terminology used could use a once over:

\- "The SDK is available as an npm (Node Packaged Module)"

\- "while keeping you from having to deal with threads, polling, timeouts, and
event loops"

"npm" stands for "Node Package Manager", and Node.js definitely uses an event
loop.

I'll definitely get some use out of this SDK though.

~~~
jeffbarr
I do my best to get this stuff right!

The top level of npmjs.org says "Node Packaged Modules."

What I was trying to say with regard to the event loop is that you don't have
to write your own.

Let me know what you think of the SDK. The team loves feedback.

~~~
9oliYQjP
Overall, I'm happy to have official support from AWS. Are there any plans to
support credentials via IAM roles? It looks like the two options right now are
to set environment variables or read credentials from disk. I was just about
to look into adding this capability to livelycode's aws-lib.

~~~
sha90
Open an issue for IAM roles in the GitHub issue tracker
(<http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues>). It seems like we want this, so
opening an issue will give us all a better way to track the feature.

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alessioalex
At the moment I'm using <https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum> It's
fantastic and supports a billion services already, besides providing tons of
useful examples. Before the AWS SDK matures, I don't think I'll be moving away
from this library (even then I'm not sure).

What I don't like in this SDK it that it has its own promise thing. I just
want to be able to write in a callback style, and IF I don't want that I can
easily make my own abstractions. (more about this here:
<https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues/2> )

Another thing to be considered before making the "final" release would be to
support more services: Route53, SNS, SES etc.

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ladon86
I'd like to see the addition a nice API for Amazon SQS.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Any specific reason why you need this? Can you explain the use case?

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thegoleffect
Thanks for hosting it on Github, Jeff. Waiting for more examples though (esp.
for EC2).

~~~
lsegal
What specific kinds of examples are you looking for? If we know, we can write
better guide docs. You might want to open an issue on
<http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues> with suggestions-- guides are hosted
there right now.

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PhrosTT
While I suppose this is good news... It also means I now get to recode my app
off third party libraries so damnnit.

~~~
alessioalex
I don't think you need to do that at the moment, this is just a developer
preview. Just wait and see how things evolve. At the moment
<https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum> still seems like a much much better
SDK for AWS ;)

~~~
PhrosTT
yeah actually i opted to stay on my current npm package.

looks like this requires specifying datatypes for each field in dynamo whereas
my current one just lets me blindly dump objects.

