To get things started, below is a simple and brief overview of the 3 technologies.

What Is AWS Lambda?

First of all, let’s have a brief overview of how AWS Lambda and AWS API Gateway fit together. AWS lambda functions offer a way of serverless computing where you just create a Lambda function which serves your needs and you don’t ever have to worry about configuring or maintaining any servers again; you Lambda function contains the logic that you provided and is available all the time, managed by AWS itself.

More information: https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/

What is AWS API Gateway?

Now Lambda is logic, but how to expose this logic to the world so this Lambda resource can be consumed. Enter AWS API Gateway. API Gateway exposes your resources, whether it’s a Lambda function, HTTP resource, Mock or any other AWS Service.

More information: https://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/

What is Cloud9 IDE?

The Cloud9 IDE is an IDE where you don’t have to setup any development related configuration locally, everything is in the cloud and ready for you to start cracking once you access the AWS console. AWS hosts all your development environment files on an EC2 instance which is shut down in case of no activity and automatically starts up(in case it was shut down) when you access your Cloud9 environment.

Next up, we will create our first Cloud9 environment.