IronFunctions

Quickstart

This guide will get you up and running in a few minutes.

Run IronFunctions Container

To get started quickly with IronFunctions, you can just fire up an iron/functions container:

docker run --rm --name functions --privileged -it -v $PWD/data:/app/data -p 8080:8080 iron/functions

Note: A list of configurations via env variables can be found here.*

Create an Application

An application is essentially a grouping of functions, that put together, form an API. Here's how to create an app.

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{
    "app": { "name":"myapp" }
}' http://localhost:8080/v1/apps

Now that we have an app, we can map routes to functions.

Add a Route

A route is a way to define a path in your application that maps to a function. In this example, we'll map /path to a simple Hello World! image called iron/hello.

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{
    "route": {
        "path":"/hello",
        "image":"iron/hello"
    }
}' http://localhost:8080/v1/apps/myapp/routes

Calling your Function

Calling your function is as simple as requesting a URL. Each app has it's own namespace and each route mapped to the app. The app myapp that we created above along with the /hello route we added would be called via the following URL.

curl http://localhost:8080/r/myapp/hello

Passing data into a function

Your function will get the body of the HTTP request via STDIN, and the headers of the request will be passed in as env vars. Try this:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{
    "name":"Johnny"
}' http://localhost:8080/r/myapp/hello

You should see it say Hello Johnny! now instead of Hello World!.

Add an asynchronous function

IronFunctions supports synchronous function calls like we just tried above, and asynchronous for background processing.

Asynchronous function calls are great for tasks that are CPU heavy or take more than a few seconds to complete. For instance, image processing, video processing, data processing, ETL, etc.
Architecturally, the main difference between synchronous and asynchronous is that requests to asynchronous functions are put in a queue and executed on upon resource availability so that they do not interfere with the fast synchronous responses required for an API. Also, since it uses a message queue, you can queue up millions of function calls without worrying about capacity as requests will just be queued up and run at some point in the future.

To add an asynchronous function, create another route with the "type":"async", for example:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{
    "route": {
        "type": "async",
        "path":"/hello-async",
        "image":"iron/hello"
    }
}' http://localhost:8080/v1/apps/myapp/routes

Now if you request this route, you will just get a call_id response:

{"call_id":"572415fd-e26e-542b-846f-f1f5870034f2"}

If you watch the logs, you will see the function actually runs in the background.

Writing Functions

TODO:

See examples for now.

Using IronFunctions Hosted by Iron.io

Simply point to https://functions.iron.io instead of localhost and add your Iron.io Authentication header (TODO: link), like this:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer IRON_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{"app": {"name":"myapp"}}' https://functions.iron.io/v1/apps

And you'll get an ironfunctions.com host for your app:

myapp.USER_ID.ironfunctions.com/hello

API Reference

https://swaggerhub.com/api/iron/functions

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