AWS Compute Blog

Kotlin and Groovy JVM Languages with AWS Lambda


Juan Villa – Partner Solutions Architect

 

When most people hear “Java” they think of Java the programming language. Java is a lot more than a programming language, it also implies a larger ecosystem including the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Java, the programming language, is just one of the many languages that can be compiled to run on the JVM. Some of the most popular JVM languages, other than Java, are Clojure, Groovy, Scala, Kotlin, JRuby, and Jython (see this link for a list of more JVM languages).

Did you know that you can compile and subsequently run all these languages on AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda supports the Java 8 runtime, but this does not mean you are limited to the Java language. The Java 8 runtime is capable of running JVM languages such as Kotlin and Groovy once they have been compiled and packaged as a “fat” JAR (a JAR file containing all necessary dependencies and classes bundled in).

In this blog post we’ll work through building AWS Lambda functions in both Kotlin and Groovy programming languages. To compile and package our projects we will use Gradle build tool.

To follow along, please clone the Git repository available at GitHub here. Also, I recommend using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) such as JetBrain’s IntelliJ IDEA, this is the IDE I used while working on these projects.

Kotlin

Kotlin is a statically-typed JVM language designed and developed by JetBrains (one of our Amazon Partner Network Technology partners) and the open source community. Compared to Java the programming language, Kotlin has additional powerful language features such as: Data Classes, Default Arguments, Extensions, Elvis Operator, and Destructuring Declarations. This is a just a short list of Kotlin’s powerful language features. For a more thorough list of features, and how to use them, refer to the full documentation of the Kotlin language.

Let’s jump right into the code and see what an AWS Lambda function looks like in Kotlin.

package com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.kotlin

import java.io.*
import com.fasterxml.jackson.module.kotlin.*

data class HandlerInput(val who: String)
data class HandlerOutput(val message: String)

class Main {
    val mapper = jacksonObjectMapper()

    fun handler(input: InputStream, output: OutputStream): Unit {
        val inputObj = mapper.readValue<HandlerInput>(input)
        mapper.writeValue(output, HandlerOutput("Hello ${inputObj.who}"))
    }
}

The above example is a very simple Hello World application that accepts as an input a JSON object containing a key called “who” and returns a JSON object containing a key called “message” with a value of “Hello {who}”.

AWS Lambda does not support serializing JSON objects into Kotlin data classes, but don’t worry! AWS Lambda supports passing an input object as a Stream, and also supports an output Stream for returning a result (see this link for more information). Combined with the Input/Output Stream form of the handler function, we are using the Jackson library with a Kotlin extension function to support serialization and deserialization of Kotlin data class types.

To get started with this example, let’s first compile and package the Kotlin project.

git clone https://github.com/awslabs/lambda-kotlin-groovy-example
cd lambda-kotlin-groovy-example/kotlin
./gradlew shadowJar

Once packaged, a JAR file containing all necessary dependencies will be available at “build/libs/ jvmlangs-kotlin-1.0-SNAPSHOT-all.jar”. Now let’s deploy this package to AWS Lambda.

To deploy the lambda function, we will be using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). You can find information on how to set up the AWS CLI here. This tool allows you to set up and manage AWS services via the command line.

aws lambda create-function --region us-east-1 --function-name kotlin-hello \
--zip-file fileb://build/libs/jvmlangs-kotlin-1.0-SNAPSHOT-all.jar \
--role arn:aws:iam::<account_id>:role/lambda_basic_execution \
--handler com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.kotlin.Main::handler --runtime java8 \
--timeout 15 --memory-size 128

Once deployed, we can test the function by invoking the lambda function from the CLI.

aws lambda invoke --function-name kotlin-hello --payload '{"who": "AWS Fan"}' output.txt
cat output.txt

If successful, you’ll see an output of “{"message":"Hello AWS Fan"}”.

Groovy

Groovy is an optionally typed JVM language with both dynamic and static typing capabilities. Groovy is currently being supported by the Apache Software Foundation. Like Kotlin, Groovy also packs a lot of powerful features such as: Closures, Dynamic Typing, Collection Literals, String Interpolation, and Elvis Operator. This is just a short list, see the full documentation for a list of features and how to use them.

Once again, let’s jump right into the code.

package com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.groovy

class HandlerInput {
    String who
}
class HandlerOutput {
    String message
}

class Main {
    def handler(HandlerInput input) {
        return new HandlerOutput(message: "Hello ${input.who}")
    }
}

Just like the Kotlin example, we have defined a function that takes a simple JSON object containing a “who” key value and build a response containing a “message” key. Note that in this case we are not using the Input/Output Stream form of the handler function, but rather we are letting AWS Lambda serialize the input JSON object into the type HandlerInput. To accomplish this, AWS Lambda uses the Jackson library and handles the serialization for us.

Let’s go ahead and compile and package this Groovy example.

git clone https://github.com/awslabs/lambda-kotlin-groovy-example
cd lambda-kotlin-groovy-example/groovy
./gradlew shadowJar

Once packaged, a JAR file containing all necessary dependencies will be available at “build/libs/ jvmlangs-groovy-1.0-SNAPSHOT-all.jar”. Now let’s deploy this package to AWS Lambda.

aws lambda create-function --region us-east-1 --function-name groovy-hello \
--zip-file fileb://build/libs/jvmlangs-groovy-1.0-SNAPSHOT-all.jar \
--role arn:aws:iam::<account_id>:role/lambda_basic_execution \
--handler com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.groovy.Main::handler --runtime java8 \
--timeout 15 --memory-size 128

Once deployed, we can test the function by invoking the lambda function from the CLI.

aws lambda invoke --function-name groovy-hello --payload '{"who": "AWS Fan"}' output.txt
cat output.txt

If successful, you’ll see an output of “{"message":"Hello AWS Fan"}”.

Gradle Build Tool

Finally, let’s touch up on how we built the JAR package from the Kotlin and Groovy sources above. To build the JARs we used the Gradle build tool. Gradle builds a project by reading instructions from a file called “build.gradle”. This is a file written in Gradle’s Groovy Domain Specific Langauge (DSL). You can find more information on the gradle build file by looking at their documentation. Let’s take a look at the Gradle build files we used for this post.

For the Kotlin example, this is the build file we used.

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
        jcenter()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin:$kotlin_version"
        classpath "com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins:shadow:1.2.3"
    }
}

group 'com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.kotlin'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'

apply plugin: 'kotlin'
apply plugin: 'com.github.johnrengelman.shadow'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib:$kotlin_version"
    compile "com.fasterxml.jackson.module:jackson-module-kotlin:2.8.2"
}

For the Groovy example this is the build file we used.

buildscript {
    repositories {
        jcenter()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins:shadow:1.2.3'
    }
}

group 'com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.groovy'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'

apply plugin: 'groovy'
apply plugin: 'com.github.johnrengelman.shadow'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:2.3.11'
    testCompile group: 'junit', name: 'junit', version: '4.11'
}

As you can see, the build files for both Kotlin and Groovy files are very similar. For the Kotlin project we define a dependency on the Jackson Kotlin module. Also, for each respective language we include the language supporting libraries (kotlin-stdlib and groovy-all respectively).

In addition, you will notice that we are using a plugin called “shadow”. We use this plugin to package all the project dependencies into one JAR by using the Gradle task “shadowJar”. You can find more information on Shadow in their documentation.

Final Words

Don’t stop here though! Take a look at other JVM languages and get them running on AWS Lambda with the Java 8 runtime. Maybe start with Clojure? or Scala?

Also take a look AWS Lambda Java libraries provided by AWS. They provide interfaces and models to make handling events from event sources easier to handle.