Skip to content

How it works

As it is with many projects, sometimes you barely have any idea how your tools work. Ha! Not here! We want to give you an opportunity to understand how things work behind the scenes.

Knowing this is not required to use functions, but if you are a born Curiosateles, check it out.

So how does functions work?

We will look here in a high level overview of how this tool structured. How different components interact. What happens when you type a functions command and which components are triggered.

Layout

Here lays a high-level layout of how our tool is built and how various components interact.

functions components layout

Following assumes that functions is installed and available in the terminal.

  1. User types a functions command in the terminal.
  2. functions will evaluate available components and store this information in the config file. Command will raise exceptions if required components like docker are not present.
  3. Next, it will evaluate the registry if information about this function is available and if said registry needs to be updated.
  4. Depending on the command type, docker will be used to run or serve a targeted function.
  5. If a command deploys resources to a cloud provider, we will use the correct provider to manipulate resources. Subject to authorization and sub-tool (like gcloud) availability.

Internal components

Typer core

Our tool is built on top a well known typer CLI tool.

Config

Custom component responsible for saving functions configuration information on the file system.

Functions Registry

Custom component responsible for saving information about each added, build, run, stopped and deployed "function". Information stored on the file system.

External components

Docker

All that makes functions fun, easy and functional is power by docker. We use it manage your functions locally and more.

FaaS providers

  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - We use cloud functions as a proof of concept for creating FaaS resources in the cloud.
  • More to come...

Invisible patterns

  • Exceptions - A set of methods, wrappers and custom error classes built to handle exceptions from different parts of the tool in a unified way.
  • Logging - functions can manipulate cloud and local resources therefore a logging functionality was developed to offer the bare minimum of viewing operation outcomes.
Last update: February 20, 2022
Back to top