In this Advanced Demo you will be implementing a serverless reminder application. The application will load from an S3 bucket and run in browser .. communicating with Lambda and Step functions via an API Gateway Endpoint Using the application you will be able to configure reminders for 'pet cuddles' to be sent using email.

This advanced demo consists of 6 stages :-

• STAGE 1 : Configure Simple Email service
• STAGE 2 : Add a email lambda function to use SES to send emails for the serverless application <= THIS STAGE
• STAGE 3 : Implement and configure the state machine, the core of the application
• STAGE 4 : Implement the API Gateway, API and supporting lambda function
• STAGE 5 : Implement the static frontend application and test functionality
• STAGE 6 : Cleanup the account

STAGE2 VIDEO GUIDE

In this stage of the demo you need to create an IAM role which the email_reminder_lambda will use to interact with other AWS services.
You could create this manually, but its easier to do this step using cloudformation to speed things up.
Click https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/home?region=us-east-1#/stacks/quickcreate?templateURL=https://learn-cantrill-labs.s3.amazonaws.com/aws-serverless-pet-cuddle-o-tron/lambdarolecfn.yaml&stackName=LAMBDAROLE Check the I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources. box and then click Create Stack

Wait for the Stack to move into the CREATE_COMPLETE state before moving into the next

Move to the IAM Console https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?#/roles and review the execution role
Notice that it provides SES, SNS and Logging permissions to whatever assumes this role.
This is what gives lambda the permissions to interact with those services

Next You're going to create the lambda function which will will be used by the serverless application to create an email and then send it using SES
Move to the lambda console https://console.aws.amazon.com/lambda/home?region=us-east-1#/functions
Click on Create Function
Select Author from scratch
For Function name enter email_reminder_lambda
and for runtime click the dropdown and pick Python 3.9
Expand Change default execution role
Pick to Use an existing Role
Click the Existing Role dropdown and pick LambdaRole (there will be randomness and thats ok)
Click Create Function

Scroll down, to Function code
in the lambda_function code box, select all the code and delete it

Paste in this code

import boto3, os, json

FROM_EMAIL_ADDRESS = 'REPLACE_ME'

ses = boto3.client('ses')

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    # Print event data to logs .. 
    print("Received event: " + json.dumps(event))
    # Publish message directly to email, provided by EmailOnly or EmailPar TASK
    ses.send_email( Source=FROM_EMAIL_ADDRESS,
        Destination={ 'ToAddresses': [ event['Input']['email'] ] }, 
        Message={ 'Subject': {'Data': 'Whiskers Commands You to attend!'},
            'Body': {'Text': {'Data': event['Input']['message']}}
        }
    )
    return 'Success!'
  

This function will send an email to an address it's supplied with (by step functions) and it will be FROM the email address we specify.
Select REPLACE_ME and replace with the PetCuddleOTron Sending Address which you noted down in STAGE1
Click Deploy to configure the lambda function
Scroll all the way to the top, and click the copy icon next to the lambda function ARN.
Note this ARN down somewhere same as the email_reminder_lambda ARN

At this point you have configured the lambda function which will be used eventually to send emails on behalf of the serverless application.
You can go ahead and move onto stage 3 of the advanced demo.