Overview

What used to be web servers, web frameworks, routers, and tons of config is now quite simply Begin HTTP Functions.

Begin HTTP Functions are fast, lightweight, simple, highly durable, and require no configuration.

Oh, and provisioning new HTTP Functions is a cinch!

Provisioning new HTTP Functions

Each new HTTP Function is assigned a folder in your project under src/http/, and this code is eventually deployed to its corresponding cloud function.

To provision a new HTTP Function open your Begin App and open the Functions view in the left nav. Once there, simply:

1. Select the HTTP method for your new route (e.g. POST)
2. Enter the path for the route you wish to create (e.g. /api/:item)
3. Click Add Function

That's it. Now let's take a closer look at the capabilities of HTTP Functions, and how they work.

The basics

Each HTTP Function maps to a logical HTTP route. For example:

• GET / is serviced by the HTTP Function in your project at src/http/get-index
• GET /about is serviced by src/http/get-about
• POST /form is serviced by src/http/post-form
• And so on...

All HTTP Functions begin with /, and can include letters, numbers, and slashes, underscores, dashes, and periods, up to 35 characters.

Importantly and uniquely, you can also use URL parameters to build dynamic paths – more on that below.

After clicking Add Function, the following things happen automatically:

• Your new HTTP Function is saved to your Begin app configuration
• New infrastructure is provisioned to make the route publicly available (this may take a moment)
• A basic handler for this route is committed to your project in the src/http/ folder
• A build is kicked off, and, if green, is deployed to staging (but not production, of course)

✨ Tip: It's possible to have multiple HTTP methods respond from the same path! For example: GET /contact-us and POST /contact-us is totally valid, as you'd expect.

Using URL parameters to create dynamic paths

It's possible to build dynamic paths using Express-style URL parameters, like: GET /shop/:product

URL parameters are passed to your route via the req.params object. (Learn more about HTTP requests here.)

For example, the route used to serve this page is GET /:lang/:cat/:doc (view source).

When a client requests the path /en/functions/creating-new-functions/, the HTTP Function handling this route receives a req object containing:

{
  params: {
    lang: 'en',
    cat: 'http-functions',
    doc: 'provisioning'
  }
}

If we were to navigate to the Quickstart doc, the same HTTP Function would receive a req object containing:

{
  params: {
    lang: 'en',
    cat: 'guides',
    doc: 'quickstart'
  }
}

You can do a lot with this!

Note: Slashes still function as path part delimiters within URL params, so GET /api/:foo will service GET /api/hello, but will not service GET /api/hello/there. To handle GET /api/hello/there, create a second HTTP Function for GET /api/:foo/:bar