Welcome to Event-Driven Serverless Notifications! 🚀

You’ll build a real workflow that automatically sends email notifications when files are uploaded to cloud storage. This pattern appears everywhere: document management systems, data pipelines, content processing workflows.

What You’ll Build

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a working system where:

1. User uploads a file to a cloud storage bucket
2. Storage service emits an event automatically
3. Serverless function runs in response to the event
4. Email notification is sent with file details

No servers to manage. No infrastructure to maintain. Just code that runs when it needs to.

Real-World Use Cases

This pattern powers many products:

📄 Document Management

• Notify team when a new contract is uploaded
• Alert stakeholders when reports are ready

📊 Data Pipelines

• Trigger processing when raw data arrives
• Send alerts when datasets are complete

🖼️ Content Processing

• Notify when images are uploaded
• Alert when videos finish processing

📋 Compliance & Auditing

• Log file uploads automatically
• Send alerts for sensitive document uploads

What You Need

Before starting, make sure you have:

• Basic HTTP and JSON knowledge - You understand how web requests work
• Programming experience - Comfortable with Node.js or Python
• Cloud account - AWS, Azure, or GCP (free tier works fine)
• Email service - SendGrid, Mailgun, or cloud-native email service

Tutorial Structure

This tutorial is divided into 8 pages (approximately 45 minutes):

1. Introduction (5 min) - What you’ll build and key concepts
2. Prerequisites and Architecture (6 min) - Understanding the components
3. Step 1: Create Storage Bucket (6 min) - Set up object storage
4. Step 2: Write Serverless Function (10 min) - Core notification logic
5. Step 3: Connect Trigger and Function (6 min) - Link storage to function
6. Step 4: Send Email Notification (6 min) - Integrate email service
7. Test, Debug, and Observe (4 min) - Verify everything works
8. Security, Cost, and Cleanup (2 min) - Best practices and cleanup

Interactive Features

Throughout this tutorial, you’ll experience:

• 🎯 Architecture Diagrams - Visual flow of events through the system
• 💻 Code Examples - Working code for AWS, Azure, and GCP
• 📊 Interactive Components - Step-by-step visualizations
• ✅ Knowledge Checks - Test your understanding
• 🔧 Debugging Guides - Troubleshoot common issues

Estimated Time

⏱️ 45 minutes to complete all 8 pages

You can take breaks between pages. Your progress will be tracked as you navigate.

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Key Concepts Preview

Before we start, here are the main concepts you’ll learn:

Event - Something that happens (file uploaded, message received, timer fired)

Trigger - A connection between an event source and your function

Serverless Function - Code that runs automatically, no server management

Notification Service - Sends emails, SMS, or other alerts

Ready to build? Click the button above to start!