Project 2: AWS Lambda and JSON Web Tokens (JWT)

In this project you will write ruby code to provide a semi-trivial HTTP API. Your code will be deployed using a single AWS Lambda function.

Learning Outcomes

  • Student has leveraged JWTs to provide authorization protection to HTTP endpoints.

  • Student has utilized HTTP request methods, resources, headers, and bodies to differentiate between distinct HTTP requests.

  • Student has implemented two endpoints to an HTTP API.

  • Student can deploy code to AWS Lambda.

  • Student has compared the performance of a static website to that of a dynamic website.

Overview Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1qmUASw58E

Project Submission

https://forms.gle/RhsrS5CQHR4NY5oV8

API Specification

GET /

This protected endpoint is used to simply reflect the content contained within the data field of a valid JWT. It is a demonstration of how authorization can be enforced on an endpoint.

  • Requires a valid token from POST /token passed via the HTTP Header Authorization whose value is Bearer <TOKEN>.

  • On success, returns a json document containing the contents of the data field from the provided token and responds with the status code 200.

  • Responds 401 if either the token is not yet valid, or if it is expired.

  • Responds 403 if a proper Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN> header is not provided.

POST /token

This endpoint is used to obtain the JWT necessary to request /. Normally such an endpoint would be used to authenticate a user (e.g., verify a username and password) before returning an authorization token. For simplicity we’re skiping the authentication step and will always return a token for a valid request.

  • On success, returns a json document of the format {"token": <GENERATED_JWT>} with status code 201 where <GENERATED_JWT>:

    • uses a HS256 signature (the symmetric key to use is in the environment variable JWT_SECRET)

    • contains exactly three fields

      • data which includes the request body from the HTTP requst

      • exp which is set to 5 seconds after the generation time

      • nbf which is set to 2 seconds after the generation time

  • Responds 415 if the request content type is not application/json.

  • Responds 422 if the body of the request is not actually json.

Other Specifications

  • All HTTP responses should have the content type application/json. You shouldn’t need to do anything to satisfy this requirement.

  • Requests to any other resources must respond with status code 404.

  • Requests to / or /token which do not use the appropriate HTTP method must respond with status code 405.

Resources

CS291 SSH Jump Box

The CS291 SSH jump box provides all the necessary configuration to deploy this project to AWS. Using the *.pem file you were shared on Google Drive, ssh into the jump box via:

ssh -i <ACCOUNT_NAME>.pem <ACCOUNT_NAME>@ec2.cs291.com

Please note that if you have an underscore _ in your UCSBNetId, then you’ll need to replace that with a hyphen -. For example, if your UCSBNetId is some_student, you should have the file some-student.pem, and you will run the command:

ssh -i some-student.pem some-student@ec2.cs291.com

Once on the box you can clone the template repository:

git clone https://github.com/scalableinternetservices/cs291a_project1_template.git

Then, run the file directly to ensure the example code works:

cd cs291a_project1_template
ruby function.rb

Deploy the function:

./deploy.py <ACCOUNT_NAME>

Note: Please do not do any load testing from this machine.

Project Template

https://github.com/scalableinternetservices/cs291a_project1_template

Verification Script

Please use the following script to verify your web application: https://github.com/scalableinternetservices/ucsb_website/tree/main/scripts#project-1-verification-script

Questions To Answer

  • On average, how many successful requests can ab complete to /token in 8 seconds with various power-of-two concurrency levels between 1 and 256?

  • Using data you’ve collected, describe how this service’s performance compares to that of your static webpage from Project 0 (remeasure those results if necessary).

  • What do you suspect accounts for the difference in performance between GitHub pages and your AWS Lambda web service?

Required Tools

Other Resources