Developing Serverless Applications

Chapter 2. OpenWhisk Basics

One of the best benefits of OpenWhisk is how easy it is to get started. You’ll learn what IBM Cloud Functions based on OpenWhisk and IBM Cloud (Bluemix) are and how they relate. Then, you’ll learn how to get started. That process is divided into two parts. First, I’ll walk you through registering with IBM Bluemix. While optional, this provides the simplest way to test your OpenWhisk actions. Second, I’ll show you how to install the command line interface for OpenWhisk, how to confirm it worked, and what the upgrade process is like.

Introduction to Apache OpenWhisk

Apache OpenWhisk is a new, open source project under the Apache umbrella (see Figure 2-1 for a screenshot of its website). Many people tend to think of Apache as “the web server people,” but the organization is responsible for many open source projects.

Figure 2-1. The Apache OpenWhisk website

Apache OpenWhisk has some pretty big supporters, including IBM, Adobe, and most recently, Red Hat.

As an open source project, anyone and everyone can participate in the platform. There is both a public mailing list as well as GitHub repositories where bugs can be reported (and worked on). There is also a Slack organization where people can ask technical questions. You can sign up for that Slack group and, once registered, you can chat with other developers.

OpenWhisk on IBM Cloud (Bluemix)

As one ...