Using AWS API in order to invoke Lambda functions Asynchronously

Question

I have been researching AWS Documentation on how to invoke lambda functions, and I've come across different ways to do that. Mainly, Lambda invocation is done by calling Invoke() function which can be used to invoke lambda functions synchronously or asynchronously.

Currently I am invoking my Lambda functions via HTTP Request (as REST API), but, HTTP Request times out after 30 seconds, while asynchronous calls as far as I know times out after 15min.

What are the advantages, besides time that I have already mentioned, of asynchronous lambda invocation compared to invoking lambda with HTTP Request. Also, what are best (recommended) ways to invoke lambdas in production? On AWS docs (SDK for Go - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-go/api/service/lambda/#InvokeAsyncInput ) I see that InvokeAsyncInput and InvokeAsyncOutput have been depricated. So I am wondering how async implementation would actually look like.

Answer 1

Lambda really is about event-driven-computing. This means Lambda always gets triggered in response to an event . This event can originate from a wide range of AWS Services as well as the AWS CLI and SDK.

All of these events invoke the Lambda function and pass some kind of information in the form of an event and context object. How this event looks like depends on the service that triggered lambda. You can find more information about the context in this documentation .

There is no real "best" way to invoke Lambda - this mostly depends on your use case - if you're building a webservice, let API Gateway invoke Lambda for you. If you want to process new files on S3 - let S3 trigger Lambda. If you're just testing the Lambda function you can invoke it via the CLI. If you have custom software that needs to trigger a Lambda function you can use the SDK. If you want to run Lambda on a schedule, configure CloudWatch events...

Please provide more information about your use case if you require a more detailed evaluation of the available options - right now this is very broad.