Nitric Update - Oct 2021

The Nitric team is thrilled to announce the latest release of our Preview of the Nitric Framework… it’s a big one!

Highlights

This release focused heavily on applying the feedback of those using Nitric to improve the developer experience, enhance productivity and make the solution more intuitive for new users.

Docs Site

• New Site Layout which separates guides, reference docs and samples making it easier to quickly find the information you need
• Refreshed "Getting Started" Tutorial to guide new users of Nitric through building their first portable cloud-native application
• Tested Code Snippets all code examples on our docs site are now imported directly from GitHub and automatically tested with CI to improve accuracy
• Enhanced "Concepts" Section, which explains the core concepts behind Nitric and how to choose the right project structure for your needs

Nitric Core & CLI

• Preview Azure Support! We've enabled Azure as a deployment target for preview with support for managed services including App Service, Azure Container Registry, Azure API Management, Cosmos DB, Azure Front Door, Azure Event Grid, Azure Storage, Azure Storage Queues & Key Vault
• Code Sharing between Functions in the same Nitric Stack via a new Stack structure and build process using Cloud Native Buildpacks
• Secrets Service enables you to store your application secrets and credentials backed by AWS Secrets Manager, Google Secret Manager and Azure Key Vault.
• Enhanced Local Storage Service through migration to Minio server when running Nitric applications locally, which better replicates cloud service behaviour and enables pre-signed URL support for file upload/download
• Improved API Definitions allowing API gateway definitions to be stored in their own OpenAPI 3 spec file and referenced from nitric.yaml
• Custom Containers which enable stacks to mix and match Serverless Functions and custom-built Docker containers in the same project
• Stack Template Validation to detect and correct issues earlier for local build and deploy
• Document Results Streaming allowing document query results to be streamed, providing an alternative to manual pagination
• Error Code Standardization of Nitric server error codes to improve DX for API consumers
• General Enhancements and Bug Fixes - see our GitHub release page for details

SDKs (Node/Python/Java/Go)

• Context API for Nitric Functions for reading/writing request and response information
• Composable Middleware for Nitric Function handlers allowing improved reuse and modularity in function development
• Fluent Style SDKs to improve discoverability when working with IDEs
• General Enhancements and Bug Fixes - see the release notes of individual SDKs on GitHub for details

Tips for Upgrading

• Your nitric.yaml needs to change, check our new docs for the format differences - primarily around Nitric Functions
• Our new stack template structures provide base scaffolds for our new stack and directory structure. This should help upgrades to the new context APIs and enable code sharing between functions.
• For existing projects, you'll want to upgrade the SDK version you're using to unlock the new features and fixes

A few more things in the works

We've still got more in the works, here's a preview of what we're working on next. Think we're missing something? Let us know:

• Improvements to Serverless Function build performance
• Pre-signed URL support for Google Cloud Storage

Learn

We know that building APIs as well as protecting them can be a bit daunting, so check out our easy to follow getting started page.