Chalice Version 1.0.0b1 Is Now Available

We’ve just released Chalice version 1.0.0b1, the first preview release of Chalice 1.0.0. Since our last post that showcased the 0.9.0 release we’ve added numerous features we’re excited to share with you.

• Support for built in authorizers. In earlier versions of Chalice, you could integrate a custom authorizer with your Chalice application. However, you had to manage the AWS Lambda function separately from your Chalice app. You can now use Chalice to manage the Lambda function used for your custom authorizer. When you define a built-in authorizer in your Chalice application, the chalice deploy command will manage both your Lambda function used for your API handler and the Lambda function used for your authorizer. You register an authorizer function with Chalice by using the @app.authorizer() decorator. Our user guide walks through an example of using built-in authorizers in Chalice.
• Support for binary Python packges. When it’s possible, Chalice now automatically tries to download binary packages. This allows you to use Python packages that require C extensions, provided they have a manylinux1 wheel available. As a result, Python packages such as numpy, psycopg2, and Pillow will automatically work with Chalice. See 3rd Party Packages in our user guide for more information.
• Support for scheduled events. Scheduled events has been one of the most requested features of Chalice. In version 1.0.0b1 of Chalice, you can now register a function to be called on a regular schedule. This is powered by Amazon CloudWatch Events. To create a scheduled event, you use the @app.schedule() decorator on any function in your application. Chalice takes care of creating the additional Lambda function, creating the necessary CloudWatch Events rules and targets, and adding the appropriate permissions to the Lambda function policy. See Event Sources in our user guide for more information on using scheduled events in Chalice.
• Support for pure AWS Lambda functions. The @app.route(), @app.authorizer(), and @app.schedule() decorators not only create Lambda functions for you, they also offer a higher level of abstraction over a standard Lambda function. However, there are times when you just need a pure Lambda function with no additional levels of abstraction. Chalice now supports this with the @app.lambda_function() decorator. By using this decorator, you can still leverage all of Chalice’s deployment capabilities including automatic policy generation, deployment packaging for your requirements.txt file, stage support, etc. See pure Lambda functions in our user guide for more details.

If you’d like to try out this preview version of Chalice 1.0.0, you have two options when using pip:

• You can specify the --pre flag: pip install --upgrade --pre chalice.
• You can specify a version range that references this preview release: pip install chalice>=1.0.0b1,<2.0.0. This also installs any future 1.0.0 preview releases of Chalice.

We’d love to hear any feedback you have about Chalice. Try out these new features today and let us know what you think. You can chat with us on our Gitter channel and file feature requests and issues on our GitHub repo. We look forward to hearing from you.