Simple SNS System

A lightweight cloud-powered event notification platform built with AWS. This project allows users to subscribe to event alerts, view upcoming events, and create new announcements — all through a static website backed by serverless infrastructure.

AWS Event Notification Pipeline

An automated system using:

• Amazon S3 for frontend hosting and event data storage
• Amazon SNS for email subscriptions and notifications
• AWS Lambda for backend logic
• API Gateway for RESTful endpoints
• IAM Roles for secure access control

Architecture Overview

1. Frontend: Static site hosted on S3 with HTML, CSS, and events.json

2. Subscribe Flow:

   • /subscribe → API Gateway → Lambda → SNS
   • The SubscribeToSNSFunctionlambda handles email subscriptions:

• Uses boto3.client('sns') to interact with SNS
• sns_client.subscribe adds emails to the topic
• Validates email presence in request body before subscribing
• Topic used: arn:aws:sns:us-east-2:230193013910:MyEventAnnouncements

Subscribe Flow Screenshots

3. Create Event Flow:
   • /create-event → API Gateway → Lambda
   • The createEventFunction:
     • Appends new event details to the events.json file stored in S3 (arn:aws:s3:::myevent-announcement-website-s3)
     • Notifies all SNS subscribers about the new event
     • Function permissioned by myeventcreationLAMBDAroll

📸 Architecture Flow Examples

Here are key screenshots from the configuration and testing process:

Create Event Flow

Setup Steps

1. Frontend Hosting with S3
   • Uploaded index.html, styles.css, and events.json
   • Enabled static site hosting
   • Used this bucket ARN: arn:aws:s3:::myevent-announcement-website-s3

Frontend Setup Screenshots

2. SNS Setup
   • Created topic: MyEventAnnouncements
   • ARN: arn:aws:sns:us-east-2:230193013910:MyEventAnnouncements
   • Enabled Lambda to publish to the topic

SNS Topic Setup

3. Lambda Functions

   • SubscribeToSNSFunctionlambda: Manages email subscriptions
   • createEventFunction: Updates events.json and triggers notifications

4. API Gateway Configuration

   • Created REST API: myEventManagementAPIrest
   • Integrated and tested endpoints /subscribe and /create-event
   • Enabled CORS
   • Deployed to stage dev:
     • Subscribe: https://gh7p4kplu.execute-api.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/dev/subscribe
     • Create Event: https://gh7p4kplu.execute-api.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/dev/create-event

SNS Topic Setup

5. IAM Roles & Policies
   • Created role: myeventcreationLAMBDAroll for Lambda permissions
   • Roles assigned to handle S3 access and SNS publishing securely

Testing

• Manually tested Lambda and API Gateway connections
• Verified CORS handling and frontend communication
• Events successfully posted, stored in S3, and email notifications sent via SNS
• Responses were parsed and displayed correctly on the site

Troubleshooting

During the build, I ran into a few issues and fixed them along the way:

• CORS Problems
  My API Gateway wasn’t accepting requests from the frontend — fixed by turning on CORS for each endpoint and redeploying the API.

• Weird JSON Response from Lambda
  Lambda gave me a response with a string inside the body. I had to use JSON.parse() twice in my JavaScript to get the actual message out.

• Site Looked All White After Changes
  When I swapped in tutorial code, my styling disappeared. Turned out a broken URL and a missing CSS link caused a JavaScript error that broke the layout. Once I fixed the fetch() call and re-checked the CSS file, it worked again.

• Accidental Line Breaks
  There was a sneaky line break in one of my fetch() calls — made the code crash silently. I used VS Code to spot it and fix it.

• Endpoint Security
  I kept my real API endpoints out of the repo for safety. I tested everything fully, then removed the live links during cleanup.

Clean-Up

Once functionality was confirmed:

• Deleted S3 bucket
• Deleted Lambda functions: SubscribeToSNSFunctionlambda and createEventFunction
• Removed API Gateway endpoints
• Deleted SNS topic and subscriptions
• Detached and deleted IAM roles

Notes

This project was built with a hands-on approach to reinforce real-world AWS architecture. Each component was tested individually before full integration. Permissions followed least-privilege principles, and CORS was validated during deployment.

Temporary frontend was hosted at:
http://myevent-announcement-website-s3.s3-website.us-east-2.amazonaws.com
This site has since been removed during cleanup for security and cost control.

Tech Stack

Cloud & Infrastructure:
AWS (Lambda, S3, SNS, API Gateway, IAM)

Frontend:
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Static Site Hosting via S3

Backend:
Node.js (Lambda functions), REST API design via API Gateway, Event-driven architecture

Automation & Permissions:
IAM Roles, Email notifications via SNS + SES

Deployment Approach:
Serverless architecture, Infrastructure-as-Code style (manual in this repo, Terraform-ready)