Build Story
Built while preparing for the AWS Certified Developer - Associate exam, this project exists to exercise the API Gateway objectives against a real, working endpoint instead of just reading about them: a single Lambda function fronted by two different API Gateway types, so their capabilities could be compared side by side rather than taken on faith.
API Gateway's HTTP API and REST API types look similar on paper, but the exam (and real projects) hinge on knowing exactly where they diverge: cost, feature set, and configuration surface. The only way to really internalize that was to stand up both in front of the same Lambda function.
A single Python Lambda function reads lat/lon from the query string, calls the free Open-Meteo API, and returns current conditions as JSON. Both the HTTP API and the REST API proxy straight into the same function, so any difference in behavior comes from the gateway, not the backend.
The HTTP API (weather-demo-api) is the low-cost, low-ceremony option: CORS-enabled and open, no API key, ideal for a frontend that just needs to call an endpoint.
The REST API (weather-demo-rest-api) exercises the features HTTP APIs don't support: a required API key, a usage plan with request throttling and a daily quota, and a regional custom domain at weather-api.joesparkman.com backed by an ACM certificate.
joesparkman.com's DNS lives in GoDaddy, not Route 53, so the certificate validation record and the final domain-mapping CNAME couldn't be automated in CloudFormation. Those steps were done by hand in GoDaddy's DNS manager and documented in the README exactly as performed.
Everything here runs comfortably within AWS free-tier limits: Lambda's million-request allowance, negligible per-request API Gateway pricing, and a free ACM certificate. The API key is stored in SSM Parameter Store rather than Secrets Manager specifically to keep ongoing cost at zero.