Building a Media Management and Distribution System with Serverless Architecture

💡Introduction: “Technology is best when it brings people together.” — Matt Mullenweg

In this article, we will delve into a project I was involved in that aimed to revolutionize media management and distribution, specifically focusing on music and videos on platforms like YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer, and Spotify. Our goal was to create an efficient system capable of seamlessly handling media content across multiple channels. To achieve this, we leveraged the power of serverless architecture, utilizing various AWS services and integrating with a software called Fuga for distribution. Let’s explore the key components and technologies used in this project.

⚡️Serverless Architecture:

“Serverless computing is the execution of code without the need to provision or manage servers.” — Martin Fowler

Serverless architecture allows us to build and deploy applications without the overhead of managing servers. In our project, we utilized AWS Lambda functions and API Gateway to create a serverless API that handled media management and distribution. By adopting serverless, we achieved scalability, cost-efficiency, and improved development speed.

Example code snippet (Python — AWS Lambda function):

import json

def handle_media(event, context):
    # Code logic for media management and distribution
    return {
        'statusCode': 200,
        'body': json.dumps('Media handled successfully')
    }
Example code snippet (Golang — AWS Lambda function):

package main

import (
 "fmt"
 "github.com/aws/aws-lambda-go/lambda"
)

type Event struct {
 // Event structure
}

func handleMedia(event Event) (string, error) {
 // Code logic for media management and distribution
 return "Media handled successfully", nil
}

func main() {
 lambda.Start(handleMedia)
}

🌐 Front-end and CDN:

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

For the front-end, we opted for Vue.js, a popular JavaScript framework known for its simplicity and versatility. We hosted the front-end application on AWS CloudFront, which provided a global content delivery network (CDN) for efficient distribution of static files. This ensured a seamless and optimized user experience across various locations.

🔄 DevOps with CI/CD:

“Continuous integration is a software engineering practice in which frequent, isolated changes are immediately tested and reported on when they are added to a larger codebase.” — Jez Humble

To streamline the development and deployment process, we employed a CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) approach. Bitbucket served as our code repository, and we leveraged its pipeline feature to automate the CI/CD pipeline. Any changes made in the repository triggered the pipeline, ensuring automated testing and smooth deployments.

Database Technologies:

🗄️“Databases are the hidden heroes of the software world, handling all our data and powering many essential applications.” — Michael J. Hernandez

In our media management system, we utilized different database technologies to handle structured and unstructured data. For structured data, we relied on Amazon RDS, utilizing MySQL as our relational database management system. Additionally, we employed Redis, an in-memory data store, to efficiently store and retrieve unstructured data, particularly metadata for media distribution.

Example code snippet (Redis — Golang):

package main

import (
 "fmt"
 "github.com/go-redis/redis/v8"
)

func main() {
 ctx := context.Background()
 client := redis.NewClient(&redis.Options{
  Addr:     "localhost:6379",
  Password: "",
  DB:       0,
 })

 err := client.Set(ctx, "metadata_key", "metadata_value", 0).Err()
 if err != nil {
  panic(err)
 }

 val, err := client.Get(ctx, "metadata_key").Result()
 if err != nil {
  panic(err)
 }
 fmt.Println("Metadata Value:", val)
}

architecture diagram:

Conclusion:

🚀 “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs

By adopting a serverless architecture and leveraging various AWS services, along with the integration of Fuga software, we successfully created a robust media management and distribution system. Through Vue.js and CDN, we ensured a delightful user experience, while our CI/CD pipeline streamlined the development and deployment processes. The combination of Amazon RDS and Redis enabled efficient data management, empowering us to handle both structured and unstructured data effectively.

We invite you to share your thoughts and experiences with media management and serverless architectures in the comments below. Let’s engage in a vibrant discussion on this exciting topic!