How to Create a Serverless Meme-as-a-Service

Memes have become a ubiquitous part of internet culture. They provide humorous social commentary, spread virally, and have even led to the rise of a so-called "meme economy". Many tech companies, marketers, and content creators now see meme generation as a valuable tool.

As a developer, how can you ride this wave and build your own meme generation service? And can you do it in a cost-effective, scalable way?

Enter the Serverless Meme-as-a-Service. By leveraging serverless cloud functions for on-demand meme generation and serving those memes through a web interface, you can create a highly scalable meme service without managing servers yourself. Let‘s dive into how it works.

Architecture of a Serverless Meme Generator

There are three key components to a serverless meme generation service:

1. Serverless functions for the backend meme generation
2. A static web page frontend for users to create memes
3. Cloud storage for storing and serving the meme images

The serverless functions contain the core logic for generating memes. This includes accepting parameters from the frontend, manipulating images to add text and other customizations, and returning a URL to the generated meme image.

The frontend is a simple static web page that provides an interface for users to enter their desired meme text and customizations. It makes requests to the backend functions and displays the meme image results.

Cloud storage acts as the "database" to durably store the generated meme images. The backend functions save memes to storage and return the public URL that the frontend uses to display the image.

With this architecture, the meme service can scale to massive demand while keeping costs low. You only pay for the backend functions and storage used, without provisioning servers.

Meme Generation with Serverless Functions

The real magic happens in the serverless functions that generate meme images on-demand. At a high level, the functions need to:

1. Accept meme parameters like background image, custom text, font, color, size and position
2. Fetch and manipulate the background image to add the custom text
3. Save the generated meme image to cloud storage
4. Return the URL for the generated image

There are a number of image processing libraries you can use in serverless functions to aid with meme generation. Some popular ones include:

• ImageMagick – A powerful CLI tool and library for image manipulation
• Jimp – A Node.js library for image processing
• Sharp – A high performance Node.js image processor
• Pillow – A user-friendly image library for Python

Here‘s an example of meme generation code using Jimp in a Node.js serverless function:

const Jimp = require(‘jimp‘);
const aws = require(‘aws-sdk‘);
const s3 = new aws.S3();

module.exports.generateMeme = async (event) => {  
  // Parse meme options from request
  const body = JSON.parse(event.body);
  const topText = body.topText;
  const bottomText = body.bottomText;
  const bgImgUrl = body.bgImgUrl;

  // Fetch background image
  const bgImg = await Jimp.read(bgImgUrl);

  // Load font 
  const font = await Jimp.loadFont(Jimp.FONT_SANS_64_BLACK);

  // Add text to image
  bgImg.print(font, 0, 0, topText);        
  bgImg.print(font, 0, bgImg.bitmap.height - 100, bottomText);

  // Save meme to S3 bucket
  const buffer = await bgImg.getBufferAsync(Jimp.MIME_PNG);        
  const key = `memes/${Date.now()}.png`;

  await s3.putObject({
    Bucket: process.env.BUCKET_NAME,       
    Key: key,
    Body: buffer
  }).promise();

  // Return URL to generated meme
  return {
    statusCode: 200,
    body: JSON.stringify({ 
      memeUrl: `https://${process.env.BUCKET_NAME}.s3.amazonaws.com/${key}` 
    })
  };
};

This code uses Jimp to load a background image, add custom text with a selected font, and save the generated meme to S3. It returns the URL to the generated image that the frontend can use to display the meme.

You could further enhance this to support more customizations like:

• Allowing users to upload custom background images
• More text options like color, outline, rotation, etc.
• Adding other content like stickers, emojis, photo filters
• Integrating AI/ML services to generate meme text or images

The sky‘s the limit, but start simple and gradually add features as you go.

Frontend Interface

With the backend in place, you need a way for users to actually generate memes. This is where the frontend comes in.

The frontend is a web page where users can enter the text and options for their meme and see the generated result. It makes requests to the backend serverless function to create memes and display them on the page.

You have a lot of flexibility in how you create the frontend since it‘s just a static web page. Some common approaches are:

• A simple HTML page with a form to collect meme options and display results
• A single-page JS app using a framework like React, Vue or Svelte
• A mobile app using a webview to embed the meme generator page

Here‘s a simple example of the HTML for a meme generator page:

<form id="meme-form">
  <label for="bg-img-url">Background Image URL:</label>
  <input id="bg-img-url" type="text" />

  <label for="top-text">Top Text:</label>
  <textarea id="top-text"></textarea>

  <label for="bottom-text">Bottom Text:</label>  
  <textarea id="bottom-text"></textarea>

  <button type="submit">Generate Meme</button>
</form>

<div id="meme-result">
  <h2>Your Meme</h2>
  <img id="meme-img" />
</div>

<script>
  const form = document.getElementById(‘meme-form‘);
  const imgUrl = document.getElementById(‘bg-img-url‘);  
  const topText = document.getElementById(‘top-text‘);
  const bottomText = document.getElementById(‘bottom-text‘);
  const memeImg = document.getElementById(‘meme-img‘);

  form.addEventListener(‘submit‘, async (e) => {
    e.preventDefault();

    const resp = await fetch(‘https://api.my-meme-generator.com/memes‘, { 
      method: ‘POST‘,
      body: JSON.stringify({
        bgImgUrl: imgUrl.value,
        topText: topText.value,
        bottomText: bottomText.value
      })
    });

    const data = await resp.json();
    memeImg.src = data.memeUrl;
  });
</script>

This page has a form for entering the meme background image URL and top/bottom text. On submit, it makes a POST request to the backend meme generation function and displays the returned image URL.

You could further enhance this frontend with:

• Background image selection from pre-set options
• More customization options in the form
• Ability to share or download memes
• User accounts to save/manage generated memes
• Integrations to post directly to social media
• A feed of popular or trending memes

Spend time polishing the frontend interface, since that‘s what users will interact with. Make it easy to use while still supporting flexible meme customization.

Deployment with the Serverless Framework

Once you have the frontend and backend implemented, you need to deploy them to the cloud to make your meme generator publicly accessible. This is where the Serverless Framework comes in.

The Serverless Framework is an open source CLI for building and deploying serverless applications. It supports all the major serverless clouds like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more.

With the Serverless Framework, you define your application in a simple YAML configuration file. This includes:

• The cloud provider and region to deploy to
• The backend serverless functions and their triggers (HTTP API, event, etc.)
• Any cloud resources the functions need (storage buckets, databases, etc.)
• The static frontend assets to deploy and how to host them

Here‘s a simple example of a Serverless Framework config for the meme generator:

service: meme-generator

provider:
  name: aws
  runtime: nodejs12.x
  region: us-east-1
  memorySize: 512

functions:
  generateMeme:
    handler: memes.generate
    events:
      - http:
          path: /memes
          method: post

resources:
  Resources:
    MemesBucket:
      Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
      Properties:
        BucketName: my-meme-generator

    MemesTable:  
      Type: AWS::DynamoDB::Table
      Properties:
        TableName: memes
        AttributeDefinitions:
          - AttributeName: id
            AttributeType: S
        KeySchema:
          - AttributeName: id
            KeyType: HASH
        ProvisionedThroughput:
          ReadCapacityUnits: 1
          WriteCapacityUnits: 1

custom:
  client:
    bucketName: meme-generator-frontend
    distributionFolder: client/dist  

This config defines a service named "meme-generator" to deploy on AWS. It has:

• A generateMeme function triggered by a POST request to /memes
• An S3 bucket for saving meme images
• A DynamoDB table for saving meme metadata
• A S3 bucket for hosting the static frontend assets from the client/dist folder

To deploy this application, you simply run:

$ serverless deploy

The Serverless Framework will package up the functions, create the cloud resources, upload the frontend assets, and provide you with the public URLs for the API and website.

As you make changes, you can deploy updates with a single command:

$ serverless deploy function -f generateMeme

This command only updates the specified function, rather than the whole stack.

You can also add custom domains, CDN caching, and many other properties to further customize your Serverless meme generator deployment.

Conclusion

Creating your own meme generator and offering it as a scalable web service might seem daunting at first. But by leveraging serverless architecture, you can focus on writing the core meme generation logic and user experience while letting the cloud handle the rest.

Through serverless functions, managed storage, static site hosting, and deployment tools like the Serverless Framework, you can build a flexible and cost-effective Meme-as-a-Service. You only pay for the cloud resources consumed when memes are generated, so you can start small and scale up effortlessly.

The meme service architecture outlined here is just a starting point. Think of other features you could add like text-to-meme generation, GIF support, user accounts, social sharing, content moderation, and more to create a truly unique and compelling meme creation experience.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start building the next viral meme generator!