Emergency Cats

An AWS Lambda function that sends a random cat picture (from the cat api) to a recipient via email. The source email and recipient emails are configured via environment variables and the email is sent using Amazon's SES.

Getting Started

Install the python packages

pip install -r requirements.txt

Create the AWS deployment package containing the source code and the packages.

sh package.sh

Create a new Lambda function

aws lambda create-function \
--region "${region}" \
--function-name "${function}" \
--handler="lambda.handler" \
--zip-file "fileb://${file}" \
--role "arn:aws:iam::${accountid}:role/${role}" \
--runtime python2.7 \
--timeout 10 \
--memory-size 128

or update an existing function

aws lambda update-function-code \
--function-name "${function}" \
--zip-file "fileb://${file}" \
--publish

Configuration

The function supports the following environment variables

Variable Name	Required?	Description
SOURCE	Yes	The email address from which the email will be sent.
RECIPIENT	Yes	The email address for the recipient.
SUBJECT	No	The subject line for the email. Defaults to "Emergency Cat".
BACKUP	No	Text used as the plain text version of the email and as the image's alt text. Defaults to "A picture of a cat!".
REPLYTO	No	The reply-to email address. Will not be set if not provided.