Nom Kitties Online
A Development Story
Published Nov 26, 2024
I had so much fun exploring the new features and tools in AWS Amplify Gen2, that helped me make this game https://nomkitties.com with AmazonQ as my assistant to help me get along the way.
Aws Amplify offers many of the tools full stack developers need, without any of the overhead of configuration. For an app like this I took advantage of their appsync integration, and their domain configurations. I got through most of the code, with good ol' know how, but amplifyQ came in clutch! The biggest issue I had was integrating appsync's new event api which removes the data storage layer, perfect for chats, and online games where you can get a whole lot of data that you don't necessarily need to hold onto.
The documentation says to use aws amplify's integration, and event method provided from the library which is perfect for simple applications however this app uses auth, and cognito and had an existing integration making the documentation unhelpful. Thankfully I found another section of the docs that was not directly tied to amplify, and I used that with amazonQ to build my own websocket connection which I had never done before. Using libraries like websocket.io are built to different standards so they could not have been used. With Amazon Q I was able to complete one of the more time consuming research parts with no issues!
For me its allot easier to understand the abstract ideas when i see the code, and amazon Q does that for you.