GCP Cloud Functions

Table of Contents

• Overview
• When to Use
• Quick Start
• Reference Guides
• Best Practices

Overview

Google Cloud Functions enables event-driven serverless computing on Google Cloud Platform. Build functions with automatic scaling, integrated security, and seamless integration with Google Cloud services for rapid development.

When to Use

• HTTP APIs and webhooks
• Pub/Sub message processing
• Storage bucket events
• Firestore database triggers
• Cloud Scheduler jobs
• Real-time data processing
• Image and video processing
• Data pipeline orchestration

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

# Install Google Cloud SDK
curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash
exec -l $SHELL

# Initialize and authenticate
gcloud init
gcloud auth application-default login

# Set project
gcloud config set project MY_PROJECT_ID

# Create service account
gcloud iam service-accounts create cloud-function-sa \
  --display-name "Cloud Function Service Account"

# Grant permissions
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding MY_PROJECT_ID \
  --member="serviceAccount:cloud-function-sa@MY_PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
  --role="roles/cloudfunctions.invoker"

# Deploy HTTP function
gcloud functions deploy my-http-function \
  --gen2 \
  --runtime nodejs18 \
  --region us-central1 \
// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)

Reference Guides

Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:

Best Practices

✅ DO

• Use service accounts with least privilege
• Store secrets in Secret Manager
• Implement proper error handling
• Use environment variables for configuration
• Monitor with Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring
• Set appropriate memory and timeout
• Use event filters to reduce invocations
• Implement idempotent functions

❌ DON'T

• Store secrets in code
• Use default service account
• Create long-running functions
• Ignore error handling
• Deploy without testing
• Use unauthenticated access for sensitive functions