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5 Comments

Function Marketplace: Buy & Sell Google Cloud Functions. Install in One Click!

Hey Everyone,

I'm new to IndieHackers and excited to be a part of this community!

Problem:
I was frustrated by how long it took to implement new functionality to existing or new web apps. What made me even more frustrated was that I knew developers had already written and implemented amazing solutions for the functions & features I wanted to implement on our web apps.

My team was equally frustrated, explaining how they had built similar features in the past, however, the code they built wasn't general enough to be reused.

Solution:
After speaking to my team, we decided to build Function Store, a marketplace of reusable, well-built, and tested Google Cloud Functions. In our marketplace, developers can search for Cloud Functions, easily configure, and install those functions on Google Cloud Projects without ever having to write a line of code.

Now what use to take days or weeks of development, can be implemented in a matter of minutes. In addition, we are opening up this marketplace for developers to write their own Cloud Functions to either sell on the marketplace or be used for private workspaces.

Now you can implement the following use cases without writing a line of code:

  • Transactional Emails
  • Subscription Billing
  • Vendor Payouts
  • Sync Data across databases and tools
  • And Much More!

In the future, we plan to make it possible to bundle various Cloud Functions so you'll be able to launch complete products or features with a few clicks of a button!

The Questions I Have for All of You:

  • Would this be something you'd use? Why or Why Not?
  • How are you currently reusing code across projects?
  • What Cloud Function would you want built to solve a problem your facing?

Thanks, everyone for taking the time to read our post!

If you are interested in learning more please reach out and check out our landing page -> functions.store :)

Also, we are currently looking for beta users so any GCP/Firebase Developers we'd love to chat!!!

Best,

  1. 1

    I'm intrigued by the idea:

    1. Every cloud function I have ever written is highly customized to my project. And that customization is the hard part. For example, the hard part of a function that handles a Stripe webhook is to update the user's data in the database, potentially across multiple tables, update the roles and permissions of the user, etc. That's all custom to my application. How would a pre-built cloud function handle that?

    2. For any function task that is generic (e.g., searching for a record in a database, data validation, resizing an image before saving it to cloud storage), it's really easy to find the code on stackoverflow and copy and paste it in / modify it. Why would I need to use this service for those generic cases.

    1. 1

      Ryan,

      Thanks for your feedback and patience!

      1. In an effort to make our functions more general we allow piping policies before the function runs. Think of policies as express middleware that prepare your function execution to run the common logic. So your example of handling a Stripe Webhook, you could leverage policies to make sure that what is unique to your project is taken into consideration while the general function runs. In addition, you could leverage an additional Cloud Function to handle anything that the webhook function doesn't handle. For a more technical conversation, I'd be happy to connect you to my tech partner.

      2. Completely agree that it is possible to find code on stack overflow for generic tasks. In our case, we make the process more streamlined. All functions in our store can be installed with a click of a button. We also include unit tests built-in. Ultimately, we do see developers saving time in comparison to a copy/paste job from StackOverflow. Given that after you click install, it's a simply no-code form to do any configuration for Environmental Variables and Policies.

      We'd love to give you a demo of the system so you can get a better sense of how the system works. Please let me know if you'd be open to checking it out!

      1. 1

        Thanks for the reply. I'm not interested in a demo right now because I'm not currently updating my cloud functions. If you have a website with email updates, I'd be happy to take a look and revisit this when I next update my cloud functions.

        1. 1

          Ryan,

          You can follow our progress at functions.store - Included on the page is a sign up for a newsletter to keep you in the loop :)

          1. 1

            Just signed up. Thanks! Good luck.

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