π Serverless Dictionary API using AWS
Project link- http://serverless-dictionary-frontend-meraj.s3-website.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com
A fully serverless, scalable, and cost-efficient dictionary lookup service built using AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, and optionally CloudFront.
This project demonstrates real-world cloud skills, modern API development, and serverless best practices β ideal for cloud engineering, AWS, DevOps, and backend roles.
π Features
π Word Lookup API using a Lambda function (Python)
π Serverless API Endpoint via API Gateway (HTTP API)
π¦ External Dictionary API Integration (api.dictionaryapi.dev)
π Search History Storage (DynamoDB)
π¨ Frontend Web App (HTML + JS hosted on S3, optionally through CloudFront CDN)
β»οΈ Fully Serverless & Auto-scaling
π° 100% Free-Tier Friendly
π Project Structure
Serverless-Dictionary-API/ β βββ lambda/ β βββ lambda_function.py β βββ requirements.txt β βββ dependencies (requests, urllib3, etc.) β βββ frontend/ β βββ index.html β βββ architecture-diagram/ β βββ (ASCII / PNG / docs) β βββ README.md
π§ How It Works
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User types a word in the frontend UI (hosted on S3).
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Frontend calls your API endpoint: https://.execute-api..amazonaws.com/lookup?word=hello
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API Gateway triggers Lambda.
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Lambda requests meaning from DictionaryAPI.dev using Python requests.
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Lambda returns formatted JSON to the frontend.
π οΈ AWS Services Used Service Purpose AWS Lambda (Python) Core backend logic API Gateway (HTTP API) REST endpoint DynamoDB Optional search history storage S3 Static Hosting Frontend hosting CloudFront Optional CDN for performance & HTTPS CloudWatch Logs Monitoring
π Improvements & Future Enhancements
Add JWT authentication using Cognito
Track per-user search history
Add caching (API Gateway cache or CloudFront)
Add audio pronunciation playback
Deploy using IaC (AWS SAM / Terraform)
π Acknowledgements
Dictionary API powered by https://dictionaryapi.dev
Hosted & deployed on AWS Free Tier