Cloudflare enables developers to build apps on its serverless platform
Cloudflare announced new tools and integrations to make developing applications flexible and fast. Now developers will be able to connect to their existing databases such as MySQL, MongoDB, Prisma, or Postgres alongside Cloudflare’s own tools like Durable Objects to easily and intelligently store and access data at the edge.
The promise of serverless computing is to allow developers to focus on writing code and solving challenges for their customers, without having to worry about configuring and managing infrastructure. However, while a serverless environment is meant to make development easier, solutions that exist today still create challenges for developers when it comes to working with data.
Connecting or migrating databases to serverless solutions is a complex challenge that developers have to solve, taking time and energy away from building applications. Today, Cloudflare is making it easy for developers to connect their existing databases to Cloudflare Workers and also allowing developers to use new and innovative data technologies to utilize data.
“The promise of serverless computing is its simplicity, and that promise draws hundreds of developers to sign up for Cloudflare Workers every day to power their businesses, websites, and applications,” said Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare. “We are constantly investing in making the platform the fastest, most flexible, and easy to use serverless platform on the market. That’s why these new tools and partnerships are grounded in our belief that any developer in the world should be able to connect their data to build any type of application on Cloudflare, period.”
Cloudflare’s developer platform, including Cloudflare Workers, helps developers deploy code across Cloudflare’s global network spanning more than 250 cities in over 100 countries for exceptional performance, reliability, and scale. Since 2017, more than 350,000 developers have built on Cloudflare’s developer platform and more than two million applications have been launched using Cloudflare Workers. The platform was also recently named as a Leader in The Forrester New Wave™: Edge Development Platforms, Q4 2021 report.
“Cloudflare Workers has been a game changer for LendingTree,” said John Turner, Application Security Lead, LendingTree. “We can run JavaScript asynchronously within or alongside a client session, manipulate data, and make decisions, without impacting performance or availability. No other solution offers this functionality.”
“Our customers and employees require a fast and reliable experience. Cloudflare Workers creates a seamless experience for our developers without impacting performance for our end users,” said Hamidreza Khamjani, Application Services, NOV Inc. (National Oilwell Varco). “Cloudflare Workers enables innovation by providing tomorrow’s technology to yesterday’s legacy code.”
As developers continue to build increasingly complex applications, they require more ways to store and access their data from Cloudflare’s edge. Today Cloudflare is announcing three new ways for developers to utilize data in Cloudflare Workers:
Durable Objects: Now anyone can run complex applications entirely at the edge
First, Cloudflare is making Durable Objects generally available to all. The biggest challenge with working on distributed systems is not just handling data — it’s scaling access to that data. With Durable Objects, Cloudflare has created an innovative access pattern for data that offers extreme scale and effortless data sovereignty compliance without added complexity for developers. Durable Objects lets developers implement previously complex applications, like collaborative whiteboarding, game servers, or global queues, in just a few lines of code.
Database Partnerships: Connect your databases directly to Cloudflare’s edge
Second, Cloudflare announced new partnerships with MongoDB and Prisma to help developers expand their access to data from Cloudflare’s edge. With access to MongoDB Atlas–the leading hosted document database in the cloud–developers can build complete applications that require a rich query language. The addition of the Prisma Data Platform gives developers an easy-to-use, modern data layer that lets developers connect to MySQL, Postgres and SQL Server while abstracting away the difficulties of working across database platforms.
Database Connectors: Seamlessly integrate Cloudflare Workers with relational databases
Finally, Cloudflare announced Database Connectors allowing developers to connect directly to classic relational databases, including MySQL and PostgreSQL. This allows developers to use their existing tools while benefiting from the scalability and developer experience of Cloudflare Workers.