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:

Guide	Contents
Cloud Function Creation with gcloud CLI	Cloud Function Creation with gcloud CLI
Cloud Functions Implementation (Node.js)	Cloud Functions Implementation (Node.js)
Terraform Cloud Functions Configuration	Terraform Cloud Functions Configuration

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