How to Use Amazon Simple Notification Service – Beginners Level Tutorial

How to Use Amazon Simple Notification Service

SNS (Simple Notification Service) is one of the major web services provided by Amazon. As the name suggests, it is a web service used to send notifications over cloud network without having any hardware and software specifications. Specially designed for developers, this service is highly scalable, flexible and cost effective. Since it is a PAYG service; user has to pay only for the data he uses to transfer. The rates are predefined and you can choose the plan according to your need and convenience.

Amazon Simple Notification Service is very useful for the developers who want to publish messages from an application and deliver immediately to the receiver or the application over a cloud network.

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The main usages of SNS are:

• Monitoring Applications
• Updating sensitive information in system applications
• Updating information in Mobile Application
• Marinating workflow in the system

The following steps are required to start using Amazon SNS:

1. Open Amazon website using http://aws.amazon.com URL.
2. Go to “Products” and select Amazon Simple Notification service under “Messaging”.

1. This action will direct you to the SNS web page where you can see detailed information on Amazon Simple Notification service. You can see a link at the right corner this web page “Sign up for the SNS”. Click on this  button.
2. The Amazon Sign in page appears, if you are an existing user and have an account then Sign in using your Amazon login credentials. You have to accept AWS Customer Agreement and enter the security image before signing up for the Simple Notification Service.
3. Once the information is verified, you can see the following page with the rates of Request, Notifications and data transfer for using Amazon SNS.

CONTINUE…

Here you can make your mind and select your payment options according to your region e.g. US East, US West, Asia Pacific etc.

In the same page you have to enter your credit card information before opting for any payment method which you can change in the future as per your choice and convenience.

After verification and payment method selection you can use Amazon SNS for publishing, Notifying and receiving messages in 4 simple steps:

• 1. Create a Topic: Create an access point which can be an even or a specific subject for publishing message and allow clients to receive messages. For Example:

• 1. Set Policies for Topic: Although it’s optional, you should set some policies for your topic which can be supported through transport protocols like http, https, emails etc. policies are defined as limits for receivers and protocol specifications. For example you can predefine your receiver and transport protocol which restricts other receivers to receive your message and usage of other protocols.

• 1. Add Subscriber to Topic: Once the topic is created and policies are set you can define subscriber by directly adding them as a receiver. These subscribers then define the protocols over which they want to receive message. Amazon sends a confirmation message to these subscribers before actually sending them notification. An example of adding subscriber is shown below:

• 1. Publish Message or Send Notifications: Any update or important message which you want to send to your subscriber has to be added in the topic. This action stimulates Amazon Simple Notification service to send the message to its intended receiver as shown in the example below.