sam local start-api detached mode

Describe your idea/feature/enhancement

Allow sam local start-api to run detached

Proposal

While SAM is great for local development it can fall short for CI or even test commands. In order to run tests automatically against my api-gateway I need to run sam local start-api this command continues running until I press Ctrl-C. This works well for local development but I would like to script this out into a CI that will allow me to run integration tests without deploying to aws.

Things to consider:

1. Will this require any updates to the SAM Spec

   • No, as far as I know, this should require any updates to the spec.

2. Additional arguments/commands

   • By adding a detached mode that also means there must be a non-interrupt way to stop the api. I suggest sam local stop-api as a way to stop the api. This command would be dependent on the directory and template that is running and thus the running instance would be a singleton.
   • I would suggest -d as this would follow the docker command scheme and be more familiar to developers.

[ghost]

Any updates on this?

[jonowhite]

I think this would be really helpful. I have similar use cases, my current method I am testing (which might be a little dodgy) is to send the sam command to the background and redirect all logs to prevent interference.

sam local start-api  > /dev/null 2>&1 &

This keeps the local API active while retaining control of the shell. So you could run it multiple times, or re-use the shell to run tests against the local API.

Potential issue when it comes to stopping the background processes if you have multiple running and need to be careful with which you kill.