Cloudflare Workers Tech Talks #1
Cloudflare Workers Tech Talks #1
Yesterday, on July 19, I hosted an event called ”Workers Tech Talks #1” in Tokyo. It’s a developer meetup for developers by developers, particularly aimed at those interested in Cloudflare Workers. As a Developer Advocate at Cloudflare, this was - exactly what I wanted! Let’s dive into the details of the event.
Me?
Before we get started, let me introduce myself.
I’ve been working as a Developer Advocate at Cloudflare since April this year. I am known by the username ”yusukebe” on most platforms. One of my projects is maintaining the framework called ”Hono,” which is designed for Cloudflare Workers and other edge platforms.
Photo by @techtalkjp.
Venue
The event took place at the office of Classmethod, Inc. located in Hibiya, Tokyo. They were kind enough to lend us their space for this occasion. A big thank you to them.
Attendees
Around 100 people attended the event, a significant turnout for a meetup in Japan. Some attendees traveled quite a distance, coming from places like Nagoya, Osaka, and even Okinawa!
I posed a question to the crowd, “Have you ever used Cloudflare Workers?“. Impressively, around 80% of the attendees raised their hands.
Hashtag
Attendees were tweeting with the hashtag #workers_tech. You can check out what they were saying here: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23workers_tech
Talks
Five developers gave presentations. I had specifically requested them not to talk about “What is Workers?“. This was to encourage more advanced talks, rather than covering beginner-level material.
There are already a lot of articles and tutorials for beginners, but there’s a noticeable lack of higher-level discussions led by expert developers. I wanted this event to fill that gap.
Timetable
Here is the timetable. I’ll introduce each talk in detail.
| Speaker | Topic |
|---|---|
| @chimame_rt | GraphQL Server on Edge |
| @hiroshi3110 | Case Study of Cloudflare Workers Usage at Gyazo |
| @teckl | Migrating Image Delivery to a Low-Cost Solution with Cloudflare Workers + R2 |
| @mizchi | Build Optimization for Server-side |
| @codehex | gRPC Client on Cloudflare Workers |
GraphQL Server on edge by @chimame_rt
He migrated a production-level GraphQL application from Google Cloud Run (GCP) - Node.js based to Cloudflare Workers,
using the new tcp connect feature.
As a result, the deployment time was shortened, cold start was sped up, and costs were reduced. I believe this might be one of the largest applications of its kind in the world.
Case Study of Cloudflare Workers Usage at Gyazo by @hiroshi3110
The deck is here.
Gyazo is a well-known image sharing service that has been around for quite some time. They have been using Cloudflare Workers since 2018, a whole five years ago! There was no Wrangler!
Their use case is quite straightforward, but they fully utilize the potential of Workers.
Migrating Image Delivery to a Low-Cost Solution with Cloudflare Workers + R2 by @teckl
He shared the story of migrating from AWS S3 to Cloudflare R2 as an image storage solution.
His talk included implementation with the Cache API, data copying with rclone, cache purging, logging, among other topics.
His theme was very practical, which generated a lot of interest among the attendees.
Build Optimization for Server-side by @mizchi
His talk was unique and focused on optimizing JavaScript bundling for “backend - server side”, not for “frontend”. In Node.js backend, we generally don’t consider the bundle size. However, for Cloudflare Workers, there are limitations, such as a 1MB cap for free plan users. Therefore, reducing the size of the bundled JavaScript file is important.
One of my key takeaways was that the bundle size impacts the performance of Cloudflare Workers. According to his rough benchmarking, larger bundled applications are slower than smaller ones when first accessed.
gRPC Client on Cloudflare Workers by @codehex
He came from Okinawa, which is about a 2.5 hour flight from Tokyo!
His theme revolved around gRPC. He successfully got an app using bufbuild/connect-es running on Workers. Furthermore, he is attempting to build a gRPC-JSON REST API gateway using it. The work is still in progress, but the repository can be found here. I believe this is a unique use-case and implementation for gRPC on Cloudflare Workers.
Recap
That’s all! The talks were very exciting and I believe that almost all attendees were satisfied.
Looking forward, I’m planning the second installment of this event, #2, to take place in the Autumn. I can’t wait!
Once again, a huge thank you to Classmethod, Inc. for lending us the venue, to the speakers for their informative talks, and to all the attendees.