How AWS Amplify is different from AWS SDK for Swift?

[parthp027]

Can you please help me to identify a difference between AWS Amplify and AWS SDK for a Swift?

[jbelkins]

Sure. Here's the high-level difference between the two:

Amplify provides a set of tools that make it easy to create mobile & desktop apps, along with managing backend services hosted in AWS. Amplify provides a lot of ready-made functionality like authentication & storage that you can use with just a little configuration.

AWS SDK for Swift is a set of tools for accessing all AWS services. Rather than providing services that are ready-to-go and focused on the needs of application developers, AWS SDK for Swift provides access to everything AWS has to offer, and lets you talk directly to those services. If you need to use AWS services that aren't supported by Amplify, the AWS SDK for Swift is how you would do that.

By the way, you don't have to choose one or the other - you can use them together. You can use Amplify as the base of your app, then use AWS SDK for Swift for accessing AWS services that are beyond the scope of Amplify. (Amplify-swift actually uses AWS SDK for Swift to perform some of its interactions with AWS services, so if you install amplify-swift you'll get AWS SDK for Swift installed as well). My general advice for a new app would be to start with Amplify to get essential services in place, then use the AWS SDK for Swift for AWS features that are beyond the scope of Amplify.

Hope that helps!

[jbelkins]

If starting both client & server from scratch, and Amplify's features will meet your most immediate needs, Amplify might be the best choice to help you get both client & server set up quicker. If you already have fully-featured backend systems and just need your client to connect to them, using AWS SDK for Swift for specific functions might be the better choice.

And remember, you're not locked into one or the other. If you eventually need AWS functions outside of Amplify's feature set, you can pull in AWS SDK for Swift to access those later.

[Takemichi0]

@jbelkins Hi! It’s been about two weeks, and if the sample codes are ready, could you kindly share them here? I would really appreciate it. Thank you in advance for your help.

[jbelkins]

Sorry for the delay. We have an example here for using Sign In With Apple to obtain AWS credentials from AWS STS.

We have another sample in the works for obtaining credentials from Cognito as well. We'll post a link here in Discussions once that is ready as well.

[ramink]

Thanks for the Sign In With Apple example! FWIW, I'm really looking forward to the Cognito example, as I haven't been able to make much progress on achieving this on my own. I'd be happy to see a draft version of the example! ;-)

[lon9man]

@jbelkins

I expect it to be ready in the next few days.

~2 months already passed since 26 September.

Dear maintaners, it is pretty hard to understand current flow related to authentication using Amplify and other wrappers.
most of the developers need SIMPLE UNDERSTANDABLE FLOW to use SDK WITHOUT any additional wrappers like Cognito, Amplify, Apple Sign-In, Amazon Sign-In and etc.

almost all developers have ONLY:

1. mobile application
2. Amazon infrastructure
   maybe additionally backend with API (PHP, NodeJS, ...) for some purpose (like user logging-in, ...)

EXPECTED WORKFLOW:

mobile app needs to use Amazon infrastructure directly
-> for this app needs some PERMISSIONS
-> for this (as i see) app needs temporary STS token.
or maybe exist some other available SIMPLE logics without additional overhead.

please GIVE US real examples for described above workflow. how much time it needs? years?
thanks!