How to use LocalStack to simulate AWS services on your local machine and use Terraform or CLI to interact

While developing applications for AWS, I always feel that it will be easier to test something before I deploy to AWS and use up billing. I have come across many solutions and examples to do local testing for the applications or services built for AWS. But one of those solutions which I found very useful was Localstack. Once I learnt about Localstack, I have been using it for all my testing. I have found it very easy to test a service deployment locally before actually deploying to AWS. This also helps with accruing billing for something which I just want to test and make sure its working.

In this post, we will delve into the fundamentals of LocalStack, its key features, and the benefits it offers. Whether you’re a seasoned AWS professional or just starting, understanding LocalStack’s capabilities can significantly streamline your development process, reduce costs, and enhance your overall productivity.

All the code I show here, can be found in this Github Repo:

https://github.com/amlana21/localstack-post-publish

Pre-requisites

Before I start the walkthroughs, let me list out some pre-requisites, if you want to install and run this on your own