
Security News
CVE Volume Surges Past 48,000 in 2025 as WordPress Plugin Ecosystem Drives Growth
CVE disclosures hit a record 48,185 in 2025, driven largely by vulnerabilities in third-party WordPress plugins.
@nrfcloud/lambda-local
Advanced tools
Commandline tool to run Lambda functions on your local machine.
Lambda-local lets you test NodeJS Amazon Lambda functions on your local machine, by providing a simplistic API and command-line tool.
It does not aim to be perfectly feature proof as projects like serverless-offline or docker-lambda, but rather to remain very light (it still provides a fully built Context, handles all of its parameters and functions, and everything is customizable easily).
The main target are unit tests and running lambda functions locally.
npm install -g lambda-local
make build
Or
npm install
npm install --only=dev
npm run build
If you're unsure about some definitions, see Definitions for terminology.
API accessible with:
const lambdaLocal = require("lambda-local");
Or on TypeScript (supported on 1.7.0+):
import lambdaLocal = require("lambda-local");
lambdaLocal.execute(options)Executes a lambda given the options object, which is a dictionary where the keys may be:
| Key name | Description |
|---|---|
event | requested event as a json object |
lambdaPath | requested path to the lambda function |
lambdaFunc | pass the lambda function. You cannot use it at the same time as lambdaPath |
profilePath | optional, path to your AWS credentials file |
profileName | optional, aws profile name. Must be used with |
lambdaHandler | optional handler name, default to handler |
region | optional, AWS region, default to us-east-1 |
timeoutMs | optional, timeout, default to 3000 ms |
esm | boolean, marks that the script is an ECMAScript module (use import), default false |
environment | optional, extra environment variables for the lambda |
envfile | optional, load an environment file before booting |
envdestroy | optional, destroy added environment on closing, default to false |
verboseLevel | optional, default 3. Level 2 dismiss handler() text, level 1 dismiss lambda-local text and level 0 dismiss also the result. |
callback | optional, lambda third parameter callback. When left out a Promise is returned |
clientContext | optional, used to populated clientContext property of lambda second parameter (context) |
lambdaLocal.setLogger(logger)lambdaLocal.getLogger()Those functions allow to access the winston logger used by lambda-local.
A lot of examples, especially used among Mocha, may be found in the test files over: here
const lambdaLocal = require('lambda-local');
var jsonPayload = {
'key': 1,
'another_key': "Some text"
}
lambdaLocal.execute({
event: jsonPayload,
lambdaPath: path.join(__dirname, 'path_to_index.js'),
profilePath: '~/.aws/credentials',
profileName: 'default',
timeoutMs: 3000
}).then(function(done) {
console.log(done);
}).catch(function(err) {
console.log(err);
});
const lambdaLocal = require('lambda-local');
var jsonPayload = {
'key': 1,
'another_key': "Some text"
}
lambdaLocal.execute({
event: jsonPayload,
lambdaPath: path.join(__dirname, 'path_to_index.js'),
profilePath: '~/.aws/credentials',
profileName: 'default',
timeoutMs: 3000,
callback: function(err, data) {
if (err) {
console.log(err);
} else {
console.log(data);
}
},
clientContext: JSON.stringify({clientId: 'xxxx'})
});
-l, --lambda-path <lambda index path> (required) Specify Lambda function file name.-e, --event-path <event path> (required --watch is not in use) Specify event data file name.-h, --handler <handler name> (optional) Lambda function handler name. Default is "handler".-t, --timeout <timeout> (optional) Seconds until lambda function timeout. Default is 3 seconds.--esm (optional) Load lambda function as ECMAScript module.-r, --region <aws region> (optional) Sets the AWS region, defaults to us-east-1.-P, --profile-path <aws profile name> (optional) Read the specified AWS credentials file.-p, --profile <aws profile name> (optional) Use with -P: Read the AWS profile of the file.-E, --environment <JSON {key:value}> (optional) Set extra environment variables for the lambda--wait-empty-event-loop (optional) Sets callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop=True => will wait for an empty loop before returning. This is false by default because our implementation isn't perfect and only "emulates" it.--envdestroy (optional) Destroy added environment on closing. Defaults to false-v, --verboselevel <3/2/1/0> (optional) Default 3. Level 2 dismiss handler() text, level 1 dismiss lambda-local text and level 0 dismiss also the result.--envfile <path/to/env/file> (optional) Set extra environment variables from an env file--inspect [[host:]port] (optional) Starts lambda-local using the NodeJS inspector (available in nodejs > 8.0.0)-W, --watch [port] (optional) Starts lambda-local in watch mode listening to the specified port [1-65535].# Simple usage
lambda-local -l index.js -h handler -e examples/s3-put.js
# Input environment variables
lambda-local -l index.js -h handler -e examples/s3-put.js -E '{"key":"value","key2":"value2"}'
A simple way you can run lambda functions locally, without the need to create any special template files (like Serverless plugin and SAM requires), just adding the parameter --watch. It will raise a http server listening to the specified port (default is 8008). You can then call the lambda as mentionned here:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/urls-invocation.html
lambda-local -l examples/handler_gateway2.js -h handler --watch 8008
curl --request POST \
--url http://localhost:8008/ \
--header 'content-type: application/json' \
--data '{
"key1": "value1",
"key2": "value2",
"key3": "value3"
}'
{"message":"This is a response"}
You can also use the following format for your event, in order to avoid using the Amazon API Gateway format:
{
"event": {
"key1": "value1",
"key2": "value2",
"key3": "value3"
}
}
In this case, the event will be passed directly to the handler.
Event sample data are placed in examples folder - feel free to use the files in here, or create your own event data.
Event data are just JSON objects exported:
// Sample event data
module.exports = {
foo: "bar"
};
The context object has been sampled from what's visible when running an actual Lambda function on AWS, and the available documentation
They may change the internals of this object, and Lambda-local does not guarantee that this will always be up-to-date with the actual context object.
As of version 2.0.0, lambda-local no longer packages AWS-SDK in its dependencies. To run a function that makes use of this module, make sure to install it as a dependency in your project.
make to install npm modules. (Required to develop & test lambda-local)make test to execute the mocha test.make clean to reset the repository.This library is released under the MIT license.
FAQs
Commandline tool to run Lambda functions on your local machine.
We found that @nrfcloud/lambda-local demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 19 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
Did you know?

Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.

Security News
CVE disclosures hit a record 48,185 in 2025, driven largely by vulnerabilities in third-party WordPress plugins.

Security News
Socket CEO Feross Aboukhadijeh joins Insecure Agents to discuss CVE remediation and why supply chain attacks require a different security approach.

Security News
Tailwind Labs laid off 75% of its engineering team after revenue dropped 80%, as LLMs redirect traffic away from documentation where developers discover paid products.