First attempt at AWS Amplify with NodeJS gives 404 page not found - node.js

Question

When go to the url given, something like this: https://master.xyz.amplifyapp.com/, I get 404 page not found. I don't need my own domain for this proof of concept. I also tried https://master.xyz.amplifyapp.com/poc (see my directory structure below). Same result.
Previous steps taken:
The directory was originally created by doing a clone of an empty AWSCodeCommit repository.
I ran create-react-app poc, and when I do npm start in the "poc" directory, it shows fine in the browser with this url: http://localhost:3000/ (Note at bottom of this post, I did the same thing with a NodeJS RESTAPI and got the same result).
This is my directory structure, and from there I did:
git add -all
git commit -m"first checking"
git push
In AWSCodeCommit I can browse the repository and see the code there.
This is the result of connecting CodeCommit to Amplify:
I'm expecting to see the same thing from the provided URL (https://master.xyz.amplifyapp.com/) as I do on my local machine (localhost:3000).
I had one idea. I copied the poc directory up to the main directory, committed, pushed, saw it rebuild/deploy, and tried again, but same result.
NOTE: I have gone through the same exercise with a simple NodeJS REST API. It also gets the "page not found".
Local: http://localhost:8080/api/books
returns: [{"title":"Harry Potter","id":1},{"title":"Twilight","id":2},{"title":"Lorien Legacies","id":3}]
With Amplify:
https://master.xyz.amplifyapp.com/api/books
gives "404 page not found".
I was thinking the problem with the React was that it was a regular React app, and not a Native-React application. But now I'm getting same issue with a simpler nodeJS application, and no idea what to try next.

Answer 1

This is the video that gave me the ideas to get it working, even though I'm not using Cognito. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4qKydnd0vU
The first videos made no mention of installing and running amplify locally.
So I installed amplify on my Windows laptop. Then basically had to run these commands from the windows command prompt:
npm install -g #aws-amplify/cli
amplify configure
amplify init
When I ran the second command, it created another amplify app in AWS. Fortunately, my first project had dashes in it, and this one did not, so they didn't conflict. (I will go back and either delete my originals or try to get them working later).
Many of the videos demonstrate with GitHub, but I was using CodeCommit.
If you get an error in the Build phase that says "The requested URL returned error: 403", that means there is an access issue to your code library. I solved that by changing the "Service role" of my Amplify app to one that I created previously. If you respond with comments to this answer, there's a good chance that I won't have any answers.
amplify configure:
(I used an existing username that I had already created for the first attempts. If you haven't done that, I think you would need to do it so you have the data to paste in for user, access code, and secret.
amplify init:
So this is what I did to get it up and working (for both React and my NodeJS api backend). I have much more reading or watching videos and experimenting ahead to learn more about it. There were many videos that created the apps in the AWS web console, without using the command line "amplify config" and "amplify init" commands. Nobody answered this question for about 4 days, so it seems like maybe it's still new and not so popular yet.
I'm still having a minor issue on the NodeJS api/backend that I will figure out next. For this url: https://master.xyz.amplifyapp.com/api/books/ it returns:
<Error>
<script/>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Access Denied</Message>
<RequestId>1Z3T564T3SSGXJQE</RequestId>
<HostId>mx8RKnqMS1MDe0oOiZ0it3A1sL0bRXHsdZrL5IBuin9S2llrwLFNI+y=</HostId>
</Error>
This is possibly indicative of a "page not found", and needs redirects to solve as discussed in this StackOverflow. The NodeJS code is a simple example that does this:
app.get('/api/books', (req,res)=> {
res.send(books);
});
I did the following which caused another build/deploy, but access denied error is still happening:
git status (I see new Amplify folder)
git add --all
git commit -am"after amplify config/init"
git push
My package.json contains this, among other settings:
"main": "index.js",
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"dev": "node index.js",
"prod": "node index.js"
},