AWS Lambda and AWS API Gateway circular request Storm

LambdaStorm.py

##################################################################################################
# Purpose:      This function is triggerd to start a circular Lambda API Gateway storm
#
# Author:       Adrian Drummond & Ben Harloe
#
# Date:         June 8, 2017  (initial creation)
#               ?              (updated)
#
# Triggered by: A manual Lambda function execution
#
# Summary: 		This Lambda function hits an API which hits a backend Lambda function....and 
#				the storm or repeating starts.  :-) 
##################################################################################################


import boto3
import subprocess
import os

# ToDo:  
#       1) add DEBUG flag for print messages 
#       2) implement a counter using a seperate endpoint and DynamodB
#       3) implement a Elasticache cluster to speed up queries to DynamoDB 



####### Global debugging flag #######
DEBUG = True



def lambda_handler(event, context):
	
	print 'Running lambda_handler'

	if event != "local":
		url = os.environ['url']
		print "url="
		print url
		API_address = url
	else:
		API_address = ""

	command = "curl -I " + API_address

	result = subprocess.call(command, shell=True)
	return result



# For locally running this function 
if __name__ == '__main__':
    print 'Running Locally?....'
    test_event="local"
    context = "not yet setup for local testing"
    lambda_handler(test_event,context)
else:
    print '__name__ !=__main__ So this is probably running in AWS'
    print 'ALERT:  You should NOT be seeing this Alert!!'