Business
Jobs
  • About Us
  • Solutions
    • Job Postings
      Post your job and receive qualified candidates in 48h.
    • Candidate Assessments
      500+ technical and psychological tests, plus anti-fraud.
    • Headhunting
      Tailor-made executive search from start to finish.
    • Payroll + EOR
      Payroll dispersal and EOR across 15+ LATAM countries.
  • Pricing
  • Jobs

0

886
Views
"Runtime.UserCodeSyntaxError" while trying to declare an async AWS Lambda function

I've had an old AWS Lambda function, that was declared as synchronous (used Promises), the declaration looked like this:

exports.getSong = (event, context, callback) => { }

It worked as intended. Recently, I decided to re-write it using async/await and thus, tried declaring the getSong function asynchronously, like so:

exports.getSong = async (event, context) => { }

And while trying to execute, I get the following error in it's entirety:

{
  "errorType": "Runtime.UserCodeSyntaxError",
  "errorMessage": "SyntaxError: Unexpected token '.'",
  "trace": [
    "Runtime.UserCodeSyntaxError: SyntaxError: Unexpected token '.'",
    "    at _loadUserApp (/var/runtime/UserFunction.js:98:13)",
    "    at Object.module.exports.load (/var/runtime/UserFunction.js:140:17)",
    "    at Object.<anonymous> (/var/runtime/index.js:43:30)",
    "    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1133:30)",
    "    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1153:10)",
    "    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:977:32)",
    "    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:877:14)",
    "    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:74:12)",
    "    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:18:47"
  ]
}

It absolutely not clear what the issue is from this error message, but by googling for similar issues and narrowing everything down, I figured out that the problem is the function declaration.

I tried declaring the getSong function as synchronous, and then running another asynchronous function inside it, like so:

var anotherAsyncFunction = async () => { }
exports.getSong = (event, context, callback) => { anotherAsyncFunction() }
    

But then, I get the same error. So clearly, it has something to do with the Asynchronous function declaration inside the Lambda. What might be the issue here? Thank you.

over 4 years ago · Santiago Trujillo
1 answers
Answer question

0

I encounter a similar issue. for me it was res.Body?.toString('utf-8') which lambda could not understand what is Body?. i think in your case you should do the following :

export const getSong = async (event, context) => { ...}

also for whoever has the same problem, the best way to figure out the reason is to go to your lambda code page, it should show a red X on the line of code

over 4 years ago · Santiago Trujillo Report
Answer question
Find remote jobs

Discover the new way to find a job!

Top jobs
Top job categories
Business
Post vacancy Pricing Sales
Legal
Terms and conditions Privacy policy
© 2026 PeakU Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Andres GPT
Show me some job opportunities
There's an error!