Accessing DynamoDB

The AWS CLI is available at http://aws.amazon.com/cli. It runs on Windows, macOS, or Linux. After you download the AWS CLI, follow these steps to install and configure it:

The command line format consists of a DynamoDB operation name followed by the parameters for that operation. The AWS CLI supports a shorthand syntax for the parameter values, as well as JSON.

For example, the following command creates a table named Music. The partition key is Artist, and the sort key is SongTitle. (For easier readability, long commands in this section are broken into separate lines.)

aws dynamodb create-table \
    --table-name Music \
    --attribute-definitions \
        AttributeName=Artist,AttributeType=S \
        AttributeName=SongTitle,AttributeType=S \
    --key-schema AttributeName=Artist,KeyType=HASH AttributeName=SongTitle,KeyType=RANGE \
    --provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=1,WriteCapacityUnits=1 \
    --table-class STANDARD

The following commands add new items to the table. These examples use a combination of shorthand syntax and JSON.

aws dynamodb put-item \
    --table-name Music \
    --item \
        '{"Artist": {"S": "No One You Know"}, "SongTitle": {"S": "Call Me Today"}, "AlbumTitle": {"S": "Somewhat Famous"}}' \
    --return-consumed-capacity TOTAL  

aws dynamodb put-item \
    --table-name Music \
    --item '{
        "Artist": {"S": "Acme Band"},
        "SongTitle": {"S": "Happy Day"},
        "AlbumTitle": {"S": "Songs About Life"} }' \
    --return-consumed-capacity TOTAL

On the command line, it can be difficult to compose valid JSON. However, the AWS CLI can read JSON files. For example, consider the following JSON code snippet, which is stored in a file named key-conditions.json.

{
    "Artist": {
        "AttributeValueList": [
            {   
                "S": "No One You Know"
            }   
        ],  
        "ComparisonOperator": "EQ"
    },  
    "SongTitle": {
        "AttributeValueList": [
            {   
                "S": "Call Me Today"
            }   
        ],  
        "ComparisonOperator": "EQ"
    }
}

You can now issue a Query request using the AWS CLI. In this example, the contents of the key-conditions.json file are used for the --key-conditions parameter.

aws dynamodb query --table-name Music --key-conditions file://key-conditions.json

The AWS CLI can also interact with DynamoDB local (downloadable version) that runs on your computer. To enable this, add the following parameter to each command:

--endpoint-url http://localhost:8000

The following example uses the AWS CLI to list the tables in a local database.

aws dynamodb list-tables --endpoint-url http://localhost:8000

If DynamoDB is using a port number other than the default (8000), modify the --endpoint-url value accordingly.