DynamoDB attributes from the .NET object persistence model

This section describes the attributes that the object persistence model offers so that you can map your classes and properties to DynamoDB tables and attributes.

DynamoDBGlobalSecondaryIndexHashKey

Maps a class property to the partition key of a global secondary index. Use this attribute if you need to Query a global secondary index.

DynamoDBGlobalSecondaryIndexRangeKey

Maps a class property to the sort key of a global secondary index. Use this attribute if you need to Query a global secondary index and want to refine your results using the index sort key.

DynamoDBHashKey

Maps a class property to the partition key of the table's primary key. The primary key attributes cannot be a collection type.

The following C# code example maps the Book class to the ProductCatalog table, and the Id property to the table's primary key partition key.

[DynamoDBTable("ProductCatalog")]
public class Book 
{
    [DynamoDBHashKey]
    public int Id { get; set; }

    // Additional properties go here.
}

DynamoDBIgnore

Indicates that the associated property should be ignored. If you don't want to save any of your class properties, you can add this attribute to instruct DynamoDBContext not to include this property when saving objects to the table.

DynamoDBLocalSecondaryIndexRangeKey

Maps a class property to the sort key of a local secondary index. Use this attribute if you need to Query a local secondary index and want to refine your results using the index sort key.

DynamoDBProperty

Maps a class property to a table attribute. If the class property maps to a table attribute of the same name, you don't need to specify this attribute. However, if the names are not the same, you can use this tag to provide the mapping. In the following C# statement, the DynamoDBProperty maps the BookAuthors property to the Authors attribute in the table.

[DynamoDBProperty("Authors")]
public List<string> BookAuthors { get; set; }

DynamoDBContext uses this mapping information to create the Authors attribute when saving object data to the corresponding table.

DynamoDBRenamable

Specifies an alternative name for a class property. This is useful if you are writing a custom converter for mapping arbitrary data to a DynamoDB table where the name of a class property is different from a table attribute.

DynamoDBRangeKey

Maps a class property to the sort key of the table's primary key. If the table has a composite primary key (partition key and sort key), you must specify both the DynamoDBHashKey and DynamoDBRangeKey attributes in your class mapping.

For example, the sample table Reply has a primary key made of the Id partition key and Replenishment sort key. The following C# code example maps the Reply class to the Reply table. The class definition also indicates that two of its properties map to the primary key.

[DynamoDBTable("Reply")]
public class Reply 
{
   [DynamoDBHashKey]
   public int ThreadId { get; set; }
   [DynamoDBRangeKey]
   public string Replenishment { get; set; }
   
   // Additional properties go here.
}

DynamoDBTable

Identifies the target table in DynamoDB to which the class maps. For example, the following C# code example maps the Developer class to the People table in DynamoDB.

[DynamoDBTable("People")]
public class Developer { ...}

This attribute can be inherited or overridden.

You can add the optional parameter, LowerCamelCaseProperties, to request DynamoDB to make the first letter of the property name lowercase when storing the objects to a table, as shown in the following C# example.

[DynamoDBTable("People", LowerCamelCaseProperties=true)]
public class Developer 
{
    string DeveloperName;
    ...
}

When saving instances of the Developer class, DynamoDBContext saves the DeveloperName property as the developerName.

DynamoDBVersion

Identifies a class property for storing the item version number. For more information about versioning, see Optimistic locking using DynamoDB and the AWS SDK for .NET object persistence model.