Deploying DynamoDB locally on your computer

Download DynamoDB local for free from one of the following locations.

After you download the archive, extract the contents and copy the extracted directory to a location of your choice.

To start DynamoDB on your computer, open a command prompt window, navigate to the directory where you extracted DynamoDBLocal.jar, and enter the following command.

java -Djava.library.path=./DynamoDBLocal_lib -jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb

Before you can access DynamoDB programmatically or through the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), you must configure your credentials to enable authorization for your applications. Downloadable DynamoDB requires any credentials to work, as shown in the following example.

AWS Access Key ID: "fakeMyKeyId" 
AWS Secret Access Key: "fakeSecretAccessKey"
Default Region Name: "fakeRegion"

You can use the aws configure command of the AWS CLI to set up credentials. For more information, see Using the AWS CLI.

Start writing applications. To access DynamoDB running locally with the AWS CLI, use the --endpoint-url parameter. For example, use the following command to list DynamoDB tables.

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

Download and install Docker desktop.

Copy the following code to a file and save it as docker-compose.yml.

services:
 dynamodb-local:
   command: "-jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb -dbPath ./data"
   image: "amazon/dynamodb-local:latest"
   container_name: dynamodb-local
   ports:
     - "8000:8000"
   volumes:
     - "./docker/dynamodb:/home/dynamodblocal/data"
   working_dir: /home/dynamodblocal

If you want your application and DynamoDB local to be in separate containers, use the following yaml file.

version: '3.8'
services:
 dynamodb-local:
   command: "-jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb -dbPath ./data"
   image: "amazon/dynamodb-local:latest"
   container_name: dynamodb-local
   ports:
     - "8000:8000"
   volumes:
     - "./docker/dynamodb:/home/dynamodblocal/data"
   working_dir: /home/dynamodblocal
 app-node:
   depends_on:
     - dynamodb-local
   image: amazon/aws-cli
   container_name: app-node
   ports:
    - "8080:8080"
   environment:
     AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: 'DUMMYIDEXAMPLE'
     AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: 'DUMMYEXAMPLEKEY'
   command:
     dynamodb describe-limits --endpoint-url http://dynamodb-local:8000 --region us-west-2

This docker-compose.yml script creates an app-node container and a dynamodb-local container. The script runs a command in the app-node container that uses the AWS CLI to connect to the dynamodb-local container and describes the account and table limits.

To use with your own application image, replace the image value in the example below with that of your application.

version: '3.8'
services:
 dynamodb-local:
   command: "-jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb -dbPath ./data"
   image: "amazon/dynamodb-local:latest"
   container_name: dynamodb-local
   ports:
     - "8000:8000"
   volumes:
     - "./docker/dynamodb:/home/dynamodblocal/data"
   working_dir: /home/dynamodblocal
 app-node:
   image: location-of-your-dynamodb-demo-app:latest
   container_name: app-node
   ports:
     - "8080:8080"
   depends_on:
     - "dynamodb-local"
   links:
     - "dynamodb-local"
   environment:
     AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: 'DUMMYIDEXAMPLE'
     AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: 'DUMMYEXAMPLEKEY'
     REGION: 'eu-west-1'

Run the following command-line command:

docker-compose up

Download and install Apache Maven. For more information, see Downloading Apache Maven and Installing Apache Maven.

Add the DynamoDB Maven repository to your application's Project Object Model (POM) file.

<!--Dependency:-->
<dependencies>
   <dependency>
      <groupId>com.amazonaws</groupId>
      <artifactId>DynamoDBLocal</artifactId>
      <version>2.5.3</version>
   </dependency>
</dependencies>

Example template for use with Spring Boot 3 and/or Spring Framework 6:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

<groupId>org.example</groupId>
<artifactId>SpringMavenDynamoDB</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

<properties>
   <spring-boot.version>3.0.1</spring-boot.version>
   <maven.compiler.source>17</maven.compiler.source>
   <maven.compiler.target>17</maven.compiler.target>
   <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
</properties>

   <parent>
       <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
       <version>3.0.1</version>
   </parent>

<dependencies>
   <dependency>
       <groupId>com.amazonaws</groupId>
       <artifactId>DynamoDBLocal</artifactId>
       <version>2.5.3</version>
   </dependency>
   <!-- Spring Boot -->
   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
       <version>${spring-boot.version}</version>
   </dependency>
   <!-- Spring Web -->
   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
       <version>${spring-boot.version}</version>
   </dependency>
   <!-- Spring Data JPA -->
   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
       <version>${spring-boot.version}</version>
   </dependency>
   <!-- Other Spring dependencies -->
   <!-- Replace the version numbers with the desired version -->
   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
       <version>6.0.0</version>
   </dependency>
   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
       <version>6.0.0</version>
   </dependency>
   <!-- Add other Spring dependencies as needed -->
   <!-- Add any other dependencies your project requires -->
</dependencies>
</project>