Working with items and attributes in DynamoDB

In Amazon DynamoDB, an item is a collection of attributes. Each attribute has a name and a value. An attribute value can be a scalar, a set, or a document type. For more information, see Amazon DynamoDB: How it works.

DynamoDB provides four operations for basic create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) functionality. All these operations are atomic.

Each of these operations requires that you specify the primary key of the item that you want to work with. For example, to read an item using GetItem, you must specify the partition key and sort key (if applicable) for that item.

In addition to the four basic CRUD operations, DynamoDB also provides the following:

These batch operations combine multiple CRUD operations into a single request. In addition, the batch operations read and write items in parallel to minimize response latencies.

This section describes how to use these operations and includes related topics, such as conditional updates and atomic counters. This section also includes example code that uses the AWS SDKs.

Reading an item

To read an item from a DynamoDB table, use the GetItem operation. You must provide the name of the table, along with the primary key of the item you want.

aws dynamodb get-item \
    --table-name ProductCatalog \
    --key '{"Id":{"N":"1"}}'

A GetItem request performs an eventually consistent read by default. You can use the ConsistentRead parameter to request a strongly consistent read instead. (This consumes additional read capacity units, but it returns the most up-to-date version of the item.)

GetItem returns all of the item's attributes. You can use a projection expression to return only some of the attributes. For more information, see Using projection expressions in DynamoDB.

To return the number of read capacity units consumed by GetItem, set the ReturnConsumedCapacity parameter to TOTAL.

aws dynamodb get-item \
    --table-name ProductCatalog \
    --key '{"Id":{"N":"1"}}' \
    --consistent-read \
    --projection-expression "Description, Price, RelatedItems" \
    --return-consumed-capacity TOTAL

Writing an item

To create, update, or delete an item in a DynamoDB table, use one of the following operations:

For each of these operations, you must specify the entire primary key, not just part of it. For example, if a table has a composite primary key (partition key and sort key), you must provide a value for the partition key and a value for the sort key.

To return the number of write capacity units consumed by any of these operations, set the ReturnConsumedCapacity parameter to one of the following:

PutItem

PutItem creates a new item. If an item with the same key already exists in the table, it is replaced with the new item.

aws dynamodb put-item \
    --table-name Thread \
    --item file://item.json

{
    "ForumName": {"S": "Amazon DynamoDB"},
    "Subject": {"S": "New discussion thread"},
    "Message": {"S": "First post in this thread"},
    "LastPostedBy": {"S": "fred@example.com"},
    "LastPostDateTime": {"S": "201603190422"}
}

UpdateItem

If an item with the specified key does not exist, UpdateItem creates a new item. Otherwise, it modifies an existing item's attributes.

You use an update expression to specify the attributes that you want to modify and their new values. For more information, see Using update expressions in DynamoDB.

Within the update expression, you use expression attribute values as placeholders for the actual values. For more information, see Using expression attribute values in DynamoDB.

aws dynamodb update-item \
    --table-name Thread \
    --key file://key.json \
    --update-expression "SET Answered = :zero, Replies = :zero, LastPostedBy = :lastpostedby" \
    --expression-attribute-values file://expression-attribute-values.json \
    --return-values ALL_NEW

The arguments for --key are stored in the key.json file.

{
    "ForumName": {"S": "Amazon DynamoDB"},
    "Subject": {"S": "New discussion thread"}
}

The arguments for --expression-attribute-values are stored in the expression-attribute-values.json file.

{
    ":zero": {"N":"0"},
    ":lastpostedby": {"S":"barney@example.com"}
}

DeleteItem

DeleteItem deletes the item with the specified key.

aws dynamodb delete-item \
    --table-name Thread \
    --key file://key.json

Return values

In some cases, you might want DynamoDB to return certain attribute values as they appeared before or after you modified them. The PutItem, UpdateItem, and DeleteItem operations have a ReturnValues parameter that you can use to return the attribute values before or after they are modified.

The default value for ReturnValues is NONE, meaning that DynamoDB does not return any information about attributes that were modified.

The following are the other valid settings for ReturnValues, organized by DynamoDB API operation.

PutItem

UpdateItem

The most common usage for UpdateItem is to update an existing item. However, UpdateItem actually performs an upsert, meaning that it automatically creates the item if it doesn't already exist.

DeleteItem

Batch operations

For applications that need to read or write multiple items, DynamoDB provides the BatchGetItem and BatchWriteItem operations. Using these operations can reduce the number of network round trips from your application to DynamoDB. In addition, DynamoDB performs the individual read or write operations in parallel. Your applications benefit from this parallelism without having to manage concurrency or threading.

The batch operations are essentially wrappers around multiple read or write requests. For example, if a BatchGetItem request contains five items, DynamoDB performs five GetItem operations on your behalf. Similarly, if a BatchWriteItem request contains two put requests and four delete requests, DynamoDB performs two PutItem and four DeleteItem requests.

In general, a batch operation does not fail unless all the requests in the batch fail. For example, suppose that you perform a BatchGetItem operation, but one of the individual GetItem requests in the batch fails. In this case, BatchGetItem returns the keys and data from the GetItem request that failed. The other GetItem requests in the batch are not affected.

BatchGetItem

A single BatchGetItem operation can contain up to 100 individual GetItem requests and can retrieve up to 16 MB of data. In addition, a BatchGetItem operation can retrieve items from multiple tables.

aws dynamodb batch-get-item \
    --request-items file://request-items.json

{
    "Thread": {
        "Keys": [
            {
                "ForumName":{"S": "Amazon DynamoDB"},
                "Subject":{"S": "DynamoDB Thread 1"}
            },
            {
                "ForumName":{"S": "Amazon S3"},
                "Subject":{"S": "S3 Thread 1"}
            }
        ],
        "ProjectionExpression":"ForumName, Subject, LastPostedDateTime, Replies"
    }
}

BatchWriteItem

The BatchWriteItem operation can contain up to 25 individual PutItem and DeleteItem requests and can write up to 16 MB of data. (The maximum size of an individual item is 400 KB.) In addition, a BatchWriteItem operation can put or delete items in multiple tables.

aws dynamodb batch-write-item \
    --request-items file://request-items.json

{
    "ProductCatalog": [
        {
            "PutRequest": {
                "Item": {
                    "Id": { "N": "601" },
                    "Description": { "S": "Snowboard" },
                    "QuantityOnHand": { "N": "5" },
                    "Price": { "N": "100" }
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "PutRequest": {
                "Item": {
                    "Id": { "N": "602" },
                    "Description": { "S": "Snow shovel" }
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

Atomic counters

You can use the UpdateItem operation to implement an atomic counter—a numeric attribute that is incremented, unconditionally, without interfering with other write requests. (All write requests are applied in the order in which they were received.) With an atomic counter, the updates are not idempotent. In other words, the numeric value increments or decrements each time you call UpdateItem. If the increment value used to update the atomic counter is positive, then it can cause overcounting. If the increment value is negative, then it can cause undercounting.

You might use an atomic counter to track the number of visitors to a website. In this case, your application would increment a numeric value, regardless of its current value. If an UpdateItem operation fails, the application could simply retry the operation. This would risk updating the counter twice, but you could probably tolerate a slight overcounting or undercounting of website visitors.

An atomic counter would not be appropriate where overcounting or undercounting can't be tolerated (for example, in a banking application). In this case, it is safer to use a conditional update instead of an atomic counter.

For more information, see Incrementing and decrementing numeric attributes.

aws dynamodb update-item \
    --table-name ProductCatalog \
    --key '{"Id": { "N": "601" }}' \
    --update-expression "SET Price = Price + :incr" \
    --expression-attribute-values '{":incr":{"N":"5"}}' \
    --return-values UPDATED_NEW

Conditional writes

By default, the DynamoDB write operations (PutItem, UpdateItem, DeleteItem) are unconditional: Each operation overwrites an existing item that has the specified primary key.

DynamoDB optionally supports conditional writes for these operations. A conditional write succeeds only if the item attributes meet one or more expected conditions. Otherwise, it returns an error.

Conditional writes check their conditions against the most recently updated version of the item. Note that if the item did not previously exist or if the most recent successful operation against that item was a delete, then the conditional write will find no previous item.

Conditional writes are helpful in many situations. For example, you might want a PutItem operation to succeed only if there is not already an item with the same primary key. Or you could prevent an UpdateItem operation from modifying an item if one of its attributes has a certain value.

Conditional writes are helpful in cases where multiple users attempt to modify the same item. Consider the following diagram, in which two users (Alice and Bob) are working with the same item from a DynamoDB table.

Suppose that Alice uses the AWS CLI to update the Price attribute to 8.

aws dynamodb update-item \
    --table-name ProductCatalog \
    --key '{"Id":{"N":"1"}}' \
    --update-expression "SET Price = :newval" \
    --expression-attribute-values file://expression-attribute-values.json

The arguments for --expression-attribute-values are stored in the file expression-attribute-values.json:

{
    ":newval":{"N":"8"}
}

Now suppose that Bob issues a similar UpdateItem request later, but changes the Price to 12. For Bob, the --expression-attribute-values parameter looks like the following.

{
    ":newval":{"N":"12"}
}

Bob's request succeeds, but Alice's earlier update is lost.

To request a conditional PutItem, DeleteItem, or UpdateItem, you specify a condition expression. A condition expression is a string containing attribute names, conditional operators, and built-in functions. The entire expression must evaluate to true. Otherwise, the operation fails.

Now consider the following diagram, showing how conditional writes would prevent Alice's update from being overwritten.

Alice first tries to update Price to 8, but only if the current Price is 10.

aws dynamodb update-item \
    --table-name ProductCatalog \
    --key '{"Id":{"N":"1"}}' \
    --update-expression "SET Price = :newval" \
    --condition-expression "Price = :currval" \
    --expression-attribute-values file://expression-attribute-values.json

The arguments for --expression-attribute-values are stored in the expression-attribute-values.json file.

{
    ":newval":{"N":"8"},
    ":currval":{"N":"10"}
}

Alice's update succeeds because the condition evaluates to true.

Next, Bob attempts to update the Price to 12, but only if the current Price is 10. For Bob, the --expression-attribute-values parameter looks like the following.

{
    ":newval":{"N":"12"},
    ":currval":{"N":"10"}
}

Because Alice has previously changed the Price to 8, the condition expression evaluates to false, and Bob's update fails.

For more information, see DynamoDB condition expression CLI example.

Conditional write idempotence

Conditional writes can be idempotent if the conditional check is on the same attribute that is being updated. This means that DynamoDB performs a given write request only if certain attribute values in the item match what you expect them to be at the time of the request.

For example, suppose that you issue an UpdateItem request to increase the Price of an item by 3, but only if the Price is currently 20. After you send the request, but before you get the results back, a network error occurs, and you don't know whether the request was successful. Because this conditional write is idempotent, you can retry the same UpdateItem request, and DynamoDB updates the item only if the Price is currently 20.

Capacity units consumed by conditional writes

If a ConditionExpression evaluates to false during a conditional write, DynamoDB still consumes write capacity from the table. The amount consumed is dependent on the size of the existing item (or a minimum of 1). For example, if an existing item is 300kb and the new item you are trying to create or update is 310kb, the write capacity units consumed will be the 300 if the condition fails, and 310 if the condition succeeds. If this is a new item (no existing item), then the write capacity units consumed will be 1 if the condition fails and 310 if the condition succeeds.

A failed conditional write returns a ConditionalCheckFailedException. When this occurs, you don't receive any information in the response about the write capacity that was consumed. .

To return the number of write capacity units consumed during a conditional write, you use the ReturnConsumedCapacity parameter: