Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Using the Amazon CLI

You can use the Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) to control multiple Amazon services from the command line and automate them through scripts. You can use the Amazon CLI for ad hoc operations, such as creating a table. You can also use it to embed Amazon DynamoDB operations within utility scripts.

Before you can use the Amazon CLI with DynamoDB, you must get an access key ID and secret access key. For more information, see Granting programmatic access .

For a complete listing of all the commands available for DynamoDB in the Amazon CLI, see the Amazon CLI command reference.

Downloading and configuring the Amazon CLI

The Amazon CLI is available at http://www.amazonaws.cn/cli. It runs on Windows, macOS, or Linux. After you download the Amazon CLI, follow these steps to install and configure it:

Using the Amazon CLI with DynamoDB

The command line format consists of a DynamoDB operation name followed by the parameters for that operation. The Amazon 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 Amazon 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 Amazon 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

Using the Amazon CLI with downloadable DynamoDB

The Amazon CLI can also interact with DynamoDB (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 Amazon 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.