First table creation in DynamoDB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Create Your First DynamoDB Table

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a simple database table to store information about books in a library. Each book has a unique ID and a title.

🎯 Goal: Create a DynamoDB table named Books with a primary key called BookID of type string.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a table named Books

Use BookID as the partition key

Set the partition key type to S (string)

Set the read and write capacity units to 5

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Creating DynamoDB tables is a common task when setting up cloud databases for applications like online stores, mobile apps, or IoT devices.

💼 Career

Knowing how to create and configure DynamoDB tables is essential for cloud developers, database administrators, and backend engineers working with AWS.

1

Define the table name and key schema

Create a variable called table_name and set it to 'Books'. Then create a variable called key_schema that defines the partition key with AttributeName as 'BookID' and KeyType as 'HASH'.

DynamoDB

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember, the partition key is called BookID and its key type is HASH.

2

Define the attribute definitions and provisioned throughput

Create a variable called attribute_definitions that defines BookID as type 'S'. Then create a variable called provisioned_throughput with ReadCapacityUnits and WriteCapacityUnits both set to 5.

DynamoDB

table_name = 'Books'
key_schema = [{
    'AttributeName': 'BookID',
    'KeyType': 'HASH'
}]
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Attribute type 'S' means string. Set both read and write capacity units to 5.

3

Create the table creation parameters dictionary

Create a variable called table_params that combines table_name, key_schema, attribute_definitions, and provisioned_throughput into one dictionary with keys TableName, KeySchema, AttributeDefinitions, and ProvisionedThroughput respectively.

DynamoDB

table_name = 'Books'
key_schema = [{
    'AttributeName': 'BookID',
    'KeyType': 'HASH'
}]
attribute_definitions = [{
    'AttributeName': 'BookID',
    'AttributeType': 'S'
}]
provisioned_throughput = {
    'ReadCapacityUnits': 5,
    'WriteCapacityUnits': 5
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Combine all parts into one dictionary called table_params.

4

Add the final command to create the DynamoDB table

Create a variable called dynamodb_client that represents the DynamoDB client. Then create a variable called create_table_response that calls dynamodb_client.create_table() with table_params as the argument.

DynamoDB

table_name = 'Books'
key_schema = [{
    'AttributeName': 'BookID',
    'KeyType': 'HASH'
}]
attribute_definitions = [{
    'AttributeName': 'BookID',
    'AttributeType': 'S'
}]
provisioned_throughput = {
    'ReadCapacityUnits': 5,
    'WriteCapacityUnits': 5
}
table_params = {
    'TableName': table_name,
    'KeySchema': key_schema,
    'AttributeDefinitions': attribute_definitions,
    'ProvisionedThroughput': provisioned_throughput
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use boto3.client('dynamodb') to create the client and call create_table() with the parameters.