Creating and Populating a DynamoDb Table

Creating a new migration

Several options are available here to create the DynamoDB table. You might use the AWS console or use a CloudFormation script, for example. However, since I’m using Laravel, I decided to go with migrations. In this way, I can easily keep my local DynamoDB in sync with the cloud environments.

Unfortunately, the baopham package doesn’t include migration support, but I adapted the code found in this thread. First, I created a new migration:

php artisan make:migration DynamoTable

and then added the code that you can find here.

Preparing the Environment for Migration

I wanted to be able to run the same migration for the local and cloud versions of DynamoDB. This is why I configured .env and .env.dev pointing to two SQLite databases that track the migration status. This is how they’re configured:

# file: .env
APP_NAME=Laravel
APP_ENV=local
APP_KEY=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://localhostLOG_CHANNEL=slack
LOG_LEVEL=debugDB_CONNECTION=sqlite
DB_DATABASE=database/database.local.sqliteDYNAMODB_CONNECTION=local
DYNAMODB_LOCAL_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:8000SESSION_DRIVER=array

and:

# file: .env.dev
APP_NAME=Laravel
APP_ENV=cloud
APP_KEY=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://localhostLOG_CHANNEL=stderr
LOG_LEVEL=debugDB_CONNECTION=sqlite
DB_DATABASE=database/database.cloud.sqliteDYNAMODB_CONNECTION=aws_iam_roleSESSION_DRIVER=array

You won’t find the .env files on my Github repository, as they might contain sensitive information and should never be committed.

Finally, let’s create the two migration databases:

touch database/database.local.sqlite
touch database/database.cloud.sqlite

On Windows, you can use TYPE NUL > database\database... instead.

With this configuration, when I run migration commands, they run against the local DynamoDB instance. When I add --env dev, they run against the AWS account.

Using the migration

You can create and delete the table in your local DynamoDB instance at any time with:

php artisan migrate
php artisan migrate:rollback ## WARNING: all data will be lost!

If you want to create/remove the table from the AWS account, simply add --env cloud to the above commands, e.g.:

php artisan --env dev migrate

Creating a database seeder

Quoting the Laravel documentation: “Laravel includes a simple method of seeding your database with test data using seed classes. All seed classes are stored in the database/seeders directory.”

Let’s modify the default DatabaseSeeder class to insert a few book entries into DynamoDB, replacing the body of the run() method as follows:

...
use BaoPham\DynamoDb\Facades\DynamoDb;
use Ramsey\Uuid\Uuid;
use App\Models\Book;
...public function run() {
  $records = [
    [
        'title' => 'The Grapes of Wrath',
        'author_name' => 'John Steinbeck',
        'cover_url' => 'https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1375670575l/18114322.jpg' 
    ],
    [
        'title' => 'Love in the Time of Cholera',
        'author_name' => 'Gabriel Garcia Marquez',
        'cover_url' => 'https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348243057l/9714.jpg' 
    ],
    [
        'title' => 'The Post-American World',
        'author_name' => 'Fareed Zakaria',
        'cover_url' => 'https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347716469l/2120783.jpg' 
    ],
    [
        'title' => 'Leonardo da Vinci',
        'author_name' => 'Walter Isaacson',
        'cover_url' => 'https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523543570l/34684622._SY475_.jpg' 
    ],
];  foreach ($records as $record) {
      $record['id'] = Uuid::uuid4()->toString();
      $book = Book::create($record);
      $book->save();
  }

For each record, we generate a UUID v4, which will be the primary key, right before inserting it into the database. The full code is available here.