For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll mainly show things in the console. You can use the command line for this task, there are a few tools that help you do so like this one for VS Code.
I’ve used this quick UUID generator for the IDs, which I have given to each item as well as each nested item I might retrieve. We’ll add in some fields, you can see I’ve made it a little complex to show all of the different types we can have, and because that’s more true to real life. We’ll start filling out the items I’m going to store and their types by clicking “Create Item”. Click “create” when done.Īfter it’s finished being set up, we’ll click on the “Items” tab. You don’t have to name it “id”, but I do suggest using a string for the ID. We’re going to name our DynamoDB table, “restaurants”, and use an “id” as a string as the primary key. You’ll be brought to an overview screen with a big blue button that says “Create Table”, go ahead and click that. Go to the AWS management console and search for DynamoDB, or follow this link. It provides tools for the requests, such as testing and modeling. We’ll be using Lambda to express in a function what shape of data we’d like to retrieve from DynamoDB.ĪPI Gateway is pretty well named :) It integrates with Lambda or other backend services to provide a proxy to accept API calls, aggregate the services to fulfill them, and return the appropriate result. :) Lambda lets us execute event-based logic without having to manage or provision servers. Lambda is so well-known for Serverless Functions that it’s a bit like Kleenex, sometimes people say Lambda when they mean Functions. It offers fast performance and scalability without hiccups in your service, which makes it an excellent tool for our use in an application. It takes care of replicating your data across many regions without a lot of administration. Why are we using these tools?ĭynamoDB is a fully managed, highly available distributed database. Once you’ve looked for it a few times, they will “pin” your usual suspects to the search, which is handy.
You can log into the console,, and search for the service you’re looking for. AWS is disorienting because it has a lot of options. AWS is great because it has a ton of options. If this is your first time creating an AWS account, chances are you will log in and feel a little overwhelmed. Today, we’ll incorporate this API into a Jamstack app and deploy it using Netlify, including using environment variables to store the key.
By the end, you’ll set up an entire API using DynamoDB and Lambda for your application! APIs have become an important piece of modern application development, we can use them to create full stack apps, performing all CRUD operations using the technologies in this tutorial. It assumes no prior knowledge, and we’ll link off to any additional features that are out of scope. This article is intended for those who are new to creating APIs with AWS. Creating an API with AWS: Lambda, DynamoDB, and API Gateway