Full source code available here.

A few weeks ago I posted about reading and writing data to DynamoDb. I gave instruction on how to get create tables on localstack and how to use the AWS Document Model approach. I also pointed out that I was not a big fan of this, reading data look like –

[HttpGet("{personId}")]
public async Task<IActionResult> Get(int personId)
{
    Table people = Table.LoadTable(_amazonDynamoDbClient, "People");
    var person = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<Person> ((await people.GetItemAsync(personId)).ToJson());
    return Ok(person);
}

You have to cast to JSON, then deserialize, I think you should be able be able to do something more like – people.GetItemAsync(personId), but you can’t

And writing data looked like –

[HttpPost]
public async Task<IActionResult> Post(Person person)
{
    Table people = Table.LoadTable(_amazonDynamoDbClient, "People");
    
    var document = new Document();
    document["PersonId"] = person.PersonId;
    document["State"] = person.State;
    document["FirstName"] = person.FirstName;
    document["LastName"] = person.LastName;
    await people.PutItemAsync(document);
    
    return Created("", document.ToJson());
}

For me this feels even worse, having to name the keys in the document, very error prone and hard.

Luckily there is another approach that is a little better. You have to create a class with attributes that indicate what table the class represents and what properties represent the keys in the table.

using Amazon.DynamoDBv2.DataModel;

namespace DynamoDbApiObjectApproach.Models
{
    
    [DynamoDBTable("People")]
    public class PersonDynamoDb
    {

        [DynamoDBHashKey]
        public int PersonId {get;set;}
        public string State {get;set;}
        public string FirstName {get;set;}
        public string LastName {get;set;}
    }
}

Because of these attributes I don’t want to expose this class too broadly, so I create a simple POCO to represent a person.

public class Person
{
    public int PersonId {get;set;}
    public string State {get;set;}
    public string FirstName {get;set;}
    public string LastName {get;set;}
}

I use AutoMapper to map between the two classes, never exposing the PersonDynamoDb to the outside world. If you need help getting started with AutoMapper I wrote a couple of posts recently on this.

Here’s how reading and writing looks now –

[HttpGet("{personId}")]
public async Task<IActionResult> Get(int personId)
{
    var personDynamoDb = await _dynamoDBContext.LoadAsync<PersonDynamoDb>(personId);
    var person = _mapper.Map<Person>(personDynamoDb);
    return Ok(person);
}

[HttpPost]
public async Task<IActionResult> Post(Person person)
{
    var personDynamoDb = _mapper.Map<PersonDynamoDb>(person);
    await _dynamoDBContext.SaveAsync(personDynamoDb);
    return Created("", person.PersonId);
}

This is an improvement, but still not thrilled with the .NET SDK for DynamoDb.

Full source code available here.