DynamoDB Dynomite Local Server

DynamoDB Local can be useful for development. It’s like using a local SQL server instead of a remote RDS server. It can save money and be faster for development purposes. It’s handy for testing like rspec.

DynamoDB Local is simply a jar file you download and run. It takes about 5 minutes to set up.

Install

On MacOSX, its dirt simple:

brew cask install dynamodb-local
dynamodb-local

dynamodb-local is now running on port 8000.

Configure

To tell your Jets app to use dynamodb local.

config/initializers/dynomite.rb

Dynomite.configure do |config|
  config.endpoint = "http://localhost:8000" if %w[development test].include?(Jets.env)
end

You should test with dynamodb-local so you are not paying for DynamoDB.

A DynamoDB Web GUI

For MySQL, Sequel Pro is super helpful: brew cask install sequel-pro

For PostgreSQL, Postico is great: brew cask install postico

For DynamoDB, the closest thing I could find is: dynamodb-admin, thanks to Aaron. If anyone has additional client recommendations, please let me know. To start the admin:

dynamodb-admin

You can now use http://localhost:8001/ as a GUI to quickly navigate the tables. 😄

Slight Caveat You Might Run Into

You might run into a slight issue using dynamodb-admin and dynamodb-local together. Dynamodb-local uses AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID to namespace the local database that gets created. Dynamodb-admin sets this to ‘key’ by default.

So if you have your AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID set and are using AWS_PROFILE, then the local dynamodb database won’t match with dynamodb-admin and your other tools. Found this out by poking around in /usr/local/Caskroom/dynamodb-local/latest/:

$ ls /usr/local/Caskroom/dynamodb-local/latest/*.db
/usr/local/Caskroom/dynamodb-local/latest/[reacted]_us-east-1.db /usr/local/Caskroom/dynamodb-local/latest/key_us-east-1.db

You can set this key to a key that has zero permissions. It just matters that it matches.

TLDR: set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID.

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