According to the documentation, it seems like AppSync doesn't support BatchUpdateItem (only supports BatchPutItem and BatchGetItem). I have a use case where I want to update a particular attribute of multiple items in a table. Is there an efficient way to do this in AppSync and DynamoDB? I cannot do a batchPutItem because I could be overwriting the item with expired attributes (another client updated an attribute). So the only option is to do UpdateItem one item at a time. I am thinking of having a loop in my iOS app that calls UpdateItem n times. Does this mean that there would be n network rounds? I want to be efficient with my design. Is there anyway I can do all the updates in one network round trip? Thank you.
Is there anyway I can do all the updates in one network round trip?
I think you're on to a reasonable approach with this line of questioning.
You could try setting up a mutation to be handled by a Lambda function data source. Have the Lambda function do your looping and report back with any conflicts. That way you can do it all in one network call.
More about Lambda resolvers here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appsync/latest/devguide/tutorial-lambda-resolvers.html
To update items you can call BatchPutItem with given ids. It will be overwritten.
Related
I want to create a DynamoDB WebAPI. It allows the creation and reading of Posts. Now I would like to implement a click counter that updates the popularity of a post each time a user requests it. For this reason, every time a GET request for a posts comes in, I would change the Post object itself.
But I know that DynamoDB is optimized for reads, not for writes. So updating the object that is being fetched everytime would probably be a problem.
So how can I measure the popularity of posts without slowing down the API itself? I was thinking of generating a random number for every fetch and only updating it if it is below 0.05 or something similar.
But is there a better solution for this?
Dynamo DB isn't "optimized for reads" it's optimized to provide "consistent, single-digit millisecond response times at any scale."
To optimize DDB for reads, you'd want to stick a Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) instance in front of it for "faster access with microsecond latency".
In actuality, the DDB read/write performance isn't going to be an issue. In your case the network latency between your app and DDB will be orders of magnitude higher. By making two calls synchronously one after the other you'd be doubling your response time; regardless of what cloud DB you're writing too.
Assuming the data and counter are in the same record, the simple DDB solution in this case would be to not make a call to GetItem() and one to UpdateItem(). Instead, simply call UpdateItem() with an UpdateExpression that uses the ADD expression to add 1 to your counter and the ReturnValues attribute to return either ALL_OLD or ALL_NEW.
Other more complex solutions
assuming you've already got the data for display, do an async call to UpdateItem().
At scale, you might consider disconnecting the counter update from your app. Your app post a SQS message, that's processed by a lambda which could use batch updates to DDB.
I have configured dynamodb stream to trigger my lambda. When I update an item on dynamodb table, I see my lambda is triggered twice with two different event. The NewImage and OldImage are same in these two events. They are only different in eventID, ApproximateCreationDateTime, SequenceNumber etc.
And there is only 1 million second different based on the timestamp.
I updated the item via dynamodb console which means there should be only one action happened. Otherwise, it is impossible to update item twice within 1 million second via console.
Is it expected to see two events?
This would not be expected behaviour.
If you're seeing 2 separate events this would indicate 2 separate actions occurred. As theres a different time this indicates a secondary action has occurred.
From the AWS Documentation the following is true
DynamoDB Streams helps ensure the following:
Each stream record appears exactly once in the stream.
For each item that is modified in a DynamoDB table, the stream records appear in the same sequence as the actual modifications to the item.
This will likely be related to your application, ensure that you're not using multiple writes where you think there might be a single.
Also check your CloudTrail to see whether there are multiple API calls that you can see. I would imagine if you're using global tables there's a possibility of seeing a secondary api call as the contents of the item would be modified by the DynamoDB service.
Is it possible to run a Lambda function as part of a GetItem / Query request? I plan to use some kind of computed colum that I would like to update before the value is returned to the caller. The current idea is to do this with a Lambda function and DynamoDB Streams. Up to know, I kind of missed the part in the docs where I can specify the exact moment when the Lambda is executed (before, after fetching data). Of course, I am open for better ideas!
No. It is not possible. Dynamodb is designed to response items in distributed systems within milliseconds. There is no way to execute Lambdas synchronous with Put or Get Requets. DynamodDB Streams are more like asynchronous Table Trigger and only executed on new Data.
One Idea is to call an Lambda to collect and compute your data instead request Dynamodb.
I would like to know if it is possible to have multiple dynamodb request using only one dynamo resolver in AppSync?
Or the only/best way to have more complicated processing is to use a lambda function ?
Practically, no. You even cannot query on multiple indices in a single resource definition for an query, indeed.
However, if you are to use that structure for joining multiple DynamoDB tables, you can attach resolvers not to the query entry; but to the field you want to relate on other fields.
I had an issue like relating users to another table for containing the posts and I've passed it by attaching a resolver aiming the Posts field of the User type.
This issue refers to a similar problem and is quite helpful for that kind of cases: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-mobile-appsync-sdk-js/issues/17
If it is not the case of yours, you can elaborate the question. I may look like guessing your purpose for relating tables, all in all.
Have you looked at batch resolvers with AWS AppSync?https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appsync/latest/devguide/tutorial-dynamodb-batch.html
This will allow you to write to one or more tables in a single request, and also allow you to do multiple write/read/delete operations in a single request.
You can do it with pipeline resolvers
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appsync/latest/devguide/tutorial-pipeline-resolvers.html
Is there a way to check when a dynamoDB item was last updated without adding a separate attribute for this? (For example, are there any built-in attributes or metadata that could provide this information?)
No. This is not a built-in feature of the DynamoDB API.
You have to implement yourself by adding a column to each item for each UpdatedTime with the current time.
For example, are there any built-in attributes or metadata that could
provide this information? No
There are multiple approaches to implement this using DynamoDB.
Use either sort key, GSI or LSI with time stamp attribute, to query last updated item.
When adding an item to the table, keep track of last updated time at your Backend.
Using DynamoDB streams, create a Lambda function which executives, when an item is added to track last updated time.
Note: If you are going with last two approaches, you can still use a seperate DynamoDB table to store Metadata such as last updated attribute.
I don't think there is an out of the box solution for that but you can use DynamoDB streams with basic Lambda function to keep track of which items are updated, then you can store this information somewhere else like S3(through Kinesis Firehose) or you can update the same table.
It may be possible when using Global Tables, with the automatically created aws:rep:updatetime attribute.
See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/globaltables_HowItWorks.html
It's not clear if this functionality remains with the latest version though - I'll update this answer if I find out concretely.