UpdateItem

The UpdateItem request enables you to tell the AWS AppSync DynamoDB function to make a UpdateItem request to DynamoDB and allows you to specify the following:

• The key of the item in DynamoDB

• An update expression describing how to update the item in DynamoDB

• Conditions for the operation to succeed

The UpdateItem request has the following structure:

type DynamoDBUpdateItemRequest = {
  operation: 'UpdateItem';
  key: { [key: string]: any };
  update: {
    expression: string;
    expressionNames?: { [key: string]: string };
    expressionValues?: { [key: string]: any };
  };
  condition?: ConditionCheckExpression;
  customPartitionKey?: string;
  populateIndexFields?: boolean;
  _version?: number;
};

The fields are defined as follows:

UpdateItem fields

UpdateItem fields list

operation

The DynamoDB operation to perform. To perform the UpdateItem DynamoDB operation, this must be set to UpdateItem. This value is required.

key

The key of the item in DynamoDB. DynamoDB items may have a single hash key, or a hash key and sort key, depending on the table structure. For more information about specifying a “typed value”, see Type system (request mapping). This value is required.

update

The update section lets you specify an update expression that describes how to update the item in DynamoDB. For more information about how to write update expressions, see the DynamoDB UpdateExpressions documentation. This section is required.

The update section has three components:

expression

The update expression. This value is required.

expressionNames

The substitutions for expression attribute name placeholders, in the form of key-value pairs. The key corresponds to a name placeholder used in the expression, and the value must be a string corresponding to the attribute name of the item in DynamoDB. This field is optional, and should only be populated with substitutions for expression attribute name placeholders used in the expression.

expressionValues

The substitutions for expression attribute value placeholders, in the form of key-value pairs. The key corresponds to a value placeholder used in the expression, and the value must be a typed value. For more information about how to specify a “typed value”, see Type system (request mapping). This must be specified. This field is optional, and should only be populated with substitutions for expression attribute value placeholders used in the expression.

condition

A condition to determine if the request should succeed or not, based on the state of the object already in DynamoDB. If no condition is specified, the UpdateItem request updates the existing entry regardless of its current state. For more information about conditions, see Condition expressions. This value is optional.

_version

A numeric value that represents the latest known version of an item. This value is optional. This field is used for Conflict Detection and is only supported on versioned data sources.

customPartitionKey

When enabled, this string value modifies the format of the ds_sk and ds_pk records used by the delta sync table when versioning has been enabled (for more information, see Conflict detection and sync in the AWS AppSync Developer Guide). When enabled, the processing of the populateIndexFields entry is also enabled. This field is optional.

populateIndexFields

A boolean value that, when enabled along with the customPartitionKey, creates new entries for each record in the delta sync table, specifically in the gsi_ds_pk and gsi_ds_sk columns. For more information, see Conflict detection and sync in the AWS AppSync Developer Guide. This field is optional.

The item updated in DynamoDB is automatically converted into GraphQL and JSON primitive types and is available in the context result (context.result).

For more information about DynamoDB type conversion, see Type system (response mapping).

For more information about JavaScript resolvers, see JavaScript resolvers overview.

Example 1

The following example is a function request handler for the GraphQL mutation upvote(id: ID!).

In this example, an item in DynamoDB has its upvotes and version fields incremented by 1.

import { util } from '@aws-appsync/utils';
export function request(ctx) {
  const { id } = ctx.args;
  return {
    operation: 'UpdateItem',
    key: util.dynamodb.toMapValues({ id }),
    update: {
      expression: 'ADD #votefield :plusOne, version :plusOne',
      expressionNames: { '#votefield': 'upvotes' },
      expressionValues: { ':plusOne': { N: 1 } },
    },
  };
}

Example 2

The following example is a function request handler for a GraphQL mutation updateItem(id: ID!, title: String, author: String, expectedVersion: Int!).

This is a complex example that inspects the arguments and dynamically generates the update expression that only includes the arguments that have been provided by the client. For example, if title and author are omitted, they are not updated. If an argument is specified but its value is null, then that field is deleted from the object in DynamoDB. Finally, the operation has a condition, which verifies whether the item currently in DynamoDB has the version field set to expectedVersion:

import { util } from '@aws-appsync/utils';
export function request(ctx) {
  const { args: { input: { id, ...values } } } = ctx;

  const condition = {
    id: { attributeExists: true },
    version: { eq: values.expectedVersion },
  };
  values.expectedVersion += 1;
  return dynamodbUpdateRequest({ keys: { id }, values, condition });
}


/**
 * Helper function to update an item
 * @returns an UpdateItem request
 */
function dynamodbUpdateRequest(params) {
  const { keys, values, condition: inCondObj } = params;

  const sets = [];
  const removes = [];
  const expressionNames = {};
  const expValues = {};

  // Iterate through the keys of the values
  for (const [key, value] of Object.entries(values)) {
    expressionNames[`#${key}`] = key;
    if (value) {
      sets.push(`#${key} = :${key}`);
      expValues[`:${key}`] = value;
    } else {
      removes.push(`#${key}`);
    }
  }

  let expression = sets.length ? `SET ${sets.join(', ')}` : '';
  expression += removes.length ? ` REMOVE ${removes.join(', ')}` : '';

  const condition = JSON.parse(
    util.transform.toDynamoDBConditionExpression(inCondObj)
  );

  return {
    operation: 'UpdateItem',
    key: util.dynamodb.toMapValues(keys),
    condition,
    update: {
      expression,
      expressionNames,
      expressionValues: util.dynamodb.toMapValues(expValues),
    },
  };
}

For more information about the DynamoDB UpdateItem API, see the DynamoDB API documentation.