Getting Started with the AWS Mobile SDK for Unity - AWS Mobile SDK for Unity
Amazon Cognito IdentityAmazon Cognito SyncDynamo DBMobile AnalyticsAmazon S3Amazon Simple Notification ServiceAWS Lambda

The AWS Mobile SDK for Unity is now included in the AWS SDK for .NET. This guide references the archived version of the Mobile SDK for Unity. For more information, see What is the AWS Mobile SDK for Unity?

Getting Started with the AWS Mobile SDK for Unity

This page provides you with an overview of each AWS service in the AWS Mobile SDK for Unity, as well as instructions on how to set up Unity samples. You must complete all of the instructions on the Set Up the AWS Mobile SDK for Unity page before you start using the services below.

Amazon Cognito Identity

All calls made to AWS require AWS credentials. Rather than hard-coding your credentials into your apps, we recommend that you use Amazon Cognito Identity to provide AWS credentials to your application. Follow the instructions in Set Up the AWS Mobile SDK for Unity to obtain AWS credentials via Amazon Cognito.

Cognito also allows you to authenticate users using public log-in providers like Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google as well as providers that support OpenID Connect. Cognito also works with unauthenticated users. Cognito provides temporary credentials with limited access rights that you specify with an Identity and Access Management (IAM) role. Cognito is configured by creating a new Identity Pool that is associated with an IAM role. The IAM role specifies the resources/services your app may access.

To get started with Cognito Identity, see the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide.

Amazon Cognito Sync

Cognito Sync makes it easy for you to save end users data such as user preferences or game state to the AWS Cloud so that it can be made available to users regardless of the device that they are using. Cognito can also save this data locally, allowing your apps to work even when an internet connection is not available. When an internet connection becomes available, your apps can sync their local data to the cloud.

To get started with Cognito Sync, see the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide.

Using the CognitoSyncManager sample

In the Project pane, navigate to Assets/AWSSDK/examples/CognitoSync, and in the right-hand side of the pane select the CognitoSync scene to open the scene.

To run the sample click the play button at the top of the editor screen. When the app runs it displays a few text boxes and buttons that allow you to enter some player information. Below this, there are a series of buttons that save the player info locally, sync the local player info with the Cognito Cloud, refresh player info from the Cognito Cloud, and delete the local player info. Press each button to perform an operation. The sample displays feedback on the top of the game screen.

To configure the CognitoSyncManager sample, you must specify a Cognito Identity Pool ID. To specify this value, in the Unity editor, select SyncManager in the Heirarchy pane, and enter it into the IDENTITY_POOL_ID text box in the Inspector Pane.

Note

The CognitoSyncManager sample contains code that illustrates how use the Facebook identity Provider, search for the “USE_FACEBOOK_LOGIN” macro. This requires use of the Facebook SDK for Unity. For more information, see Facebook SDK for Unity.

Dynamo DB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fast, highly scalable, highly available, cost-effective, non-relational database service. DynamoDB removes traditional scalability limitations on data storage while maintaining low latency and predictable performance.

The AWS SDK for Unity provides both low-level and high-level libraries for working with DynamoDB. The high-level library includes the DynamoDB Object Mapper, which lets you map client-side classes to DynamoDB tables; perform various create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations; and execute queries. Using the DynamoDB Object Mapper, you can write simple, readable code that stores objects in the cloud.

For more information about DynamoDB, see DynamoDB Developer Guide.

For more information about using Dynamo DB from Unity Applications, see Amazon DynamoDB.

Using the DynamoDB Sample

In the Project pane, navigate to Assets/AWSSDK/ examples/DynamoDB. This sample is composed of the following scenes:

  • DynamoDBExample - the initial scene of the app

  • LowLevelDynamoDbExample - example using low-level DynamoDBD API

  • TableQueryAndScanExample - example showing how to perform queries

  • HighLevelExample - example using high-level DynamoDB API

Add these scenes into the build (in the order they appear above) by using the Build Settings dialog (open by selecting File.Build Settings). This sample create four tables: ProductCatalog, Forum, Thread, Reply.

To run the sample click the play button at the top of the editor screen. When the app runs it displays a number of buttons:

  • Low Level Table Operations - illustrates how to create, list, update, describe, and delete tables.

  • Mid Level Query & Scan Operations - illustrates how to perform queries.

  • High Level Object Mapper - illustrates how to create, update, and delete objects.

Mobile Analytics

Using Amazon Mobile Analytics, you can track customer behaviors, aggregate metrics, generate data visualizations, and identify meaningful patterns. The AWS SDK for Unity provides integration with the Amazon Mobile Analytics service. For information about Mobile Analytics, see Mobile Analytics User Guide. For more information about using Mobile Analytics from Unity Applications, see Amazon Mobile Analytics.

Configuring Mobile Analytics

Mobile Analytics defines some settings that can be configured in the awsconfig.xml file:

<mobileAnalytics sessionTimeout = "5"
                 maxDBSize = "5242880"
                 dbWarningThreshold = "0.9"
                 maxRequestSize = "102400"
                 allowUseDataNetwork = "false"/>

  • sessionTimeout - This the time interval after an application goes to background and when session can be terminated.

  • maxDBSize - This is the size of the SQLIte Database. When the database reaches the maximum size, any additional events are dropped.

  • dbWarningThreshold - This is the limit on the size of the database which, once reached, will generate warning logs.

  • maxRequestSize - This is the maximum size of the request in Bytes that should be transmitted in an HTTP request to the mobile analytics service.

  • allowUseDataNetwork - A boolean that specifies if the session events are sent on the data network.

Using the Mobile Analytics Sample

In the Project pane, navigate to Assets/AWSSDK/ examples/Mobile Analytics, and in the right-hand side of the pane select the Amazon Mobile Analytics Sample scene to open the scene. To use the sample, you need to add your app using the Amazon Mobile Analytics console. For more information about using the Mobile Analytics console, see Amazon Mobile Analytics User Guide.

Follow these steps to configure the sample before running:

  1. Select the AmazonMobileAnalyticsSample game object.

  2. Specify your App Id (created in the Amazon Mobile Analytics console) in the “App Id” field.

  3. Specify your Cognito Identity Pool Id (created using the Amazon Cognito console at) in the “Cognito Identity Pool Id” field.

  4. Ensure your authenticated and unauthenticated roles have permissions to access the Mobile Analytics service. For more information about applying policy to IAM Roles see, Managing Roles.

When running the sample application, be aware that events may not be transmitted to the backend service immediately. A background thread will buffer events locally and send them in batches to the Amazon Mobile Analytics backend at a regular interval (the default value is 60 seconds) to ensure your game’s performance is not adversely impacted. Due to the complex processing Amazon Mobile Analytics performs on your data, submitted events and corresponding reports may not be visible in the AWS console until up to 60 minutes after initial submission.

For more information on the reports provided by Amazon Mobile Analytics, see Report and Mobile Metrics.

Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), provides developers and IT teams with secure, durable, highly-scalable object storage. From Unity you can use S3 to store, list, and retrieve images, videos, music, and other data used by your games.

For more information about S3, see Amazon S3 and Getting Started with S3.

For more information about using S3 from Unity applications, see Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

Configuring the S3 Default Signature

The default S3 signature is configured as follows:

<s3 useSignatureVersion4="true" />

This is used to specify if you should use signature version 4 for S3 requests.

Using the S3 Sample

In the Project pane, navigate to Assets/AWSSDK/examples/S3, and in the right-hand side of the pane select the S3Example scene to open the scene. The sample illustrates how to list buckets, list objects within a bucket, post objects to a bucket and download objects from a bucket. Follow these steps to configure the sample before running:

  1. Select the S3 game object in the Hierarchy pane.

  2. In the Inspector pane enter values for S3BucketName and SampleFileName. S3BucketName is the name of the bucket used by the sample and S3SampleFileName is the name of the file the sample will upload into the specified S3 bucket.

  3. Ensure your authenticated and unauthenticated roles have permissions to access the S3 buckets in your account. For more information about applying policy to IAM Roles see, Managing Roles.

To run the sample click the play button at the top of the editor screen. When the app runs it displays a number of buttons:

  • Get Objects - Gets a list of all objects in all buckets in your AWS account.

  • Get Buckets - Gets a list of all buckets in your AWS account.

  • Post Object - Uploads an object to a specified S3 bucket.

  • Delete Object - Deletes all object from a specified S3 bucket.

The sample displays feedback on the top of the game screen.

Amazon Simple Notification Service

Amazon Simple Notification Service is a fast, flexible, fully managed push notification service that lets you send individual messages or to fan-out messages to large numbers of recipients. Amazon Simple Notification Service makes it simple and cost effective to send push notifications to mobile device users, email recipients or even send messages to other distributed services. To get started with Amazon Simple Notification Service, see Amazon Simple Notification Service.

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to requests or events and automatically manages the compute resources for you, making it easy to build applications that respond quickly to new information. AWS Lambda functions can be called directly from mobile, IoT, and Web apps and sends a response back synchronously, making it easy to create scalable, secure, and highly available backends for your mobile apps without the need to provision or manage infrastructure. For more information, see AWS Lambda.