Create an enhanced client and DynamoDbTable

Create an enhanced client

The DynamoDbEnhancedClient class or its asynchronous counterpart, DynamoDbEnhancedAsyncClient, is the entry point to working with the DynamoDB Enhanced Client API.

The enhanced client requires a standard DynamoDbClient to perform work. The API offers two ways to create a DynamoDbEnhancedClient instance. The first option, shown in the following snippet, creates a standard DynamoDbClient with default settings picked up from configuration settings.

DynamoDbEnhancedClient enhancedClient = DynamoDbEnhancedClient.create();

If you want to configure the underlying standard client, you can supply it to the enhanced client's builder method as shown in the following snippet.

// Configure an instance of the standard DynamoDbClient.
DynamoDbClient standardClient = DynamoDbClient.builder()
    .region(Region.US_EAST_1)
    .credentialsProvider(ProfileCredentialsProvider.create())
    .build();

// Use the configured standard client with the enhanced client.
DynamoDbEnhancedClient enhancedClient = DynamoDbEnhancedClient.builder()
    .dynamoDbClient(standardClient)
    .build();

Create a DynamoDbTable instance

Think of a DynamoDbTable as the client-side representation of a DynamoDB table that uses the mapping functionality provided by a TableSchema. The DynamoDbTable class provides methods for CRUD operations that let you interact with a single DynamoDB table.

DynamoDbTable<T> is a generic class that takes a single type argument, whether it is a custom class or an EnhancedDocument when working with document-type items. This argument type establishes the relationship between the class that you use and the single DynamoDB table.

Use the table() factory method of the DynamoDbEnhancedClient to create a DynamoDbTable instance as shown in the following snippet.

static final DynamoDbTable<Customer> customerTable = 
        enhancedClient.table("Customer", TableSchema.fromBean(Customer.class));

DynamoDbTable instances are candidates for singletons because they are immutable and can be used throughout your application.

Your code now has an in-memory representation of a DynamoDB table that can work with Customer instances. The actual DynamoDB table might or might not exist. If the table named Customer already exists, you can begin performing CRUD operations against it. If it doesn't exist, use the DynamoDbTable instance to create the table as discussed in the next section.