AWS SDK Version 2 for .NET
API Reference

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.NET Framework 4.5
 
Container for the parameters to the BatchWriteItem operation. The BatchWriteItem operation puts or deletes multiple items in one or more tables. A single call to BatchWriteItem can write up to 16 MB of data, which can comprise as many as 25 put or delete requests. Individual items to be written can be as large as 400 KB.

BatchWriteItem cannot update items. To update items, use the UpdateItem API.

The individual PutItem and DeleteItem operations specified in BatchWriteItem are atomic; however BatchWriteItem as a whole is not. If any requested operations fail because the table's provisioned throughput is exceeded or an internal processing failure occurs, the failed operations are returned in the UnprocessedItems response parameter. You can investigate and optionally resend the requests. Typically, you would call BatchWriteItem in a loop. Each iteration would check for unprocessed items and submit a new BatchWriteItem request with those unprocessed items until all items have been processed.

Note that if none of the items can be processed due to insufficient provisioned throughput on all of the tables in the request, then BatchWriteItem will return a ProvisionedThroughputExceededException.

If DynamoDB returns any unprocessed items, you should retry the batch operation on those items. However, we strongly recommend that you use an exponential backoff algorithm. If you retry the batch operation immediately, the underlying read or write requests can still fail due to throttling on the individual tables. If you delay the batch operation using exponential backoff, the individual requests in the batch are much more likely to succeed.

For more information, see Batch Operations and Error Handling in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide.

With BatchWriteItem, you can efficiently write or delete large amounts of data, such as from Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), or copy data from another database into DynamoDB. In order to improve performance with these large-scale operations, BatchWriteItem does not behave in the same way as individual PutItem and DeleteItem calls would. For example, you cannot specify conditions on individual put and delete requests, and BatchWriteItem does not return deleted items in the response.

If you use a programming language that supports concurrency, you can use threads to write items in parallel. Your application must include the necessary logic to manage the threads. With languages that don't support threading, you must update or delete the specified items one at a time. In both situations, BatchWriteItem provides an alternative where the API performs the specified put and delete operations in parallel, giving you the power of the thread pool approach without having to introduce complexity into your application.

Parallel processing reduces latency, but each specified put and delete request consumes the same number of write capacity units whether it is processed in parallel or not. Delete operations on nonexistent items consume one write capacity unit.

If one or more of the following is true, DynamoDB rejects the entire batch write operation:

Inheritance Hierarchy

System.Object
  Amazon.Runtime.AmazonWebServiceRequest
    Amazon.DynamoDBv2.AmazonDynamoDBRequest
      Amazon.DynamoDBv2.Model.BatchWriteItemRequest

Namespace: Amazon.DynamoDBv2.Model
Assembly: AWSSDK.dll
Version: (assembly version)

Syntax

C#
public class BatchWriteItemRequest : AmazonDynamoDBRequest
         IRequestEvents

The BatchWriteItemRequest type exposes the following members

Constructors

NameDescription
Public Method BatchWriteItemRequest() Empty constructor used to set properties independently even when a simple constructor is available
Public Method BatchWriteItemRequest(Dictionary<String, List<WriteRequest>>)

Properties

NameTypeDescription
Public Property RequestItems System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<System.String, System.Collections.Generic.List<Amazon.DynamoDBv2.Model.WriteRequest>> Gets and sets the property RequestItems.

A map of one or more table names and, for each table, a list of operations to be performed (DeleteRequest or PutRequest). Each element in the map consists of the following:

  • DeleteRequest - Perform a DeleteItem operation on the specified item. The item to be deleted is identified by a Key subelement:

    • Key - A map of primary key attribute values that uniquely identify the ! item. Each entry in this map consists of an attribute name and an attribute value. For each primary key, you must provide all of the key attributes. For example, with a simple primary key, you only need to provide a value for the partition key. For a composite primary key, you must provide values for both the partition key and the sort key.

  • PutRequest - Perform a PutItem operation on the specified item. The item to be put is identified by an Item subelement:

    • Item - A map of attributes and their values. Each entry in this map consists of an attribute name and an attribute value. Attribute values must not be null; string and binary type attributes must have lengths greater than zero; and set type attributes must not be empty. Requests that contain empty values will be rejected with a ValidationException exception.

      If you specify any attributes that are part of an index key, then the data types for those attributes must match those of the schema in the table's attribute definition.

Public Property ReturnConsumedCapacity Amazon.DynamoDBv2.ReturnConsumedCapacity Gets and sets the property ReturnConsumedCapacity.
Public Property ReturnItemCollectionMetrics Amazon.DynamoDBv2.ReturnItemCollectionMetrics Gets and sets the property ReturnItemCollectionMetrics.

Determines whether item collection metrics are returned. If set to SIZE, the response includes statistics about item collections, if any, that were modified during the operation are returned in the response. If set to NONE (the default), no statistics are returned.

Examples

The following examples show how to batch items into two tables.

This example will construct a batch-write collection for the first table in the request. The request will include two Put operations and one Delete operation.

BatchWrite sample - First table


// Create items to put into first table
Dictionary<string, AttributeValue> item1 = new Dictionary<string, AttributeValue>();
item1["Author"] = new AttributeValue { S = "Mark Twain" };
item1["Title"] = new AttributeValue { S = "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" };
item1["Pages"] = new AttributeValue { N = "575" };
Dictionary<string, AttributeValue> item2 = new Dictionary<string, AttributeValue>();
item2["Author"] = new AttributeValue { S = "Booker Taliaferro Washington" };
item2["Title"] = new AttributeValue { S = "My Larger Education" };
item2["Pages"] = new AttributeValue { N = "313" };
item2["Year"] = new AttributeValue { N = "1911" };

// Create key for item to delete from first table
//  Hash-key of the target item is string value "Mark Twain"
//  Range-key of the target item is string value "Tom Sawyer, Detective"
Dictionary<string, AttributeValue> keyToDelete1 = new Dictionary<string, AttributeValue>
{
    { "Author", new AttributeValue { S = "Mark Twain" } },
    { "Title", new AttributeValue { S = "Tom Sawyer, Detective" } }
};

// Construct write-request for first table
List<WriteRequest> sampleTableItems = new List<WriteRequest>();
sampleTableItems.Add(new WriteRequest
{
    PutRequest = new PutRequest { Item = item1 }
});
sampleTableItems.Add(new WriteRequest
{
    PutRequest = new PutRequest { Item = item2 }
});
sampleTableItems.Add(new WriteRequest
{
    DeleteRequest = new DeleteRequest { Key = keyToDelete1 }
});

                

This example will construct a batch-write collection for the second table in the request. The request will include one Delete operation.

BatchWrite sample - Second table


// Create key for item to delete from second table
//  Hash-key of the target item is string value "Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald"
Dictionary<string, AttributeValue> keyToDelete2 = new Dictionary<string, AttributeValue>
{
    { "Author", new AttributeValue { S = "Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald" } },
};

// Construct write-request for first table
List<WriteRequest> authorsTableItems = new List<WriteRequest>();
authorsTableItems.Add(new WriteRequest
{
    DeleteRequest = new DeleteRequest { Key = keyToDelete2 }
});

                

This example will construct the BatchWrite request from the two earlier-created collections, will issue the call and in case some items are not processed, will attempt to write the remaining items.

BatchWrite sample - Service calls


// Create a client
AmazonDynamoDBClient client = new AmazonDynamoDBClient();

// Construct table-keys mapping
Dictionary<string, List<WriteRequest>> requestItems = new Dictionary<string, List<WriteRequest>>();
requestItems["SampleTable"] = sampleTableItems;
requestItems["AuthorsTable"] = authorsTableItems;

BatchWriteItemRequest request = new BatchWriteItemRequest { RequestItems = requestItems };
BatchWriteItemResult result;
do
{
    // Issue request and retrieve items
    result = client.BatchWriteItem(request);

    // Some items may not have been processed!
    //  Set RequestItems to the result's UnprocessedItems and reissue request
    request.RequestItems = result.UnprocessedItems;

} while (result.UnprocessedItems.Count > 0);

                

Version Information

.NET Framework:
Supported in: 4.5, 4.0, 3.5

.NET for Windows Store apps:
Supported in: Windows 8.1, Windows 8

.NET for Windows Phone:
Supported in: Windows Phone 8.1, Windows Phone 8