Working with DynamoDb in Python using BOTO3

This article was published as a part of the Data Science Blogathon.

Introduction

In this article, we are going to talk about a dynamo DB a No-SQL, and a very highly scalable database provided by Amazon AWS. DynamoDB is a scalable hosted NoSQL database service that offers low latency and key-value pair databases. It is also considered a replacement for MongoDB for various Enterprises. DynamoDB supports lesser programming languages compared to MongoDB and those are as follows: Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, NET, etc.

Why DynamoDB?

There are various aspects in which DynamoDb is much superior to other No-SQL databases.

• DynamoDb uses tabes to store the records. The core components are Items and attributes. While MongoDB contained a database and a database includes collections of documents.
• DynamoDB is very easy to deploy since it’s a web service provided by AWS
• DynamoDB is more secure since AWS provides it with security.
• DynamoDB is available free of cost(Free tier) one can store up to 25 GB.

Features of DynamoDB

These are the following features that make DynamoDb popular in the field of No-SQL databases.

• It’s a serverless database. No need to worry about managing the resources.
• It stores the data redundantly across multiple availability zones in order to keep latency low and always uptime.
• It supports over 25 million requests per second.
• It encrypts all the data by default.
• Data Backup

Use Cases of DynamoDB

Many Big companies use DynamoDb for their tasks. ie Amazon, Amway, Netflix, Starlink, etc. Since DynamoDB is provided by AWS and it also supports the encryption by default promising the security at its highest level.

DynamoDb is used for :

• Inventory Tracking
• Storing User Transactions
• Fraud Detection
• In Gaming Technologies etc.

Due to the low latency of DynamoDB and the highly rich infrastructure given by AWS, DynamoDb is widely popular for handling NoSQL databases across various platforms.

Creating DynamoDB Table on AWS

Even if you have a free tier of AWS account, you can use DynamoDb and store up to 25GB of data with low latency read and write.

• Search for DynamoDB and open it.

• Create a table by assigning a table name and a key name. We can also create a dynamo DB table using Python boto3 as well.

• Saving the service Credentials

In order to connect with our AWS resources, we need to have access to our access_key and its secret key.

Connecting AWS Resources with Python

Connecting AWS resources to the python environment requires a boto3 package.

Installing the Requirement

!pip install boto3
import boto3
import os
import requests
import tqdm

Creating dynamoDb client

Creating a dynamo DB client is a connection instance that lets us connect with our dynamo DB service.

We need to specify region_name, aws_access_key_id, aws_secret_access_key in order to connect with our dynamoDb service.

dynamo_client  =  boto3.resource(service_name = 'dynamodb',region_name = 'us-east-1',
              aws_access_key_id = 'AKIA3BS5NFXXXXXXX',
              aws_secret_access_key = 'qfGTJL28HrqcbhKCM0t//xxx7gTGG4iNrv3/d94Lsp')

List the services by a resource

dynamo_client.get_available_subresources()
[3]: [Table]

Connecting with our Table

You can also list down all available tables in our dynamo DB service.

### getting the product table
product_table = dynamo_client.Table('product_table1')
product_table.table_status

the table_status return [‘ACTIVE’] if the table has been successfully connected. If not try to check the region of services.

After having the successful connection now let’s populate some data

Populating the records

Now having a successful connection with our empty dynamo DB table it’s time to create some records using python.

product_table.put_item(Item = {'product_id':"AV004","Brand":"Lacoste","Price":7800,"Sale":"Online"})

put_itemit is used to insert a record into our table.

The output shows that the data has been successfully inserted. we can confirm this by exploring the dynamo DB items for the selected table from the AWS management console.

Writing a JSON file into our table

We can populate multiple records either by using an iterator or simply by using a batch writer.

the batch writer writes the records faster than writing using an iterator with the help of the method table.put_item.

import json
file = open('sample_products_data.json','r')
file = file.read()
data_file = json.loads(file)

• Putting records using Iterators

Putting the put_item method in a loop writes multiple rows in our table but it’s a rather slow process. Batch writing is faster than loop writing.

for record in tqdm.tqdm(data_file[:50]):
    product_table.put_item(Item = record)

• Bulk writing using the batch writer

Whenever we need to write a big number of records we write records in batches using the batch writer.

with product_table.batch_writer() as batch:
    for record in tqdm.tqdm(data_file]):
        batch.put_item(Item = record)

Reading Data from Dynamo DB

the method get_itemonly returns the matching record from the table. it needs keys to filter the records.

## if you know the key of the information you are looking for 
product_table.get_item(Key = {'product_id':'AV002'})

Get all Items aka Scan

scan method searches for all the records available in the table. It works similarly to the find_all method of MongoDB.

for item in product_table.scan()['Items']:
    print(item['product_id'])

len(product_table.scan()['Items'])

Output: 115

Updating Records

Using the update_item method we can update any records. If you want to update multiple records we need to make use of a list of all the keys to identify the records that need to be updated.

product_table.update_item(Key = {'product_id':'AV002'},
                         UpdateExpression = 'set Price =:S',
                         ExpressionAttributeValues = {":S":2000})

Deleting Records

Using the method delete_item we can delete a record or multiple records as well.

product_table.delete_item(Key = {'product_id':'AV002'})

Querying the Records

Querying the records with Dynamo Db is done using the Scan function. we need to give conditions and it scans for every row.

We want to return all attributes of records where the average rating of products is equal to 4

from boto3.dynamodb.conditions import Attr
product_table.scan(Select = "ALL_ATTRIBUTES",
                  FilterExpression = Attr("average_rating").eq(4))

Applying Multiple Filters

We want to filter all the attributes where the average rating is equal to 4 and the category is ‘shoes’.

We can also apply these filters and aggregation from the DynamoDb console. You can explore this document for more information about querying the data.

### multiple filters
product_table.scan(Select = "ALL_ATTRIBUTES",
                  FilterExpression = Attr('average_rating').eq(4) & Attr('category').eq('Shoes'))

Conclusion

This article discussed creating Dynamo DB and accessing AWS resources in Python Using the boto3 package.

• In this article, we performed basic CRUD operations like creating, inserting, deleting, and updating the records in Dynamo DB
• We also talked about querying the data and aggregation

Well, this is not enough. Here are some external resources you must check out in order to extend your knowledge of Dynamo DB. AWS is a highly scalable, low latency, and highly secure database provided by Amazon web services. It was launched back in 2012 after MongoDB. This is being used in various industries from retail to media companies. If you enjoyed reading this article or have got some questions regarding this article write me here.

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