Can not find table using NoSQL Workbench for DynamoDB when connecting to DynamoDB Docker

Question

I've started DynamoDB in Docker:

docker run --network xxx --name dynamodb -d -p 8000:8000 amazon/dynamodb-local

I've created a table:

aws dynamodb create-table --table-name test --attribute-definitions \
AttributeName=UUID,AttributeType=S \
--key-schema AttributeName=UUID,KeyType=HASH \
--provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=5,WriteCapacityUnits=5 --endpoint-url http://localhost:8000

List the table:

aws dynamodb list-tables --endpoint-url http://localhost:8000
{
    "TableNames": [
        "test"
    ]
}

I'm able to connect to it using localhost:8000. Now I've installe NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB. I checked operation builder and added the connection for a local dynamoDB. I've searched for tables (test) but I can not find anything? What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The key to make it work is to use the -sharedDB flag, as detailed here.

Unfortunately, adding only that one key would cause container to exit right after start, I believe the reason is that by providing one flag it overwrites all the standard ones.

To obviate the problem I just supply all the standard ones and it works:

docker run -p 8000:8000 -d amazon/dynamodb-local -jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb -dbPath .

With docker-compose you can do the same as follows:

version: '3'
services:
  local-dynamo:
    image: amazon/dynamodb-local
    command: -jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb -dbPath .
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"

Answer 2

I had the same problem with using a docker container with docker-compose.

AWS has a documentation page here with the following snippet:

version: '3.8'
services:
  dynamodb-local:
    command: "-jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb -optimizeDbBeforeStartup -dbPath ./data"
    image: "amazon/dynamodb-local:latest"
    container_name: dynamodb-local
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - "./docker/dynamodb:/home/dynamodblocal/data"
    working_dir: /home/dynamodblocal

Using the above I was still unable to connect with NoSQL Workbench, so I tried using the AWS CLI to connect:

aws dynamodb list-tables --endpoint-url http://localhost:8000

To get this working I had to do two things:

1. Run aws configure because I was missing a region in my .aws credentials file.
2. Use docker-compose up instead of docker-compose run. The run command does not expose ports.

After the AWS CLI was connecting the NoSQL Workbench connected successfully.

Answer 3

I know this old but I came to the same issue in where NoSQL Workbench wasn't getting the tables when working docker container the dynamodb image and solved it in a different way.

I've used this command to create the table:

aws dynamodb create-table --table-name Movies \ 
--key-schema AttributeName=year,KeyType=HASH \
AttributeName=title,KeyType=RANGE --attribute-definitions \ 
AttributeName=year,AttributeType=N \
AttributeName=title,AttributeType=S \
--provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=10,WriteCapacityUnits=10 \
--billing-mode PROVISIONED \
--endpoint-url http://localhost:8000 \
--profile default

When creating the connection in the NoSQL Workbench I've noticed a callout that says "NoSQL Workbench uses the 'localhost' region when establishing a DynamoDB local connection.":

localhost-callout-image

Immediatly I remeber that when configuring the aws credentials I've never used localhost as a region. So what I did was to set localhost as a region, executed again the command to create the table and it start getting the information of table in the client.

Hope this can help someone.