1) Client Access: Is there anyway to perform CRUD operations on DynamoDB using client side JavaScript (REST/Ajax/jQuery)?

I know Amazon has support for .NET and Java.

2) Server Access: Is there any way we can access DynamoDB using server side JavaScript (Node.js) without having to install Java/.NET on the server?

1) Client Access: Is there anyway to perform CRUD operations on DynamoDB using client side JavaScript (REST/Ajax/jQuery)?

I know Amazon has support for .NET and Java.

2) Server Access: Is there any way we can access DynamoDB using server side JavaScript (Node.js) without having to install Java/.NET on the server?

• javascript
• node.js
• amazon-web-services
• amazon-dynamodb

4 Answers 4

Update 2012-12-05

There is now an official AWS SDK for Node.js, see the introductory post AWS SDK for Node.js - Now Available in Preview Form for details, here are the initially supported services:

The SDK supports Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon DynamoDB, and the Amazon Simple Workflow Service, with support for additional services on the drawing board. [emphasis mine]

Update 2012-02-27

Wantworthy has implemented a Node.js module for accessing Amazon DynamoDB a week after its launch date, thus covering 2) as well, see dynode:

Dynode is designed to be a simple and easy way to work with Amazon's DynamoDB service. Amazon's http api is complicated and non obvious how to interact with it. This client aims to offer a simplified more obvious way of working with DynamoDB, but without getting in your way or limiting what you can do with DynamoDB.

Update 2012-02-11

Peng Xie has implemented a Node.js module for accessing Amazon DynamoDB at its launch date basically, thus covering 2) already, see dynamoDB:

DynamoDB uses JSON for communication. [...] This module wraps up the request and takes care of authentication. The user will be responsible for crafting the request and consuming the result.

Unfortunately there is no official/complete JavaScript SDK for AWS as of today (see AWS Software Development Kits and boto [Python] for the available offerings).

Fortunately decent coverage for several AWS services in JavaScript is provided by the Node.js library aws-lib already though, which would be a good starting point for adding DynamoDB accordingly. An as of today unresolved feature request to Add support for DynamoDB has been filed already as well.

Further, AWS forum user gmlvsk3 has recently implemented dedicated JavaScript interface for DynamoDB, but supposedly you need [a] Java runtime to run it, because it is based on the Mozilla Rhino JavaScript engine - I haven't reviewed the code in detail yet (at first sight it looks a bit immature though in comparison to e.g. aws-lib, but may cover your needs regardless of course), so you should check it out yourself.

Finally, you can implement JavaScript HTTP Requests to Amazon DynamoDB yourself of course (see the API Reference for Amazon DynamoDB for details):

If you don't use one of the AWS SDKs, you can perform Amazon DynamoDB operations over HTTP using the POST request method. The POST method requires you to specify the operation in the header of the request and provide the data for the operation in JSON format in the body of the request.

I created a module called Dino to make it easier to work with the AWS SDK in web applications. You can use something like Restify to expose your data to jQuery via a REST interface.

Suppose you wanted to display pages of blog posts for a user. Using Dino and Restify, you would do the following:

server.get('/posts/:user_id', function(req, res, next){
    Post.find({
        match: {
            user_id: req.params.user_id
        },
        skip: req.params.skip || 0,
        take: req.params.take || 10
    }, function(err, posts){
        return res.send(posts.toJSON());
    });
});

Regarding 1), there is now the AWS SDK for JavaScript in the Browser that allows you to access services including DynamoDB.

as for 2) we've been working as well since DDB launch date. One of its key features are simplicity/performance and how close it is (retry behavior, etc) to Amazon official Java/PHP libraries:

https://github.com/teleportd/node-dynamodb

It's successfully used in production at various places with 100+ write/s (at teleportd). Additionally we're working on a a mocked version to enable efficient testing of the library's client code.