Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Request header
The DynamoDB
POSTrequest
must have the following headers:
•
Host
: The host specifies the URL where the DynamoDB REST server (or end-
point) is located. All the requests will be redirected to this server. Our database is
located at
us-west-2
, so we should specify the host as
dynamodb.us-
west-2.amazonaws.com
. Instead of this, we can directly specify it in the ad-
dress bar.
Note
As mentioned in the previous point,
Host
is also a header and every request must
consist of the header
Host
. That is the reason why we don't specify it explicitly. In-
stead, we directly mention it in the address bar.
•
x-amz-date
: This header element is used to specify the timestamp of the request
in ISO date-time format. I ran this request on June 15, 2014, at 4:35 A.M. (GMT),
so I have filled it with
20140615T043554Z
.
•
x-amz-target
: This header element is used to specify what kind of DynamoDB
operation has to be performed. To put it another way, this element gives a hint to
the endpoint of what is written in the request body. It will usually be in the format
of
DynamoDB_<API-Version>.<Table-operation>
, for example,
Dy-
namoDB_20120810.CreateTable
.
•
authorization
: This is a complex header element. It has lots of parameters; so
we will observe what is written in the previous screenshot without missing any-
thing. The element is
AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=AKIA-
prabhakarK3A/20140615/us-west-2/dynamodb/
aws4_request,SignedHeaders=host;x-amz-date;x-amz-tar-
get,Signature=66534aa47c45417eaac116e94abce8185cfcdea5d206981ee76a09967620ca76
.
We will discuss this in detail after these bullet points.
•
content-type
: This header element is used to specify the JSON version of the
request.
•
content-length
: This header element specifies the characters in the request
body.
•
connection
: This header element specifies whether the request has to be kept
alive even after execution, or should be terminated after some time.
