Useful Libraries and Tools - Mastering DynamoDB - page 248

Tools for testing
Considering the fact that each and every call to DynamoDB costs money, sometimes it gets
difficult to use DynamoDB for the purposes of testing and development.
DynamoDB Local
We have already seen what DynamoDB local is in Chapter 1 , Getting Started . Just to revis-
it, DynamoDB Local is a lightweight client-side database that roughly mimics the actual
DynamoDB implementation. To enable DynamoDB Local, you need to download the JAR
and run it using the next command. You can download the JAR at http://dynamodb-
local.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/dynamodb_local_latest . To run DynamoDB,
you need to run the following command:
java -Djava.library.path=./DynamoDBLocal_lib -jar
DynamoDBLocal.jar
There are various options available that you can explore. The information is available at ht-
tp://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/
Tools.DynamoDBLocal.html . The only prerequisite for this tool is that you should have
Java/JDK installed on your machine.
Fake DynamoDB
Similar to what we have in DynamoDB Local, this Fake DynamoDB implementation emu-
lates the actual DynamoDB functionality. Built in Ruby, it can be accessed and used by fol-
lowing some simple steps. To start the Fake DynamoDB service, you need to have Ruby
1.9+ installed. If you have it already, you can simply install the gem by running the follow-
ing command:
gem install fake_dynamo --version 0.2.5
Once the gem is installed, you can start the service by running the following command:
fake_dynamo --port 4567
You can find some information about this tool at https://github.com/ananthakumaran/
fake_dynamo .
The following tools are similar to the previously mentioned tools: