Formatting DynamoDB data to normal JSON in AWS Lambda

Question

I\'m using AWS Lambda to scan data from a DynamoDB table. This is what I get in return:

{
  \"videos\": [
    {
      \"fil         


        

Answer 1

I think it's just a custom transformation exercise for each app. A simple conversion from DynamoDB's item format to you application format might look like this:

var response = {...} // your response from DynamoDB
var formattedObjects = response.videos.map(function(video) {
    return {
        "file": video.file.S,
        "id": video.id.S,
        "canvas": video.canvas.S
    };
});

If you want to build a generic system for this, you would have to handle DynamoDB's various AttributeValue types. A function like the one below would do the job, but I've left out the hard work of handling most of DynamoDB's more complex attribute value types:

function dynamoItemToPlainObj(dynamoItem) {
    var plainObj = {};
    for (var attributeName in dynamoItem) {
        var attribute = dynamoItem[attributeName];
        var attributeValue;
        for (var itemType in attribute) {
            switch (itemType) {
            case "S":
                attributeValue = attribute.S.toString();
                break;
            case "N":
                attributeValue = Number(attribute.N);
                break;
                // more attribute types...
            default:
                attributeValue = attribute[itemType].toString();
                break;
            }
        }
        plainObj[attributeName] = attributeValue;
    }
    return plainObj;
}    
var formattedObjects = response.videos.map(dynamoItemToPlainObj);