boto3-helpers

boto3_helpers is a Python library that aims to provide a smoother interface for some of the functions in the AWS boto3 package.

You know how to install it:

pip install boto3-helpers

Have you ever seen anybody make this mistake?

from boto3 import resource as boto3_resource
from boto3.dynamodb.conditions import Key

# Don't do this; you'll miss out if there is more than one page
ddb_table = boto3.resource('dynamodb').Table('example-table')
resp = ddb_table.query(
    KeyConditionExpression=Key('username').eq('johndoe')
)
for item in resp.get('Items', []):
    print(item)

What they should have done is this:

from boto3 import resource as boto3_resource
from boto3.dynamodb.conditions import Key

# Loop through all the pages
ddb_table = boto3.resource('dynamodb').Table('example-table')
kwargs = {'KeyConditionExpression': Key('username').eq('johndoe')}
while True:
    resp = ddb_table.query(**kwargs)
    for item in resp.get('Items', []):
        print(item)
    if 'LastEvaluatedKey' not in resp:
        break
    kwargs['ExclusiveStartKey'] = resp['LastEvaluatedKey']

With boto3_helpers, you can do the right thing more easily:

from boto3 import resource as boto3_resource
from boto3.dynamodb.conditions import Key
from boto3_helpers.dynamodb import query_table

ddb_table = boto3.resource('dynamodb').Table('example-table')
for item in query_table(
    ddb_table, KeyConditionExpression=Key('username').eq('johndoe')
):
    print(item)

This package provides helper functions for several similar actions in AWS, such as:

• Paging through S3 listings
• Updating items in DynamoDB
• Assuming roles with STS
• Sending and deleting messages with SQS
• Pulling metric data from CloudWatch

See the latest docs for more.