DynamoDB Docs

Generate documentation about your DynamoDB table from a single dynamodb.yml file.

Why do you want to use generate-dynamodb-docs

AWS DynamoDB is great to store different entities in a single table (see also single-table design.

And while DynamoDB does not have a strict schema, entities normally share the same attributes (e.g. all "author" entities may have a "name" attribute). All your readers and writers need to have a mutual understanding about how to represent entities, so you do not end up in a situation in which a writer writes createdAt and your reader tries to read created_at.

This project helps you to define those attributes in a single file and then create both a markdown documentation about them and TypeScript definitions to be used directly in your code.

Install

Navigate to your repository where you either want to store documentation about your attributes or a TypeScript repository that reads/writes to your table.

Install generate-dynamodb-docs as a development dependency:

npm install --save-dev generate-generate-dynamodb-docs

Example

Let's assume you have a single DynamoDB table that stores authors and blog posts. We can describe those entities in a yaml file:

description: "Store authors and their blog posts"

defaults:
  typescriptType: AttributeValue.SMember

entities:
  Post:
    typescriptName: DynamoDBPost
    description: |-
      A single post.

      A post can be seen as a news article.
    attributes:
      title:
        description: The title of the post
      body:
        description: The actual article

  Author:
    typescriptName: DynamoDBAuthor
    description: |-
      An author describes a person that writes blog posts.
      A single author can write multiple posts
    attributes:
      name:
        description: The name of the author
      nPosts:
        description: The number of posts of the author
        typescriptType: AttributeValue.NMember

you can now generate documentation out of this:

% npx generate-dynamodb-docs --output-type markdown dynamodb.yml
### Author

An author describes a person that writes blog posts.
A single author can write multiple posts

| Name | Description | Required |
|------|-------------|:--------:|
| <a name="author_name"></a> [name](#author\_name) | The name of the author | no |
| <a name="author_nposts"></a> [nPosts](#author\_nposts) | The number of posts of the author | no |

### Post

A single post.

A post can be seen as a news article.

| Name | Description | Required |
|------|-------------|:--------:|
| <a name="post_body"></a> [body](#post\_body) | The actual article | no |
| <a name="post_title"></a> [title](#post\_title) | The title of the post | no |

Or generate TypeScript types:

% npx generate-dynamodb-docs --output-type typescript dynamodb.yml
// DynamoDB Entity Author
type DynamoDBAuthor = {
  name: AttributeValue.SMember;
  nPosts: AttributeValue.NMember;
}

// DynamoDB Entity Post
type DynamoDBPost = {
  body: AttributeValue.SMember;
  title: AttributeValue.SMember;
}

Generate a README.md for DynamoDB types

You can also inject markdown to an existing file. For this add the following markers to an existing markdown file:

Some existing text in your README.md. It will not be overwritten.

<!-- BEGIN_DYNAMODB_DOCS -->
everything in here will be replaced
<!-- END_DYNAMODB_DOCS -->

Some existing text in your README.md. It will not be overwritten.

Now run generate-dynamodb-docs in inject mode:

npx generate-dynamodb-docs --output-type markdown --mode inject --output-file README.md dynamodb.yml

In case you make use of prettier and/or linter, I recommend to disable it for the automatic code block:

Some existing text in your README.md. It will not be overwritten.

<!-- markdownlint-capture -->
<!-- markdownlint-disable -->
<!-- prettier-ignore-start -->
<!-- BEGIN_DYNAMODB_DOCS -->
everything in here will be replaced
<!-- END_DYNAMODB_DOCS -->
<!-- prettier-ignore-end -->
<!-- markdownlint-restore -->

Some existing text in your README.md. It will not be overwritten.

You can do the same for TypeScript. Create a file and make sure you add the following markers:

import { AttributeValue } from '@aws-sdk/client-dynamodb'

/* BEGIN_DYNAMODB_DOCS */
// Everything in here will be overwritten
/* END_DYNAMODB_DOCS */

Now run the following command to inject the actual typescript definition:

npx generate-dynamodb-docs --output-type typescript --mode inject --output-file dynamodb.ts dynamodb.yml

You can also create a task in your package.json:

{
    "scripts": {
        "gen:docs:md": "generate-dynamodb-docs --output-type markdown --output-file README.md --mode inject dynamodb.yml",
        "gen:docs:ts": "generate-dynamodb-docs --output-type typescript --output-file src/dynamodb.ts --mode inject dynamodb.yml",
        "gen:docs": "npm run gen:docs:md && npm run gen:docs:ts"
    }
}

And then simply execute npm run gen:docs to regenerate your documentation after updating dynamodb.yml

Post actions on generated files

In case you use eslint or prettier you may not be happy with the generated typescript file. In this case you can specify a post action that will automatically be executed on your file. The output file will automatically be appended as the last argument.

config:
  typescript:
    post-exec:
      - name: Apply eslint fixes
        cmd: eslint
        args:
         - '-c'
         - 'eslint.config.js'
         - --fix

Generate pre and post sections

You can add custom text in your markdown above and below the generated text. This can be helpful if you specify custom typescript types and want the definition of those types to also be part of the generated code. Or you use references in your markdown table that you want to define as well.

Here is an example

defaults:
  typescriptType: AttributeValue.SMember

config:
  markdown:
    post: "[rfc3339]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3339"
  typescript:
    pre: |-
      type POST_PK = { S: `AUTHOR#${string}` }
      type POST_SK = { S: `POST#${string}` }

entities:
  Post:
    typescriptName: DynamoDBPost
    attributes:
      pk:
        description: "Partition key. Must follow `AUTHOR#<name of author>`"
        typescriptType: POST_PK
      sk:
        description: "Sort key. Must follow `POST#<title>`"
        typescriptType: POST_SK
      title:
        description: The title of the post
      publishedAt:
        description: |-
          The date when the article was published. This
          should follow [RFC3339][rfc3339]
      body:
        description: The actual article

This ensures the reference rfc3339 in the generated markdown table for the publishedAt attribute will be valid in the final markdown file and the typescript type POST_PK and POST_SK are also defined in the generated typescript output.

Running test

In order to run tests locally, execute the following

npm ci
npm run test:coverage

If you get an ERR_INSPECTOR_NOT_AVAILABLE error, make sure your nodejs is compiled with inspector support. Otherwise run npm run test to skip code coverage