Get the Item Count of a Dynamodb Table

# Table of Contents

1. Get the Item Count of a Dynamodb Table with AWS Console
2. Get the Item Count of a Dynamodb Table with the AWS CLI

# Get the Item Count of a Dynamodb Table with AWS Console

To get the item count of a DynamoDB table, you have to:

1. Open the AWS Dynamodb console and click on your table's name.
2. In the Overview tab scroll down to the Items summary section.
3. Click on the Get live item count button.

4. Click on the Start scan button.

Under the hood, a scan operation is performed on the table. This means that DynamoDB has to read every single item in the table to calculate the total count.

If you don't need the most up-to-date metric for the item count in your table, you can look at the Items summary section in your table's Overview tab.

The Item count, Table size and Average item size metrics get automatically updated every 6 hours.

# Get the Item Count of a Dynamodb Table with the AWS CLI

In order to get the item count of a DynamoDB table, using the AWS CLI, you have to run the dynamodb scan command, setting the select parameter to COUNT.

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aws dynamodb scan --table-name "YOUR_TABLE" --select "COUNT"

The --select parameter of the scan command allows us to filter the output.

In our case, we only care about the total item count rather than the items themselves.

The command's output shows that the ScannedCount is equal to the Count, meaning DynamoDB had to get every item in order to calculate the total count.

This is very inefficient, can exhaust a table's read capacity units and throttle user requests.

I've also written a tutorial on how to provision and configure a Dynamodb table using AWS CDK.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

• Grant AWS Lambda Access to a Dynamodb Table
• API Gateway Example in AWS CDK - Complete Guide
• Lambda Function Example in AWS CDK - Complete Guide
• Write TypeScript Lambda functions in AWS CDK - Complete Guide
• AWS CDK Tutorial for Beginners - Step-by-Step Guide
• How to use Parameters in AWS CDK
• Get the Item Count of a Dynamodb Table