PutItem

Creates a new item, or replaces an old item with a new item. If an item that has the same primary key as the new item already exists in the specified table, the new item completely replaces the existing item. You can perform a conditional put operation (add a new item if one with the specified primary key doesn't exist), or replace an existing item if it has certain attribute values. You can return the item's attribute values in the same operation, using the ReturnValues parameter.

When you add an item, the primary key attributes are the only required attributes.

Empty String and Binary attribute values are allowed. Attribute values of type String and Binary must have a length greater than zero if the attribute is used as a key attribute for a table or index. Set type attributes cannot be empty.

Invalid Requests with empty values will be rejected with a ValidationException exception.

For more information about PutItem , see Working with Items in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

Request Syntax

Request Parameters

The request accepts the following data in JSON format.

A map of attribute name/value pairs, one for each attribute. Only the primary key attributes are required; you can optionally provide other attribute name-value pairs for the item.

You must provide all of the attributes for the primary key. For example, with a simple primary key, you only need to provide a value for the partition key. For a composite primary key, you must provide both values for both the partition key and the sort

If you specify any attributes that are part of an index key, then the data types for those attributes must match those of the schema in the table's attribute definition.

Empty String and Binary attribute values are allowed. Attribute values of type String and Binary must have a length greater than zero if the attribute is used as a key attribute for a table or index.

For more information about primary keys, see Primary Key in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

Each element in the Item map is an AttributeValue object.

Type: String to AttributeValue object map

Key Length Constraints: Maximum length of 65535.

Required: Yes

The name of the table to contain the item. You can also provide the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the table in this parameter.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 1024.

Required: Yes

This is a legacy parameter. Use ConditionExpression instead. For more information, see ConditionalOperator in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

Type: String

Valid Values: AND | OR

Required: No

A condition that must be satisfied in order for a conditional PutItem operation to succeed.

An expression can contain any of the following:

Functions: attribute_exists | attribute_not_exists | attribute_type | contains | begins_with | size

These function names are case-sensitive.

Comparison operators: = | <> | < | > | <= | >= | BETWEEN | IN

Logical operators: AND | OR | NOT

For more information on condition expressions, see Condition Expressions in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

Type: String

Required: No

This is a legacy parameter. Use ConditionExpression instead. For more information, see Expected in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

Type: String to ExpectedAttributeValue object map

Key Length Constraints: Maximum length of 65535.

Required: No

To prevent special characters in an attribute name from being misinterpreted in an expression.

Use the # character in an expression to dereference an attribute name. For example, consider the following attribute name:

The name of this attribute conflicts with a reserved word, so it cannot be used directly in an expression. (For the complete list of reserved words, see Reserved Words in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide ). To work around this, you could specify the following for ExpressionAttributeNames :

For more information on expression attribute names, see Specifying Item Attributes in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

Type: String to string map

Value Length Constraints: Maximum length of 65535.

Required: No

One or more values that can be substituted in an expression.

Use the : (colon) character in an expression to dereference an attribute value. For example, suppose that you wanted to check whether the value of the ProductStatus attribute was one of the following:

You would first need to specify ExpressionAttributeValues as follows:

You could then use these values in an expression, such as this:

For more information on expression attribute values, see Condition Expressions in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

Type: String to AttributeValue object map

Required: No

Note that some operations, such as GetItem and BatchGetItem , do not access any indexes at all. In these cases, specifying INDEXES will only return ConsumedCapacity information for table(s).

Type: String

Valid Values: INDEXES | TOTAL | NONE

Required: No

Determines whether item collection metrics are returned. If set to SIZE , the response includes statistics about item collections, if any, that were modified during the operation are returned in the response. If set to NONE (the default), no statistics are returned.

Type: String

Valid Values: SIZE | NONE

Required: No

Use ReturnValues if you want to get the item attributes as they appeared before they were updated with the PutItem request. For PutItem , the valid values are:

The values returned are strongly consistent.

There is no additional cost associated with requesting a return value aside from the small network and processing overhead of receiving a larger response. No read capacity units are consumed.

Type: String

Valid Values: NONE | ALL_OLD | UPDATED_OLD | ALL_NEW | UPDATED_NEW

Required: No

An optional parameter that returns the item attributes for a PutItem operation that failed a condition check.

There is no additional cost associated with requesting a return value aside from the small network and processing overhead of receiving a larger response. No read capacity units are consumed.

Type: String

Valid Values: ALL_OLD | NONE

Required: No

Response Syntax

Response Elements

If the action is successful, the service sends back an HTTP 200 response.

The following data is returned in JSON format by the service.

The attribute values as they appeared before the PutItem operation, but only if ReturnValues is specified as ALL_OLD in the request. Each element consists of an attribute name and an attribute value.

Type: String to AttributeValue object map

Key Length Constraints: Maximum length of 65535.

The capacity units consumed by the PutItem operation. The data returned includes the total provisioned throughput consumed, along with statistics for the table and any indexes involved in the operation. ConsumedCapacity is only returned if the ReturnConsumedCapacity parameter was specified. For more information, see Capacity unity consumption for write operations in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

Type: ConsumedCapacity object

Information about item collections, if any, that were affected by the PutItem operation. ItemCollectionMetrics is only returned if the ReturnItemCollectionMetrics parameter was specified. If the table does not have any local secondary indexes, this information is not returned in the response.

Each ItemCollectionMetrics element consists of:

The estimate is subject to change over time; therefore, do not rely on the precision or accuracy of the estimate.

Type: ItemCollectionMetrics object

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors .

An item collection is too large. This exception is only returned for tables that have one or more local secondary indexes.

HTTP Status Code: 400

Your request rate is too high. The AWS SDKs for DynamoDB automatically retry requests that receive this exception. Your request is eventually successful, unless your retry queue is too large to finish. Reduce the frequency of requests and use exponential backoff. For more information, go to Error Retries and Exponential Backoff in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide .

HTTP Status Code: 400

Throughput exceeds the current throughput quota for your account. Please contact AWS Support to request a quota increase.

HTTP Status Code: 400

The operation tried to access a nonexistent table or index. The resource might not be specified correctly, or its status might not be ACTIVE .

HTTP Status Code: 400

Put an Item

The following example puts a new item into the Thread table, but only if there is not already an item in the table with the same key.

Sample Request

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: dynamodb.<region>.<domain>;
Accept-Encoding: identity
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
User-Agent: <UserAgentString>
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.0
Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=<Credential>, SignedHeaders=<Headers>, Signature=<Signature>
X-Amz-Date: <Date>
X-Amz-Target: DynamoDB_20120810.PutItem
    "TableName": "Thread",
    "Item": {
        "LastPostDateTime": {
            "S": "201303190422"
        "Tags": {
            "SS": ["Update","Multiple Items","HelpMe"]
        "ForumName": {
            "S": "Amazon DynamoDB"
        "Message": {
            "S": "I want to update multiple items in a single call. What's the best way to do that?"
        "Subject": {
            "S": "How do I update multiple items?"
        "LastPostedBy": {
            "S": "fred@example.com"
    "ConditionExpression": "ForumName <> :f and Subject <> :s",
    "ExpressionAttributeValues": {
        ":f": {"S": "Amazon DynamoDB"},
        ":s": {"S": "How do I update multiple items?"}
            
Sample Response
            
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-amzn-RequestId: <RequestId>
x-amz-crc32: <Checksum>
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.0
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
Date: <Date>
      
See Also
      
For more information about using this API in one of the language-specific AWS SDKs, see the following: