How to return the inserted item in dynamoDB

Question

I am using nodeJS sdk to put the item to dynamoDB, The item is:

{
   "eventId": date + '-' + eventName + '-' + eventPurpose,
   "eventName": eventName,
   "eventPurpose": eventPurpose,
   "eventDates": eventDates,
   "attendees": attendees
 }

The present code for the putting the item in dynamoDB:

  const params = {
    TableName: "event",
    Item: {
        "eventId": date + '-' + eventName + '-' + eventPurpose,
        "eventName": eventName,
        "eventPurpose": eventPurpose,
        "eventDates": eventDates,
        "attendees": attendees
    },
    ReturnValues: "ALL_OLD"
  };

  dynamo.put(params, (err, data) => {
    console.log("coming here");
    if (err) {
      console.log("error : " + JSON.stringify(err));
    }
    console.log("data" + JSON.stringify(data));
    cb(null, data);
  });

The insertion happens correctly and the return value is an empty object.

I would like to return the inserted item. I found this doc. But this returns only in case of updating the old value. I could not find any other useful info other than this.

Is there any work around or we simply need to query using get method with the primary key?

Answer 1

The link you posted is, sadly, the only real answer at this time (API Version 2012-08-10). PutItem may return items just before they were updated or none at all.

The ReturnValues parameter is used by several DynamoDB operations; however, PutItem does not recognize any values other than NONE or ALL_OLD.

In short, the only reliable way to retrieve your inserted object is to GetItem, just as you surmised.