Build Your First API with Python and AWS | by Brian Roepke | January, 2025
Learn how to create a simple, yet powerful REST API with FastAPI, DynamoDB, and AWS Lambda Functions.
Today, we're going to take a slight deviation from the usual Snowflake and Data Warehouse-centric concepts in this article. We'll walk through building your own API that sits on top of data stored in another type of database, DynamoDB, and create a small web interface to test it.
You've probably coded against many APIs in your daily work, but what about creating your own? In this article, we'll show you how to build an API that gives you more exposure to how a cloud service works, but also hopefully inspires you to build your own in the future.
The following is a diagram of what we will build today: An API hosted on AWS Lambda, all written in Python, and connected to the very powerful DynamoDB. The API is then exposed through the AWS API Gateway which allows us to add protections such as rate limiting to our API. We also used Route 53 (their domain management tool) and CloudWatch for logging.
Let's jump in!
