Verify Time-To-Live(TTL) Configuration For Amazon DynamoDB Table

Check out different ways to verify if an Amazon DynamoDB(DDB) table time-to-live(TTL) is configured correctly.

Verification Methods

AWS Console

1. On AWS Console, open your DDB table Overview tab. You should see Time to live attribute item has a value set. It is the attribute name that you use for TTL.
   Since I use ttl, thus, there is ‘Time to live attribute ttl’ in the image below.
   

2. Open Items tab, and look for TTL attribute of any row.
   Note that TTL attribute value should be an Integer type. It shouldn’t be be a decimal number(floating-point number: Float or Double type). The TTL values shown in the image below have incorrect data type and thus items are not automatically by TTL.
   

3. When you hover your cursor on a TTL attribute, it should show an expiry datetime tooltips in UTC, Local and AWS Region timezones. If it doesn’t, that mean TTL is not in effect.
   

AWS CLI

You can also use AWS CLI DynamoDB describe-time-to-live command to check if time-to-live(TTL) attribute is enabled.

aws dynamodb describe-time-to-live --table-name table-name

If the output contains TimeToLiveStatus as ENABLED, that means TTL has been configured properly for this DynamoDB table.
Output:

{
    "TimeToLiveDescription": {
        "TimeToLiveStatus": "ENABLED",
        "AttributeName": "ttl"
    }
}

Put Item

The most practical way is probably to create an item with TTL as 5 minutes from current time using AWS DynamoDB Console or DynamoDB SDK. After 5 minutes, check AWS DynamoDB console to see if the item is removed.

Note that TTL is an Integer Number type and is in Unix time format.

Further Reading

If your DynamoDB table’s TTL is not configured properly, you can check out How to Set TTL For Amazon DynamoDB Entries article to learn TTL configuration for your DynamoDB Table.

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