Docker Compose facilitates spinning up local AWS-compatible services without an AWS account. This post covers DynamoDB Local for key-value storage and ElasticMQ for an SQS-compatible message queue. A common pattern is to persist state in DynamoDB and notify workers through SQS.

Prerequisites

• Docker Compose installed

Configuration

The following configuration spins up DynamoDB Local, DynamoDB Admin, ElasticMQ, and the ElasticMQ UI.

Connection details:

• DynamoDB endpoint: http://localhost:8000
• SQS endpoint: http://localhost:9324
• DynamoDB Admin: http://localhost:8001
• ElasticMQ UI: http://localhost:3000
• Region: us-east-1
• Credentials: any dummy values (for example local / local)

# docker-compose.yml
services:
 dynamodb:
 image: amazon/dynamodb-local:latest
 user: root
 command: '-jarDynamoDBLocal.jar-sharedDb-dbPath/home/dynamodblocal/data'
 ports:
 - '8000:8000'
 volumes:
 - dynamodb_data:/home/dynamodblocal/data

 dynamodb-admin:
 image: aaronshaf/dynamodb-admin:latest
 ports:
 - '8001:8001'
 environment:
 DYNAMO_ENDPOINT: http://dynamodb:8000
 AWS_REGION: us-east-1
 AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: local
 AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: local
 depends_on:
 - dynamodb

 elasticmq:
 image: softwaremill/elasticmq-native:latest
 ports:
 - '9324:9324'
 volumes:
 - ./elasticmq.conf:/opt/elasticmq.conf
 - elasticmq_data:/data

 elasticmq-ui:
 image: softwaremill/elasticmq-ui:latest
 ports:
 - '3000:3000'
 environment:
 SQS_ENDPOINT: http://elasticmq:9324
 depends_on:
 - elasticmq

volumes:
 dynamodb_data:
 elasticmq_data:

ElasticMQ loads queue definitions from an elasticmq.conf file included in the demo.

Run the following command to spin up the containers.

docker compose up -d

Disclaimer

ElasticMQ provides an SQS-compatible API, but it is not AWS SQS. DynamoDB Local also differs from managed DynamoDB (for example capacity modes, streams, TTL, and global tables). Use these containers for local development and integration tests, not as production substitutes.

Demo

Docker Compose files and scripts for this post live in the dynamodb-sqs-docker-compose folder. Get access via code demos.