I would normally handle the task of sending an email after a new DynamoDB entry with Lambda and SES but I’m required to not use Lambda for it.
There’s a ‘Contact us’ section in the website and the email needs to be sent every time a new entry is made. We use API Gateway to post the data to DyanmoDB
Is there a way to carry this out without Lambda?
3
Answers
DynamoDB triggers Lambda functions by feeding the records of a DynamoDB Stream to the Lambda function. That is by far the easiest way to process updates to a DynamoDB table, but you can also write other code that processes a DynamoDB outside of Lambda: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/Streams.html
It’s not possible without writing code. Furthermore you may probably want to tailor each email to make it more personal to the user, thus Lambda is a must.
You could design something using EventBridge Pipes which can trigger when a new user is added and can have SNS as a destination which could trigger an email. But that email may not be customizable nor may it send to people not subscribed to the topic
If you really want to do it without lambda you can use the following pattern and glue some AWS services together.
You can consume the dynamodb stream with eventbridge pipes and send it to a stepfunction and there you use the sdk integration to call SES. Instead of stepfunction you can directly use SNS for simpler setups.
You will not have to use lambda for this setup. Further you can transform your message either in the pipe or in the stepfunction.
Be aware that eventbirdge pipes has currently no AWS CDK L2 construct which might make it harder to configure if you use CDK.