Dynamo Local from Node-aws: all operations fail "Cannot do operations on a non-existent table"

I have a local dynamo-db running. I have set up my tables using the JavaScript console and they list OK from there.

I can also put and get items to my tables from the JavaScript console:

var params = { TableName:"environmentId", Item: { environmentId: {"S":"a4fe1736-98cf-4560-bcf4-cc927730dd1b"} }};
dynamodb.putItem(params, function(err, data) {
    console.log("put : err was " + JSON.stringify(err) + " and data is " + JSON.stringify(data));
});

prints put : err was null and data is {} which I'm assuming is "success" because

params = { "Key":{"environmentId":{"S":"a4fe1736-98cf-45e0-bcf4-cc927730dd1b"}},"TableName":"environmentId"}
dynamodb.getItem(params, function(err, data) {
    console.log("get : err was " + JSON.stringify(err) + " and data is " + JSON.stringify(data));
});

prints get : err was null and data is {"Item":{"environmentId":{"S":"a4fe1736-98cf-45e0-bcf4-cc927730dd1b"}}} i.e. it retrieves the object I just put to the table.

However, if it fire up the node REPL and type:

var AWS = require('aws-sdk');
AWS.config.loadFromPath("./config/credentials.js");
endpoint = new AWS.Endpoint("http://localhost:8000");
var dynamoOpts = {apiVersion: '2012-08-10', 'endpoint':endpoint};
var dynamodb = new AWS.DynamoDB(dynamoOpts);
var params = { TableName:"environmentId", Item: { environmentId: {"S":"a4fe1736-98cf-4560-bcf4-cc927730dd1b"} }};
dynamodb.putItem(params, function(err, data) {
    console.log("put : err was " + JSON.stringify(err) + " and data is " + JSON.stringify(data));
}

I get a resource not found error:

{ "message":"Cannot do operations on a non-existent table",
    "code":"ResourceNotFoundException",
    "time":"2015-04 10T10:01:26.319Z",
    "statusCode":400,
    "retryable":false,
    "retryDelay":0
}

The ASW.request object returned from the putCommand has the correct endpoint:

{ protocol: 'http:',
    host: 'localhost:8000',
    port: 8000,
    hostname: 'localhost',
    pathname: '/',
    // etc.

The same thing happens from my Node app however the same code connecting to the real AWS hosted dynamo works.

The problem is that the JavaScript console and your app use different profiles (credential and region) and therefore DynamoDB local will create separate database files for them. By using the -sharedDb flag when starting the local DynamoDB, a single database file will be shared for all clients.

From the doc:

-sharedDb — DynamoDB Local will use a single database file, instead of using separate files for each credential and region. If you specify -sharedDb, all DynamoDB Local clients will interact with the same set of tables regardless of their region and credential configuration.

Those who are using the official DynamoDB Local Docker image should use this line to start it to enable sharedDb:

docker run -p 8000:8000 amazon/dynamodb-local -jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -inMemory -sharedDb

The original ENTRYPOINT and CMD used by the image can be seen in docker inspect amazon/dynamodb-local output and are:

"Entrypoint": [
    "java"
]
"Cmd": [
    "-jar",
    "DynamoDBLocal.jar",
    "-inMemory"
]

So we basically need to copy them and add -sharedDb.