Question: Can colons and special characters be used in DynamoDB attributes?

Answered by Rafal Wilinski
Answer
Colons and special characters can be used in DynamoDB attribute names, but some restrictions exist. Attribute names cannot contain the following characters:
- forward slash (/)
- backslash ()
- period (.)
- pound sign (#)
- tilde (~)
- curly braces ({})
- angle brackets (<>)
Additionally, attribute names must start with a letter and can only contain letters, numbers, and the following characters: _ (underscore), - (hyphen), and . (dot).
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