Using Boto3 in python to acquire results from dynamodb and parse into a usable variable or dictionary

Question

I'm trying to acquire the most recent entry into DynamoDB or to parse out the results I get, so I can skim the most recent item off the top.

This is my code

from __future__ import print_function # Python 2/3 compatibility
import boto3
import json
import decimal
from boto3.dynamodb.conditions import Key, Attr

# Helper class to convert a DynamoDB item to JSON.
class DecimalEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, o):
        if isinstance(o, decimal.Decimal):
            if o % 1 > 0:
                return float(o)
            else:
                return int(o)
        return super(DecimalEncoder, self).default(o)

dynamodb = boto3.resource('dynamodb', region_name='us-west-2',
endpoint_url="https://foo.foo.foo/aws")

table = dynamodb.Table('footable')
response = table.scan(
    Select="ALL_ATTRIBUTES",
    )

for i in response['Items']:
    print(json.dumps(i, cls=DecimalEncoder))

My results are a lot of the following that I'd like to either parse or if someone knows the code to just select the top entry that would be great.

{"MinorID": 123, "Location": "123westsideave"}
{"MinorID": 321, "Location": "456nowhererd"}
{"MinorID": 314, "Location": "123westsideave"}

Answer 1

at the end of my code where it says "print(json.dumps(i, cls=DecimalEncoder))" I changed that to "d = ast.literal_eval((json.dumps(i, cls=DecimalEncoder)))" I also added import ast at the top. It worked beautifully.

import ast

table = dynamodb.Table('footable')
response = table.scan(
    Select="ALL_ATTRIBUTES",
    )

for i in response['Items']:
    d = ast.literal_eval((json.dumps(i, cls=DecimalEncoder)))