AWS Serverless - Auto Create DynamoDB - node.js

Question

In my serverless.yml file, I have specified a DynamoDB resource, something to this effect (see below). I'd like to know two things:
Why is it that I'm not seeing these tables get created when they don't exist, forcing me to manually enter AWS console and do so myself?
In my source code (nodejs), i'm not sure how I'd reference a table specified in the yml file instead of hardcoding it.
The two questions above roll up into a singular problem, which is that I'd like to be able to specify the tables in the yml and then when doing a "deploy", have a different table set created per environment.
i.e. If I deploy to "--stage Prod", then table would be "MyTable_Prod". If I deploy to "--stage Dev", then table would be "MyTable_Dev", etc...
Figuring this out would go a long way to making deployments much smoother :).
The serverless.yml section of interest is as follows:
resources:
Resources:
DynamoDbTable:
Type: AWS::DynamoDB::Table
Properties:
TableName: MyHappyFunTable
AttributeDefinitions:
- AttributeName: id
AttributeType: S
KeySchema:
- AttributeName: id
KeyType: HASH
ProvisionedThroughput:
ReadCapacityUnits: 5
WriteCapacityUnits: 5
DynamoDBIamPolicy:
Type: AWS::IAM::Policy
DependsOn: DynamoDbTable
Properties:
PolicyName: lambda-dynamodb
PolicyDocument:
Version: '2012-10-17'
Statement:
- Effect: Allow
Action:
- dynamodb:Query
- dynamodb:Scan
- dynamodb:GetItem
- dynamodb:PutItem
- dynamodb:UpdateItem
- dynamodb:DeleteItem
Resource: "arn:aws:dynamodb:${opt:region, self:provider.region}:*:table/${self:provider.environment.DYNAMODB_TABLE}"
Roles:
- Ref: IamRoleLambdaExecution
A sample of my horrid 'hardcoded' table names is as follows:
dbParms = {
TableName : "MyTable_Dev",
FilterExpression: "#tid = :tid and #owner = :owner",
ProjectionExpression: "#id, #name",
ExpressionAttributeNames: {
"#tid" : "tenantid",
"#id" : "id",
"#name" : "name",
"#owner" : "owner"
},
ExpressionAttributeValues: {
":tid": tenantId,
":owner": owner
}
};
Note the "MyTable_Dev" ... ideally i'd like that to be something like "MyTable_"
+ {$opt.stage} ... or something to that effect.

Answer 1

In my source code (nodejs), i'm not sure how I'd reference a table specified in the yml file instead of hardcoding it.
I would put your stage in an environment variable that your Lambda function has access to.
In your serverless.yml,
provider:
...
environment:
STAGE: {$opt:stage}
Then, in your code you can access it through process.env.STAGE.
const tableName = 'MyTable_' + process.env.STAGE