XUtils

bbolt

An embedded key/value database for Go.

Golang
https://github.com/etcd-io/bbolt

Project versioning

bbolt uses semantic versioning. API should not change between patch and minor releases. New minor versions may add additional features to the API.

Table of Contents

Getting Started

Installing

To start using Bolt, install Go and run go get:

$ go get go.etcd.io/bbolt@latest

This will retrieve the library and update your go.mod and go.sum files.

To run the command line utility, execute:

$ go run go.etcd.io/bbolt/cmd/bbolt@latest

Run go install to install the bbolt command line utility into your $GOBIN path, which defaults to $GOPATH/bin or $HOME/go/bin if the GOPATH environment variable is not set.

$ go install go.etcd.io/bbolt/cmd/bbolt@latest

Importing bbolt

To use bbolt as an embedded key-value store, import as:

import bolt "go.etcd.io/bbolt"

db, err := bolt.Open(path, 0600, nil)
if err != nil {
  return err
}
defer db.Close()

Opening a database

The top-level object in Bolt is a DB. It is represented as a single file on your disk and represents a consistent snapshot of your data.

To open your database, simply use the bolt.Open() function:

package main

import (
	"log"

	bolt "go.etcd.io/bbolt"
)

func main() {
	// Open the my.db data file in your current directory.
	// It will be created if it doesn't exist.
	db, err := bolt.Open("my.db", 0600, nil)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
	defer db.Close()

	...
}

Please note that Bolt obtains a file lock on the data file so multiple processes cannot open the same database at the same time. Opening an already open Bolt database will cause it to hang until the other process closes it. To prevent an indefinite wait you can pass a timeout option to the Open() function:

db, err := bolt.Open("my.db", 0600, &bolt.Options{Timeout: 1 * time.Second})

Transactions

Bolt allows only one read-write transaction at a time but allows as many read-only transactions as you want at a time. Each transaction has a consistent view of the data as it existed when the transaction started.

Individual transactions and all objects created from them (e.g. buckets, keys) are not thread safe. To work with data in multiple goroutines you must start a transaction for each one or use locking to ensure only one goroutine accesses a transaction at a time. Creating transaction from the DB is thread safe.

Transactions should not depend on one another and generally shouldn’t be opened simultaneously in the same goroutine. This can cause a deadlock as the read-write transaction needs to periodically re-map the data file but it cannot do so while any read-only transaction is open. Even a nested read-only transaction can cause a deadlock, as the child transaction can block the parent transaction from releasing its resources.

Read-write transactions

To start a read-write transaction, you can use the DB.Update() function:

err := db.Update(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	...
	return nil
})

Inside the closure, you have a consistent view of the database. You commit the transaction by returning nil at the end. You can also rollback the transaction at any point by returning an error. All database operations are allowed inside a read-write transaction.

Always check the return error as it will report any disk failures that can cause your transaction to not complete. If you return an error within your closure it will be passed through.

Read-only transactions

To start a read-only transaction, you can use the DB.View() function:

err := db.View(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	...
	return nil
})

You also get a consistent view of the database within this closure, however, no mutating operations are allowed within a read-only transaction. You can only retrieve buckets, retrieve values, and copy the database within a read-only transaction.

Batch read-write transactions

Each DB.Update() waits for disk to commit the writes. This overhead can be minimized by combining multiple updates with the DB.Batch() function:

err := db.Batch(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	...
	return nil
})

Concurrent Batch calls are opportunistically combined into larger transactions. Batch is only useful when there are multiple goroutines calling it.

The trade-off is that Batch can call the given function multiple times, if parts of the transaction fail. The function must be idempotent and side effects must take effect only after a successful return from DB.Batch().

For example: don’t display messages from inside the function, instead set variables in the enclosing scope:

var id uint64
err := db.Batch(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	// Find last key in bucket, decode as bigendian uint64, increment
	// by one, encode back to []byte, and add new key.
	...
	id = newValue
	return nil
})
if err != nil {
	return ...
}
fmt.Println("Allocated ID %d", id)

Managing transactions manually

The DB.View() and DB.Update() functions are wrappers around the DB.Begin() function. These helper functions will start the transaction, execute a function, and then safely close your transaction if an error is returned. This is the recommended way to use Bolt transactions.

However, sometimes you may want to manually start and end your transactions. You can use the DB.Begin() function directly but please be sure to close the transaction.

// Start a writable transaction.
tx, err := db.Begin(true)
if err != nil {
    return err
}
defer tx.Rollback()

// Use the transaction...
_, err := tx.CreateBucket([]byte("MyBucket"))
if err != nil {
    return err
}

// Commit the transaction and check for error.
if err := tx.Commit(); err != nil {
    return err
}

The first argument to DB.Begin() is a boolean stating if the transaction should be writable.

Using buckets

Buckets are collections of key/value pairs within the database. All keys in a bucket must be unique. You can create a bucket using the Tx.CreateBucket() function:

db.Update(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	b, err := tx.CreateBucket([]byte("MyBucket"))
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("create bucket: %s", err)
	}
	return nil
})

You can retrieve an existing bucket using the Tx.Bucket() function:

db.Update(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	b := tx.Bucket([]byte("MyBucket"))
	if b == nil {
		return errors.New("bucket does not exist")
	}
	return nil
})

You can also create a bucket only if it doesn’t exist by using the Tx.CreateBucketIfNotExists() function. It’s a common pattern to call this function for all your top-level buckets after you open your database so you can guarantee that they exist for future transactions.

To delete a bucket, simply call the Tx.DeleteBucket() function.

Using key/value pairs

To save a key/value pair to a bucket, use the Bucket.Put() function:

db.Update(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	b := tx.Bucket([]byte("MyBucket"))
	err := b.Put([]byte("answer"), []byte("42"))
	return err
})

This will set the value of the "answer" key to "42" in the MyBucket bucket. To retrieve this value, we can use the Bucket.Get() function:

db.View(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	b := tx.Bucket([]byte("MyBucket"))
	v := b.Get([]byte("answer"))
	fmt.Printf("The answer is: %s\n", v)
	return nil
})

The Get() function does not return an error because its operation is guaranteed to work (unless there is some kind of system failure). If the key exists then it will return its byte slice value. If it doesn’t exist then it will return nil. It’s important to note that you can have a zero-length value set to a key which is different than the key not existing.

Use the Bucket.Delete() function to delete a key from the bucket:

db.Update(func (tx *bolt.Tx) error {
    b := tx.Bucket([]byte("MyBucket"))
    err := b.Delete([]byte("answer"))
    return err
})

This will delete the key answers from the bucket MyBucket.

Please note that values returned from Get() are only valid while the transaction is open. If you need to use a value outside of the transaction then you must use copy() to copy it to another byte slice.

Autoincrementing integer for the bucket

By using the NextSequence() function, you can let Bolt determine a sequence which can be used as the unique identifier for your key/value pairs. See the example below.

// CreateUser saves u to the store. The new user ID is set on u once the data is persisted.
func (s *Store) CreateUser(u *User) error {
    return s.db.Update(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
        // Retrieve the users bucket.
        // This should be created when the DB is first opened.
        b := tx.Bucket([]byte("users"))

        // Generate ID for the user.
        // This returns an error only if the Tx is closed or not writeable.
        // That can't happen in an Update() call so I ignore the error check.
        id, _ := b.NextSequence()
        u.ID = int(id)

        // Marshal user data into bytes.
        buf, err := json.Marshal(u)
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }

        // Persist bytes to users bucket.
        return b.Put(itob(u.ID), buf)
    })
}

// itob returns an 8-byte big endian representation of v.
func itob(v int) []byte {
    b := make([]byte, 8)
    binary.BigEndian.PutUint64(b, uint64(v))
    return b
}

type User struct {
    ID int
    ...
}

Iterating over keys

Bolt stores its keys in byte-sorted order within a bucket. This makes sequential iteration over these keys extremely fast. To iterate over keys we’ll use a Cursor:

db.View(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	// Assume bucket exists and has keys
	b := tx.Bucket([]byte("MyBucket"))

	c := b.Cursor()

	for k, v := c.First(); k != nil; k, v = c.Next() {
		fmt.Printf("key=%s, value=%s\n", k, v)
	}

	return nil
})

The cursor allows you to move to a specific point in the list of keys and move forward or backward through the keys one at a time.

The following functions are available on the cursor:

First()  Move to the first key.
Last()   Move to the last key.
Seek()   Move to a specific key.
Next()   Move to the next key.
Prev()   Move to the previous key.

Each of those functions has a return signature of (key []byte, value []byte). You must seek to a position using First(), Last(), or Seek() before calling Next() or Prev(). If you do not seek to a position then these functions will return a nil key.

When you have iterated to the end of the cursor, then Next() will return a nil key and the cursor still points to the last element if present. When you have iterated to the beginning of the cursor, then Prev() will return a nil key and the cursor still points to the first element if present.

If you remove key/value pairs during iteration, the cursor may automatically move to the next position if present in current node each time removing a key. When you call c.Next() after removing a key, it may skip one key/value pair.
Refer to pull/611 to get more detailed info.

During iteration, if the key is non-nil but the value is nil, that means the key refers to a bucket rather than a value. Use Bucket.Bucket() to access the sub-bucket.

Prefix scans

To iterate over a key prefix, you can combine Seek() and bytes.HasPrefix():

db.View(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	// Assume bucket exists and has keys
	c := tx.Bucket([]byte("MyBucket")).Cursor()

	prefix := []byte("1234")
	for k, v := c.Seek(prefix); k != nil && bytes.HasPrefix(k, prefix); k, v = c.Next() {
		fmt.Printf("key=%s, value=%s\n", k, v)
	}

	return nil
})

Range scans

Another common use case is scanning over a range such as a time range. If you use a sortable time encoding such as RFC3339 then you can query a specific date range like this:

db.View(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	// Assume our events bucket exists and has RFC3339 encoded time keys.
	c := tx.Bucket([]byte("Events")).Cursor()

	// Our time range spans the 90's decade.
	min := []byte("1990-01-01T00:00:00Z")
	max := []byte("2000-01-01T00:00:00Z")

	// Iterate over the 90's.
	for k, v := c.Seek(min); k != nil && bytes.Compare(k, max) <= 0; k, v = c.Next() {
		fmt.Printf("%s: %s\n", k, v)
	}

	return nil
})

Note that, while RFC3339 is sortable, the Golang implementation of RFC3339Nano does not use a fixed number of digits after the decimal point and is therefore not sortable.

ForEach()

You can also use the function ForEach() if you know you’ll be iterating over all the keys in a bucket:

db.View(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
	// Assume bucket exists and has keys
	b := tx.Bucket([]byte("MyBucket"))

	b.ForEach(func(k, v []byte) error {
		fmt.Printf("key=%s, value=%s\n", k, v)
		return nil
	})
	return nil
})

Please note that keys and values in ForEach() are only valid while the transaction is open. If you need to use a key or value outside of the transaction, you must use copy() to copy it to another byte slice.

Nested buckets

You can also store a bucket in a key to create nested buckets. The API is the same as the bucket management API on the DB object:

func (*Bucket) CreateBucket(key []byte) (*Bucket, error)
func (*Bucket) CreateBucketIfNotExists(key []byte) (*Bucket, error)
func (*Bucket) DeleteBucket(key []byte) error

Say you had a multi-tenant application where the root level bucket was the account bucket. Inside of this bucket was a sequence of accounts which themselves are buckets. And inside the sequence bucket you could have many buckets pertaining to the Account itself (Users, Notes, etc) isolating the information into logical groupings.


// createUser creates a new user in the given account.
func createUser(accountID int, u *User) error {
    // Start the transaction.
    tx, err := db.Begin(true)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    defer tx.Rollback()

    // Retrieve the root bucket for the account.
    // Assume this has already been created when the account was set up.
    root := tx.Bucket([]byte(strconv.FormatUint(accountID, 10)))

    // Setup the users bucket.
    bkt, err := root.CreateBucketIfNotExists([]byte("USERS"))
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }

    // Generate an ID for the new user.
    userID, err := bkt.NextSequence()
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    u.ID = userID

    // Marshal and save the encoded user.
    if buf, err := json.Marshal(u); err != nil {
        return err
    } else if err := bkt.Put([]byte(strconv.FormatUint(u.ID, 10)), buf); err != nil {
        return err
    }

    // Commit the transaction.
    if err := tx.Commit(); err != nil {
        return err
    }

    return nil
}

Database backups

Bolt is a single file so it’s easy to backup. You can use the Tx.WriteTo() function to write a consistent view of the database to a writer. If you call this from a read-only transaction, it will perform a hot backup and not block your other database reads and writes.

By default, it will use a regular file handle which will utilize the operating system’s page cache. See the Tx documentation for information about optimizing for larger-than-RAM datasets.

One common use case is to backup over HTTP so you can use tools like cURL to do database backups:

func BackupHandleFunc(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
	err := db.View(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
		w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "application/octet-stream")
		w.Header().Set("Content-Disposition", `attachment; filename="my.db"`)
		w.Header().Set("Content-Length", strconv.Itoa(int(tx.Size())))
		_, err := tx.WriteTo(w)
		return err
	})
	if err != nil {
		http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusInternalServerError)
	}
}

Then you can backup using this command:

$ curl http://localhost/backup > my.db

Or you can open your browser to http://localhost/backup and it will download automatically.

If you want to backup to another file you can use the Tx.CopyFile() helper function.

Statistics

The database keeps a running count of many of the internal operations it performs so you can better understand what’s going on. By grabbing a snapshot of these stats at two points in time we can see what operations were performed in that time range.

For example, we could start a goroutine to log stats every 10 seconds:

go func() {
	// Grab the initial stats.
	prev := db.Stats()

	for {
		// Wait for 10s.
		time.Sleep(10 * time.Second)

		// Grab the current stats and diff them.
		stats := db.Stats()
		diff := stats.Sub(&prev)

		// Encode stats to JSON and print to STDERR.
		json.NewEncoder(os.Stderr).Encode(diff)

		// Save stats for the next loop.
		prev = stats
	}
}()

It’s also useful to pipe these stats to a service such as statsd for monitoring or to provide an HTTP endpoint that will perform a fixed-length sample.

Read-Only Mode

Sometimes it is useful to create a shared, read-only Bolt database. To this, set the Options.ReadOnly flag when opening your database. Read-only mode uses a shared lock to allow multiple processes to read from the database but it will block any processes from opening the database in read-write mode.

db, err := bolt.Open("my.db", 0600, &bolt.Options{ReadOnly: true})
if err != nil {
	log.Fatal(err)
}

Mobile Use (iOS/Android)

Bolt is able to run on mobile devices by leveraging the binding feature of the gomobile tool. Create a struct that will contain your database logic and a reference to a *bolt.DB with a initializing constructor that takes in a filepath where the database file will be stored. Neither Android nor iOS require extra permissions or cleanup from using this method.

func NewBoltDB(filepath string) *BoltDB {
	db, err := bolt.Open(filepath+"/demo.db", 0600, nil)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	return &BoltDB{db}
}

type BoltDB struct {
	db *bolt.DB
	...
}

func (b *BoltDB) Path() string {
	return b.db.Path()
}

func (b *BoltDB) Close() {
	b.db.Close()
}

Database logic should be defined as methods on this wrapper struct.

To initialize this struct from the native language (both platforms now sync their local storage to the cloud. These snippets disable that functionality for the database file):

Android

String path;
if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >=android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP){
    path = getNoBackupFilesDir().getAbsolutePath();
} else{
    path = getFilesDir().getAbsolutePath();
}
Boltmobiledemo.BoltDB boltDB = Boltmobiledemo.NewBoltDB(path)

iOS

- (void)demo {
    NSString* path = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSLibraryDirectory,
                                                          NSUserDomainMask,
                                                          YES) objectAtIndex:0];
	GoBoltmobiledemoBoltDB * demo = GoBoltmobiledemoNewBoltDB(path);
	[self addSkipBackupAttributeToItemAtPath:demo.path];
	//Some DB Logic would go here
	[demo close];
}

- (BOOL)addSkipBackupAttributeToItemAtPath:(NSString *) filePathString
{
    NSURL* URL= [NSURL fileURLWithPath: filePathString];
    assert([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath: [URL path]]);

    NSError *error = nil;
    BOOL success = [URL setResourceValue: [NSNumber numberWithBool: YES]
                                  forKey: NSURLIsExcludedFromBackupKey error: &error];
    if(!success){
        NSLog(@"Error excluding %@ from backup %@", [URL lastPathComponent], error);
    }
    return success;
}

Resources

For more information on getting started with Bolt, check out the following articles:

Comparison with other databases

Reading the Source

Bolt is a relatively small code base (<5KLOC) for an embedded, serializable, transactional key/value database so it can be a good starting point for people interested in how databases work.

The best places to start are the main entry points into Bolt:

  • Open() - Initializes the reference to the database. It’s responsible for creating the database if it doesn’t exist, obtaining an exclusive lock on the file, reading the meta pages, & memory-mapping the file.

  • DB.Begin() - Starts a read-only or read-write transaction depending on the value of the writable argument. This requires briefly obtaining the “meta” lock to keep track of open transactions. Only one read-write transaction can exist at a time so the “rwlock” is acquired during the life of a read-write transaction.

  • Bucket.Put() - Writes a key/value pair into a bucket. After validating the arguments, a cursor is used to traverse the B+tree to the page and position where the key & value will be written. Once the position is found, the bucket materializes the underlying page and the page’s parent pages into memory as “nodes”. These nodes are where mutations occur during read-write transactions. These changes get flushed to disk during commit.

  • Bucket.Get() - Retrieves a key/value pair from a bucket. This uses a cursor to move to the page & position of a key/value pair. During a read-only transaction, the key and value data is returned as a direct reference to the underlying mmap file so there’s no allocation overhead. For read-write transactions, this data may reference the mmap file or one of the in-memory node values.

  • Cursor - This object is simply for traversing the B+tree of on-disk pages or in-memory nodes. It can seek to a specific key, move to the first or last value, or it can move forward or backward. The cursor handles the movement up and down the B+tree transparently to the end user.

  • Tx.Commit() - Converts the in-memory dirty nodes and the list of free pages into pages to be written to disk. Writing to disk then occurs in two phases. First, the dirty pages are written to disk and an fsync() occurs. Second, a new meta page with an incremented transaction ID is written and another fsync() occurs. This two phase write ensures that partially written data pages are ignored in the event of a crash since the meta page pointing to them is never written. Partially written meta pages are invalidated because they are written with a checksum.

If you have additional notes that could be helpful for others, please submit them via pull request.

Known Issues

Please also refer to the discussion in https://github.com/etcd-io/bbolt/issues/562.

Articles

  • coming soon...