Database Files

Location

By default, RacksDB expects the database to be located in /var/lib/racksdb directory, splitted into multiple files.

RacksDB can load databases at the location of your choice, at the condition of specifying the path in racksdb command options and library load() arguments. For this reason, it is highly recommended to use the default path.

Files Tree

RacksDB database can be stored in a single YAML file. However, for obvious maintenaibility reasons, it is recommended to split the database into multiple files. RacksDB can load a database by walking into a directory recursively. It loads all YAML formatted files with .yml extension. It perfoms a mapping between the files hierarchy and the resulting YAML tree.

When a folder is suffixed by .l, RacksDB considers the files in this folder to be members of a sequence (aka. list or array). The content of each of these files is an item in this list. In this case, the filename is ignored.

In other folders, the files are considered to be a key/value pair of a mapping (aka. hash or associative array). The filename without its extension is the key, the value is the content of the file.

Following these principles, users are free to choose the level of fragmentation in the database model, at their own convenience.

Show basic example

For example, consider this basic example YAML file:

apples:
- variety: granny smith
  color: green
- variety: golden
  color: yellow
stocks:
  apples:
    granny smith: 10
    golden: 20

It is strictly identical to this folder tree:

📂 apples.l/
  📄 granny.yml
  📄 golden.yml
📂 stocks/
  📄 apples.yml

With the following files content:

granny.yml

variety: granny smith
color: green

golden.yml

variety: golden
color: yellow

apples.yml

granny smith: 10
golden: 20

Examples

When RacksDB is installed, full examples of databases are available in path /usr/share/doc/racksdb/examples/db/. Database contained in a single YAML file and databases splitted in a tree of YAML files can be found in this folder.

Examples are also available in source code Git repository.