Tricks

Bucket self-increasing key

Use NextSequence() to create self-incrementing keys, as shown in the following example

// 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
    ...
}

Nested bucket

Very simple, buckets can achieve nested storage

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

Example

Suppose you have a multi-tenant application where the root level bucket is the account bucket. The bucket contains a sequence of accounts, which are buckets themselves. In a sequential bucket, there may be many related buckets (Users, Note s, etc.).

// 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
}

Traversal key values

In buckets, key-value pairs are byte-ordered according to the value of the key.
Iterate it using Bucket.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
})

Cursor has five ways to iterate

1. First() Move to the first key. 
2. Last() Move to the last key.
3. Seek() Move to a specific key.
4. Next() Move to the next key.
5. Prev() Move to the previous key.

Each method returns (key []byte, value []byte) two values
Returns two nil values when the value specified by the method does not exist, in the following cases:

1. When iterating to the last key-value pair, call Cursor.Next() again
2. Call Cursor.Prev() when the current reference is the first key-value pair
3. When the initial position is specified using 4.Next() and 5. Prev() methods instead of 1.First() 2.Last() 3. Seek().

Special case: when the key is non-nil but the value is nil, it means that this is a nested bucket, and the value value is a Bucket.Bucket() method is used to access the bucket, and the parameter is the key value.

db.View(func(tx *bolt.Tx) error {
    c := b.Cursor()
    fmt.Println(c.First())
    k, v := c.Prev()
    fmt.Println(k == nil, v == nil) // true,true

    if k != nil && v == nil {
        subBucket := b.Bucket()
        // doanything
    }
    return nil
})

Prefix traversal

By using Cursor, we can do some special traversals, such as traversing key-value pairs with specific prefixes.

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 traversal

Traversing in a range, such as: using a sorted time encoding (RFC3339), can traverse the data of a specific date range.

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
})

: The RFC3339 Nano implemented by Golang is not sortable

ForEach

In the case of value in the bucket, you can use ForEach() traversal

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
})

: The key-value pairs traversed in ForEach() require copy() to be used outside of the transaction.