py2store.base

Forwards to dol.base:

Base classes for making stores. In the language of the collections.abc module, a store is a MutableMapping that is configured to work with a specific representation of keys, serialization of objects (python values), and persistence of the serialized data.

That is, stores offer the same interface as a dict, but where the actual implementation of writes, reads, and listing are configurable.

Consider the following example. You’re store is meant to store waveforms as wav files on a remote server. Say waveforms are represented in python as a tuple (wf, sr), where wf is a list of numbers and sr is the sample rate, an int). The __setitem__ method will specify how to store bytes on a remote server, but you’ll need to specify how to SERIALIZE (wf, sr) to the bytes that constitute that wav file: _data_of_obj specifies that. You might also want to read those wav files back into a python (wf, sr) tuple. The __getitem__ method will get you those bytes from the server, but the store will need to know how to DESERIALIZE those bytes back into a python object: _obj_of_data specifies that

Further, say you’re storing these .wav files in /some/folder/on/the/server/, but you don’t want the store to use these as the keys. For one, it’s annoying to type and harder to read. But more importantly, it’s an irrelevant implementation detail that shouldn’t be exposed. THe _id_of_key and _key_of_id pair are what allow you to add this key interface layer.

These key converters object serialization methods default to the identity (i.e. they return the input as is). This means that you don’t have to implement these as all, and can choose to implement these concerns within the storage methods themselves.