Hello,
inspired by the great effort of Louis-Philippe with Puredis, I have started developping a library for another of the NoSQL databases out there, CouchDB.
CouchDB is a database with a RESTful interface, i.e. you connect to the database with HTTP requests and depending on the HTTP method you perform the operations. The data you send to CouchDB for storage and the data you receive back from CouchDB are JSON objects, so (more or less) as a lemma, the library also contains objects for encoding and decoding JSON data.
The current version is online at https://github.com/residuum/CouchPdb
A reason for developping the library is Ubuntu One, as it offers a free 5GB space and includes a CouchDB database.
All is in an early stage of development, so do not expect anything to work, it is still very experimental.
I mainly uploaded it to Github to discuss a few points, where I do not know how to deal with in a manner fitting Pd, especially when it comes to encoding and decoding JSON data:
- How should JSON data be dealt with in general? I am currently just
outputting one long symbol separated by spaces, so an object of {"id":1, "name": "my-name"} becomes id 1 name my-name but {"id":1, "name": "my name", "year":2011} becomes id 1 name my name year 2011 and thus breaks the pattern of "key value key value key value".
I could output this as list, which would make spaces in values not break the pattern of "key value key value key value" (really?). But is this really a way to represent data in the correct Pd way, i.e. does this data format fit the principle of least surprise?
- How should nested objects and arrays be handled? Should they be
handled at all?
- How to implement attachments (binary files) for data? Or should I
forget about this stuff and e.g. store images as base64 encoded strings? I am asking this one in particular, because one application of the object that came into my mind would be a website to upload pictures that are downloaded by a Pd patch in an installation in some gallery, or multiple gallery installations worldwide uploading snapshop images and interacting somehow.
Please do not read the code ;) I have not programmed C for ~10 years, and I have never coded anything but simple stuff for university. So actually: Read the code and give me pointers (no pun intended) to problematic code.
Best regards, Thomas