appendable-buffer

A data structure on top of raw buffers that lets you append to buffers.

First, allocate a large (say, 1mb) buffer fill with zeros. Then inside of that, we create linked lists of contigious regions (blocks). lets say we have a lot of lists of numbers, and we don't know how many we'll need. We start of allocating enough space for say 8 items - then when that fills, we append another block but this time for 16 and so on. On average everything will be half full, and we can access any point by following the pointers - since each block gets bigger, we only need to follow O(log(N)) links, which is acceptable. Also, it can be quickly read in or written to disk without parsing, and it will not interact with garbage collection, since that doesn't touch raw memory.

example

var Appendable = require('appendable-buffer')
var b = new Buffer(1024*1024)
var a = Appendable(b)
//get a block that fits 8 32 bit ints
var i = a.alloc(4*8)
//write values to that block + offset within that block
a.writeUInt32BE(1, i, 0)
a.writeUInt32BE(2, i, 4)
a.writeUInt32BE(1, i, 8)
a.writeUInt32BE(3, i, 12)
a.writeUInt32BE(4, i, 16)
a.writeUInt32BE(5, i, 20)
a.writeUInt32BE(6, i, 24)
a.writeUInt32BE(7, i, 28)
a.writeUInt32BE(8, i, 32)
//we cannot write past the end!
assert.throws(function () {
  a.writeUInt32BE(9, i, 36)
})

//but we can extend the buffer
var i2 = a.alloc(16*4, i)
//i2 is the second block. we can access this directly,
//or via the first block.
a.writeUInt32BE(9, i, 36)

assert.equal(a.readUInt32BE(i, 36), a.readUInt32BE(i2, 0))

api: a = Appendable(buffer)

create an instance from a new buffer (or reload a buffer from disk)

a.available()

return the amount of space available in bytes

new_block_index = a.alloc(size, block_index?)

allocate another block, appending to block_index if it is provided. returns the index of the newly created block.

a.writeUInt32BE (value, block_index, index)

write a 32 bit int to the blockat block_index. follows links to the next block if necessary, and throws if index is out of bounds.

value = a.readUInt32BE (block_index, index)

read a 32 bit int to the block at block_index. follows links to the next block if necessary, and throws if index is out of bounds.

size = a.size(block_index)

sum the size of the block at block_index and link from there.

License

MIT