PEERSTORE — Extensible local persistent data storage — GNUnet documentation

# PEERSTORE — Extensible local persistent data storage

GNUnet's PEERSTORE subsystem offers persistent per-peer storage for other GNUnet subsystems. GNUnet subsystems can use PEERSTORE to persistently store and retrieve arbitrary data. Each data record stored with PEERSTORE contains the following fields:

- subsystem: Name of the subsystem responsible for the record.

- peerid: Identity of the peer this record is related to.

- key: a key string identifying the record.

- value: binary record value.

- expiry: record expiry date.

## Functionality

Subsystems can store any type of value under a (subsystem, peerid, key) combination. A "replace" flag set during store operations forces the PEERSTORE to replace any old values stored under the same (subsystem, peerid, key) combination with the new value. Additionally, an expiry date is set after which the record is *possibly* deleted by PEERSTORE.

Subsystems can iterate over all values stored under any of the following combination of fields:

- (subsystem)

- (subsystem, peerid)

- (subsystem, key)

- (subsystem, peerid, key)

Subsystems can also request to be notified about any new values stored under a (subsystem, peerid, key) combination by sending a "watch" request to PEERSTORE.

## Architecture

PEERSTORE implements the following components:

- PEERSTORE service: Handles store, iterate and watch operations.

- PEERSTORE API: API to be used by other subsystems to communicate and issue commands to the PEERSTORE service.

- PEERSTORE plugins: Handles the persistent storage. At the moment, only an "sqlite" plugin is implemented.

## libgnunetpeerstore

libgnunetpeerstore is the library containing the PEERSTORE API. Subsystems wishing to communicate with the PEERSTORE service use this API to open a connection to PEERSTORE. This is done by calling `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_connect` which returns a handle to the newly created connection. This handle has to be used with any further calls to the API.

To store a new record, the function `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_store` is to be used which requires the record fields and a continuation function that will be called by the API after the STORE request is sent to the PEERSTORE service. Note that calling the continuation function does not mean that the record is successfully stored, only that the STORE request has been successfully sent to the PEERSTORE service. `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_store_cancel` can be called to cancel the STORE request only before the continuation function has been called.

To iterate over stored records, the function `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_iterate` is to be used. peerid and key can be set to NULL. An iterator callback function will be called with each matching record found and a NULL record at the end to signal the end of result set. `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_iterate_cancel` can be used to cancel the ITERATE request before the iterator callback is called with a NULL record.

To be notified with new values stored under a (subsystem, peerid, key) combination, the function `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_watch` is to be used. This will register the watcher with the PEERSTORE service, any new records matching the given combination will trigger the callback function passed to `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_watch`. This continues until `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_watch_cancel` is called or the connection to the service is destroyed.

After the connection is no longer needed, the function `GNUNET_PEERSTORE_disconnect` can be called to disconnect from the PEERSTORE service. Any pending ITERATE or WATCH requests will be destroyed. If the `sync_first` flag is set to `GNUNET_YES`, the API will delay the disconnection until all pending STORE requests are sent to the PEERSTORE service, otherwise, the pending STORE requests will be destroyed as well.