An introduction to pmemobj (part 7) - persistent lists
The pmemobj library provides non-transactional persistent atomic circular doubly-linked lists (or NTPACDLL for short) API with an interface familiar to anyone who have ever included sys/queue.h
header file - it’s in fact so similar that I considered not writing this post at all, you can just search the web for CIRCLEQ
example.
Fun fact: The exact same list code is used internally by libpmemobj in the transaction undo log implementation.
Declaring a list
Let’s start by defining the structure of the thing we want on the list:
struct note {
time_t date_created;
POBJ_LIST_ENTRY(struct note) notes;
char msg[];
};
It’s a pmem notepad :) All of the notes are going to be stored in the root object:
struct my_root {
POBJ_LIST_HEAD(plist, struct note) head;
};
The head of this list does not have to be initialized (maybe you have noticed that this is a recurring theme throughout the library, not initializing things that is).
Inserting new list entries
You can either insert an existing object to a list (POBJ_LIST_INSERT
) or allocate directly to the list (POBJ_LIST_INSERT_NEW
). You can also insert the entries anywhere in the list you want thanks to the self-explanatory _HEAD
, _TAIL
, _AFTER
and _BEFORE
macro variants.
Continuing our example, we want to add a new entry to the head of the list:
int note_construct(PMEMobjpool *pop, void *ptr, void *arg) {
struct note *n = ptr;
char *msg = arg;
pmemobj_memcpy_persist(pop, n->msg, msg, strlen(msg));
time(&n->date_created);
pmemobj_persist(pop, &n->date_created, sizeof time_t);
return 0;
}
void create_note(char *msg) {
TOID(struct my_root) root = POBJ_ROOT(pop, struct root);
size_t nlen = strlen(msg);
POBJ_LIST_INSERT_NEW_HEAD(pop, &D_RW(root)->head, notes,
sizeof(struct note) + nlen,
note_construct, msg);
}
Quite a lot happening here. You should remember the constructor from the non-transactional allocation API. Also worth noting is the allocation of flexible array in the struct note
.
Accessing list entries
Reading things from the list is done using: POBJ_LIST_FIRST
, POBJ_LIST_LAST
, POBJ_LIST_EMPTY
, POBJ_LIST_NEXT
and POBJ_LIST_PREV
. They pretty much do what it says in the name.
Let’s write functions to read our notes:
static TOID(struct note) current_note;
void note_read_init() {
TOID(struct my_root) root = POBJ_ROOT(pop, struct root);
current_note = POBJ_LIST_FIRST(&D_RO(root)->head);
}
void note_read_next() {
current_note = POBJ_LIST_NEXT(current_note, notes);
}
void note_read_prev() {
current_note = POBJ_LIST_PREV(current_note, notes);
}
void note_print(const TOID(struct note) note) {
printf("Created at %s: \n %s\n",
ctime(D_RO(note)->date_created),
D_RO(note)->msg);
}
I’ll leave it up to the reader to correctly use these functions in a CLI/GUI.
Iterating through the list
You can iterate a list in a similar fashion it’s done for internal collections. There are two macros: POBJ_LIST_FOREACH
and POBJ_LIST_FOREACH_REVERSE
. No magic here.
Reading all the notes:
void note_print_all() {
TOID(struct my_root) root = POBJ_ROOT(pop, struct root);
TOID(struct note) iter;
POBJ_LIST_FOREACH(iter, &D_RO(root)->head, notes) {
note_print(iter);
}
}
Removing entries
Just like you can insert an existing object or a new one, you can just remove entry from the list (POBJ_LIST_REMOVE
) or remove and free it (POBJ_LIST_REMOVE_FREE
).
Removing current note:
void note_remove() {
TOID(struct my_root) root = POBJ_ROOT(pop, struct root);
POBJ_LIST_REMOVE_FREE(pop, &D_RO(root)->head, current_note, notes);
}
Moving entries between lists
This is something new, POBJ_LIST_MOVE_ELEMENT
allows you to move an object from one list to another. A good use case example can be found in the PI code here. It’s used there as a task queue and once worker thread completes a task is then moved from todo list to done list.