Bootstrapping a database
Let’s discuss game initialization. In start()
method, we need to populate
Tarantool spaces with pokémon data. Why not keep all game data in memory?
Why use a database? The answer is: persistence.
Without a database, we risk losing data on power outage, for example.
But if we store our data in an in-memory database, Tarantool takes care to
persist it on disk whenever it’s changed. This gives us one more benefit:
quick startup in case of failure.
Tarantool has a smart algorithm that quickly
loads all data from disk into memory on startup, so the warm-up takes little time.
We’ll be using functions from Tarantool built-in box module:
box.schema.create_space('pokemons')
to create a space namedpokemon
for storing information about pokémons (we don’t create a similar space for players, because we intend to only send/receive player information via API calls, so we needn’t store it);box.space.pokemons:create_index('primary', {type = 'hash', parts = {1, 'unsigned'}})
to create a primary HASH index by pokémon ID;box.space.pokemons:create_index('status', {type = 'tree', parts = {2, 'str'}})
to create a secondary TREE index by pokémon status.
Notice the parts =
argument in the index specification. The pokémon ID is
the first field in a Tarantool tuple since it’s the first member of the respective
Avro type. So does the pokémon status. The actual JSON document may have ID or
status fields at any position of the JSON map.
The implementation of start()
method looks like this:
-- create game object
start = function(self)
-- create spaces and indexes
box.once('init', function()
box.schema.create_space('pokemons')
box.space.pokemons:create_index(
"primary", {type = 'hash', parts = {1, 'unsigned'}}
)
box.space.pokemons:create_index(
"status", {type = "tree", parts = {2, 'str'}}
)
end)
-- create models
local ok_m, pokemon = avro.create(schema.pokemon)
local ok_p, player = avro.create(schema.player)
if ok_m and ok_p then
-- compile models
local ok_cm, compiled_pokemon = avro.compile(pokemon)
local ok_cp, compiled_player = avro.compile(player)
if ok_cm and ok_cp then
-- start the game
<...>
else
log.error('Schema compilation failed')
end
else
log.info('Schema creation failed')
end
return false
end