The Customizable Class

RocksDB provides a robust extension architecture, allowing the developers and community to create custom (implementations) of various classes. For example, RocksDB supports different versions of the TableFactory (PlainTable, BlockBasedTable, CuckooTable) and Env (PosixEnv, MemoryEnv, EncryptedEnv, etc). The developer is encouraged to write extensions for various RocksDB features, such as CompactionFilter, MergeOperator, and Comparator.

What has been lacking up until now is a standard way of creating and configuring these various object classes. The Customizable class is meant to address many of those issues. By inheriting from the Configurable class, Customizable objects are naturally configurable, giving the ability to configure and serialize customizable objects to the Options file without additional effort. The Customizable class provides a common framework for identifying and creating instances of these objects.

Over time, more of the existing extension classes will be converted into Customizable classes. This conversion will allow more alternative implementations to be available to the user and developer via simple configuration changes.

For terminology purposes in this document, the following terms will be used:

• Customizable: base class from which others are derived.
• Interface: base functional class (TableFactory, MergeOperator)
• Implementation: specific implementation of an interface (BlockBasedTableFactory, StringAppendMergeOperator);
• Instance: Specific run-time instantiation of an Implementation class.

This document will describe the requirements and assumptions of each type of classes.

The Interface Class

An Interface class inherits from Customizable class and provides a set of often abstract methods for the functionality of the class. Examples of interface classes include TableFactory and Env.

In addition to inheriting from Customizable, customizable interface classes must implement static Type and CreateFromString methods.

The Interface Type Method

The static const char *Type method returns a string uniquely identifying this interface class (often this string will be the name of the interface, (e.g. static const char *Type() { return "TableFactory"; }. Each interface must provide a unique type name. The Type method is used by the Object Registry to locate potential factories for instances of this class.

CreateFromString

The Status CreateFromString(const ConfigOptions&, const std::string& id, T*) method is the factory method used to create a new instance of an object of this type. The CreateFromString method can create a configure a new instance of the given interface based on the input id. All Customizable interface classes should have a CreateFromString method with this signature, only varying the type of the final argument.

The input id string can be a simple string (e.g. BlockBasedTable) identifying the name of the instance class to be created. Alternatively, the id could be a set of name-value properties -- separated by a ";" -- that denote which instance class to create and configuration parameters. For example, id=BlockBasedTable; block_size=8192, would create a BlockBasedTableFactory and initialize the BlockBasedTableOptions.block_size=8192.

The final argument to CreateFromString returns the newly created object. Depending on the interface, this may be a raw (T** result), shared (std::shared_ptr<T> *result), or unique (std::unique_ptr<T*>) pointer. On success, this will be the newly created object.

The ConfigOptions parameter controls the behavior of the CreateFromString method. For example, if ignore_unknown_options=true, then errors will not be reported if an option is not found.

The CreateFromString method should support both "built-in" and "registered" objects. The "built-in" types are built into RocksDB and are always available. The "registered" types are factories registered with the Object Registry at run-time. Helper methods are defined in include/rocksdb/utilities/customizable_util.h to make it easier to write the CreateFromString factories.

Implementation Classes

Implementation classes provide the implementation of the methods in the Interface classes (e.g. BlockBasedTableFactory and PlainTableFactory are instances of the TableFactory interface). In addition to providing the functionality required by the interface, Instance classes must implement the const char *Name() const method. This method specifies the name of this instance class (e.g., "BlockBasedTable") and is used for creating an instance of this class and will be found in the options files. Generally speaking, the

Implementation classes are strongly encouraged to provide a static const char *kClassName() method. This method returns the name of the class for this instance and is used by the reflection classes, described below. A good programming practice would be to write the kName and kClassName methods with respect to each other:

static const char *kClassName() { return "PosixEnv"; }
const char *kName() const override { return kClassName(); }

All Instances of a given Implementation should have the same Name. If there is a need to differentiate between two instances of the same class, the GetId() method should be used. For example, two instances of a FixedPrefixTransform class have the same Name (rocksdb.FixedPrefixTransform) but may have different IDs (rocksdb.FixedPrefixTransform.11 and rocksdb.FixedPrefixTransform.22). If different IDs are required for different instances, the Implementation class must provide its own implementation of the GetID() method. Note that it is the ID that is stored in the Options file and is used passed to CreateFromString.

The Name/ID may be used by the Object Registry to create new instances. Since the Object Registry does regular expression matching of its fields, it is best/simplest to avoid special regex symbols in the Name/ID (otherwise these would need to be escaped as part of the Register process).

Implementation classes are Configurable classes. Properties of an object that can be configured should be registered with the Configurable infrastructure in the class constructor:

  BlockBasedTableFactory::BlockBasedTableFactory(
    const BlockBasedTableOptions& _table_options)
    : table_options_(_table_options) {
     ...
     RegisterOptions(&table_options_, &block_based_table_type_info);
   }

See the Configurable page for more details on defining configurable options.

Advanced Customizable Properties

The IsInstanceOf method can be used to tell if a given object is an instance of the input name. Typically, this is equivalent to checking if the instance name is equivalent to the class name. However, there may be some classes that are intermediary classes (like a LRUCache is an instance of a ShardedCache as well) or have alternative historical names ('skip_list' and 'SkipListFactory'. In this case, the implementation class should implement IsInstanceOf to add itself to the check.

The Customizable base class provides reflection-like functionality via the CheckCast<T> method. This method is useful if a specific implementation of the customizable is required. For example:

    std::shared_ptr<TableFactory> table_factory;
    Status s = TableFactory::CreateFromString(ConfigOptions(), "BlockBasedTable", &table_factory);
    auto bbtf = table_factory->CheckCast<BlockBasedTableFactory>();

This example will set bbtf to the BlockBasedTableFactory. If the table_factory was not block-based, bbtf would be set to nullptr. The CheckedCast uses the kClassName method for the class in question.

Some Customizable classes are wrappers for an alternative implementation (an EnvWrapper is-a Env and has-a Env). These classes should override the const Customizable *Inner() const method to return the wrapped implementation. If a class is wrapped, the CheckedCast may traverse the inner class but the IsInstanceOf must not. As an example:

   auto lru = NewLRUCache(...);
   auto clock = NewClockCache(...);
   auto wrapper = CacheWrapper(lru); // is-a and has-a cache
   lru->IsInstanceOf("LRUCache"); // returns true
   wrapper->Inner()->>IsInstanceOf("LRUCache"); // returns true
   wrapper->IsInstanceOf("LRUCache"); // returns false
   lru->CheckedCast<LRUCache>() == wrapper->CheckedCast<LRUCache>(); // Returns non-nullptr
   clock->CheckedCast<LRUCache>(); // Returns nullptr
   lru->CheckedCast<ShardedCache>(); // Returns non-nullptr
   clock->CheckedCast<ShardedCache>(); // Returns non-nullptr

The Process for Implementing new Customizable Classes

The following steps outline a rough process for making an Interface and its Implementations fit into the Customizable methodology.

1. The basic hierarchy is established. The Interface class is changed to inherit from Customizable. The Name and kClassName methods are added to the Implementation classes.
2. The Type and CreateFromString methods are added to the Interface class. Any existing non-test implementations should be registered with the Object Registry, or created by the CreateFromString method.
3. Update the OptionTypeInfo that currently creates this object in the Options classes. This typically involves removing the custom OptionType (e.g. kMergeOperator) and associated parsing/serialization. The definition of the option in the OptionsTypeMap should be changed to use the appropriate OptionTypeInfo Customizable constructor.
4. For each of the Implementation classes, create an OptionsTypeMap and register any options as necessary
5. If necessary, the GetId, IsInstanceOf, and Inner methods are added to the implementation classes.
6. Add the appropriate tests