Using .NET Core's List, Queue, and Dictionary in Couchbase

The addition of the sub-document API to Couchbase 4.5 has paved the way for efficient data structure support in Couchbase.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show a demo of three types of data structures you can use with the Couchbase .NET SDK:

• List: A list of objects, basically a List<T> backed by Couchbase.
• Queue: A queue of objects, basically a Queue<T> backed by Couchbase.
• Dictionary: A dictionary of objects, basically a Dictionary<K,T> backed by Couchbase.

I’ll also discuss a little bit how this works behind the scenes.

You can play along at home if you like. The source code for this blog is available on GitHub, and Couchbase Server is free to download (developer previews of version 5 are currently available monthly).

List

A List<T> is a .NET data structure that is held in memory. With the data structures provided by the Couchbase .NET SDK, you can store it in a Couchbase document.

To create a Couchbase-backed List:

var list = new CouchbaseList<dynamic>(bucket, "myList");

The string "myList" corresponds to the key for the document that will contain the list. When using CouchbaseList<T>, a single document with that key will be created (if one doesn’t exist already). If a document by that key already exists, CouchbaseListwill use it.

You can now add/remove items from the list and that will all be persisted to the document. You can also perform other operations like getting a count of the items in the list.

// add 10 objects to the list
for(var i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    list.Add(new { num = i, foo = "bar" + Guid.NewGuid()});

// remove an item from the list by index
list.RemoveAt(5);

// show an item from the list by index
Console.WriteLine("5th item in the list: " + list[5].foo + " / " + list[5].num);

The above code would result in a document with a key "myList" that looks like below. Notice that the item with num of 5 is not listed, because it was removed.

There’s something subtle in the above example that needs to be pointed out. Notice that I used var item = list[5]; and then item.foo and item.num in the WriteLine. If I used list[5].foo and list[5].num directly, that would result in two different subdocument calls to Couchbase. Not only is this less than optimal efficiency, but it’s possible for the values to change between the two calls.

[
  {
    "num": 0,
    "foo": "bara1fd74ee-a790-4a0f-843c-abe449cb8b1d"
  },
  {
    "num": 1,
    "foo": "bardc1d8f9a-4e93-46f9-b8ae-ec036743869e"
  },
  {
    "num": 2,
    "foo": "bar9a60abe9-1e04-4fba-bd1f-f1ec39d69f56"
  },
  {
    "num": 3,
    "foo": "bar9566605b-7abf-4a0c-aa9d-63b98ce86274"
  },
  {
    "num": 4,
    "foo": "bar6261323f-de50-42a7-a8a7-6fcafb356deb"
  },
  {
    "num": 6,
    "foo": "bar13832bcb-2aa0-491a-a01f-1d496f999ffc"
  },

  // ... etc ...
]

Queue

Very similar to List, you can create a Couchbase-backed queue:

var queue = new CouchbaseQueue<dynamic>(bucket, "myQueue");

A queue is stored just like a list. The difference is that the ordering is significant, and this is reflected by the operations you perform on a queue: Enqueue and Dequeue.

for(var i = 0; i < 3; i++)
    queue.Enqueue(new { num = i, foo = "baz" + Guid.NewGuid()});

// dequeue
var item = queue.Dequeue();
Console.WriteLine("item num " + item.num + " was dequeued. There are now " + queue.Count + " items left in the queue.");

The above code would result in a document with a key "myQueue" (see JSON below). Notice there is no object in the array with num "0" because it was dequeued.

[
  {
    "num": 1,
    "foo": "baz64bb62b6-bf23-4e52-b584-d2fa02accce6"
  },
  {
    "num": 2,
    "foo": "baz0a160bd9-aa7b-4c45-9e19-d1a3d982a554"
  }
]

Dictionary

Hopefully, you’re seeing a pattern now. To create a dictionary:

var dict = new CouchbaseDictionary<string,dynamic>(bucket, "myDict");

Again, a document will be created with the given key. The operations that can be performed include Add, Remove, and the indexer [] operation.

for(var i = 0; i < 5; i++)
    dict.Add("key" + Guid.NewGuid(), new { num = i, foo = "qux" + Guid.NewGuid()} );

// print out keys in the dictionary
Console.WriteLine("There are " + dict.Keys.Count + " keys in the dictionary.");
foreach(var key in dict.Keys)
    Console.WriteLine("key: " + key + ", value.num: " + dict[key].num);

A dictionary document looks like:

{
  "key5aa2520d-123c-4fca-b444-b0cb8846d46e": {
    "num": 0,
    "foo": "qux93b197dc-f175-4246-a38d-7b080eb9bea0"
  },
  "key55dee298-14c6-4da7-97a8-66c69d7e8a70": {
    "num": 1,
    "foo": "quxa593ee4c-682c-402d-887b-3f09f029e9b6"
  },
  "key3386afcf-7b70-4e4d-b9ae-6defbca33fe7": {
    "num": 2,
    "foo": "qux1259ae94-1008-4e1f-86a1-bfbd0873b09b"
  },
  "key2bc8c451-f125-4282-9fb4-7ea15f4b3168": {
    "num": 3,
    "foo": "qux1b6fb62b-9918-46dc-9a2f-610a55d017ef"
  },
  "key3f7041f3-abd3-49c7-a373-454cbd2ac0fc": {
    "num": 4,
    "foo": "qux0a87655f-197d-4fb2-8a54-b1de6e288de4"
  }
}

A note about C# dynamic: I used dynamic to keep the code samples short and simple. In your application, you are probably better off using a real defined C# type. It all gets serialized to JSON in Couchbase, of course.

Behind the Scenes

Before the subdocument API was released in Couchbase Server 4.5, these data structures were possible, of course. The catch was that you would be loading up the entire document, putting it in a list, making changes to the list, and then saving the entire document. If you have large data structures, but are only reading or making changes to a single item, this would often result in wasted time and wasted bandwidth and possibly increased contention.

The sub-document API (which you can use directly; I covered it in the Sub-document API in Couchbase Server 4.5 with the .NET SDK (revisited) blog post) is used behind the scenes in CouchbaseList, CouchbaseQueue, and CouchbaseDictionary. So when you add an item to a CouchbaseList, for instance, only that item is being sent over the wire, not the entire list.

Some operations will still need to get the entire document. For instance, iterating through a collection using a foreach loop will retrieve the full document. Removing an item from a list will result in the full document being scanned. But if sub-document operations come along in the future to support those actions, the SDK implementations will be updated accordingly.

Summary

These data structures are another tool to help you manage your data. Since they use the sub-document API, they are generally more performant than a whole-document approach. For more detail, check out the Data Structures documentation.