binary keyEncoding fails indirectly

[timkuijsten]

Guys,

I've been trying to port my application from Node to the browser using level-browserify. My code depends heavily on binary keys but unfortunately all write operations fail with the error "DataError: Data provided to an operation does not meet requirements." (Fx 45.0a2). When looking up the specs binary keys are not part of IndexedDB 1.0 but they are going to be part of IndexedDB Second Edition.

I've patched IDBWrapper to map Uint8Array keys to plain arrays in the meantime, but I think the level-js package is a better place to do this, especially considering issue #46. I was wondering if a patch that handles binary keys would be welcome. Otherwise I would suggest at least a patch that throws if keyEncoding is binary. Or maybe if idb-blob-store is the future I better open this issue there?

[mcollina]

idb-blob-store is not the future, using IndexedDB directly is. A patch that removes the IDBWrapper (and bump dependencies) is highly welcomed. We are all low on bandwidth, but we can help if you want to take the lead on this.

[timkuijsten]

Ok, but what about a patch that converts binary keys to native Arrays as a stopgap while IndexedDB Second Edition is not there yet?

[mcollina]

I'm 👍 for that on the IndexedDB patch, not on the current code, as I am not sure what IDBWrapper will think about it. Moreover, the current code is not based on the latest abstract-level-down/levelup, which had a massive change in how the keys/values are handled.

[jensarps]

Just a heads-up: IDBWrapper will probably not convert invalid keys such as ArrayBuffers (or views). The reasoning behind this is the following: Say IDBWrapper would do this; once venders implement ArrayBuffers as valid keys, IDBWrapper would need to do so as well, which would introduce a backwards-compat breaking change.

So, no support from IDBWrapper on this, sorry (IMHO, converting keys is an application responsibility, and not one of a storage engine anyways). You'd either need to do this before passing keys to IDBWrapper, or push on realizing #46.

[timkuijsten]

I agree with jensarps that this should and can not be resolved in IDBWrapper. Especially when restoring values from IDB to a JS Object. I'm working on a patch* that works with binary keys in level.js.

@mcollina as jens noted, IDBWrapper does nothing special with any type of key. Binary keys in level.js should be perfectly compatible with that.

• timkuijsten@2a69f86

[vweevers]

#83 adds support for binary keys. If the browser doesn't support it, level.js will stringify the keys. It is then up to the user to encode binary keys (using a higher-level layer such as encoding-down).