Integer values in leveldb

Question

I would like to use leveldb to store integers and integer arrays efficiently, in both c++ and python.

For integers in C++, i could convert the int to a char array. Any suggestions for storing the int array in c++ and int and int array in python?

Answer 1

You could consider using a library like Google's protobuf (http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/) which is capable of (de)serializing structured data. For the case you mention, a repeated field would do the trick:

message List {
  repeated int64 val = 1;
}

Given the varint encoding used by protocol buffers (and depending on your range of values) this could be an efficient way to store the integers.

http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/encoding.html#varints

It is tough to say more without knowing a bit more about your use case. How many integers are going to be stored per array on average? What is the range of integer values? etc.