Expressing multiple columns in berkeley db in python?

Question

Say I have a simple table that contains username, firstname, lastname.

How do I express this in berkeley Db?

I'm currently using bsddb as the interface.

Cheers.

Answer 1

You have to pick one "column" as the key (must be unique; I imagine that would be "username" in your case) -- the only way searches will ever possibly happen. The other columns can be made to be the single string value of that key by any way you like, from pickling to simple joining with a character that's guaranteed to never occur in any of the columns, such as `\0' for many kind of "readable text strings".

If you need to be able to search by different keys you'll need other, supplementary and separate bsddb databases set up as "indices" into your main table -- it's lots of work, and there's lots of literature on the subject. (Alternatively, you move to a higher-abstraction technology, such as sqlite, which handles the indexing neatly on your behalf;-).