KirbyBase is a class that allows you to create
and manipulate simple, plain-text databases. You can use it in either a
single-user or client-server mode. You can select records for
retrieval/updating using code blocks.
History:
- This is a completely new version. The interface has changed dramatically.
- Changed the interface to KirbyBase#new
and KirbyBase#create_table. You now
specify arguments via a code block or as part of the argument list.
- Added the ability to specify a class at table creation time. Thereafter,
whenever you do a select, the result set will be an array of instances of
that class, instead of instances of Struct. You can also use instances of
this class as the argument to KBTable#insert, KBTable#update, and
KBTable#set.
- Added the ability to encrypt a table so that it is no longer stored as a
plain-text file.
- Added the ability to explicity specify that you want a result set to be
sorted in ascending order.
- Added the ability to import a csv file into an existing table.
- Added the ability to select a record as if the table were a Hash with
it‘s key being the recno field.
- Added the ability to update a record as if the table were a Hash with
it‘s key being the recno field.
- By far the biggest change in this version is that I have completely
redesigned the internal structure of the database code. Because the KirbyBase and KBTable classes were too tightly
coupled, I have created a KBEngine class and moved all low-level I/O logic
and locking logic to this class. This allowed me to restructure the KirbyBase class to remove all of the methods that
should have been private, but couldn‘t be because of the coupling to
KBTable. In addition, it has allowed me to take all of the low-level code
that should not have been in the KBTable class and put it where it belongs,
as part of the underlying engine. I feel that the design of KirbyBase is much cleaner now. No changes were
made to the class interfaces, so you should not have to change any of your
code.
- Changed str_to_date and str_to_datetime to use Date#parse method.
- Changed pack method so that it no longer reads the whole file into memory
while packing it.
- Changed code so that special character sequences like &linefeed; can be
part of input data and KirbyBase will not
interpret it as special characters.
- Fixed a bug in with_write_lock.
- Fixed a bug that occurred if @record_class was a nested class.
2005-09-08: | Version 2.3 Beta 1
|
- Added ability to specify one-to-one links between tables.
- Added ability to specify one-to-many links between tables.
- Added ability to specify calculated fields in tables.
- Added Memo and Blob field types.
- Added indexing to speed up queries.
2005-10-03: | Version 2.3 Beta 2
|
- New column type: :YAML. Many thanks to Logan Capaldo for this idea!
- Two new methods: add_table_column and drop_table_column.
- I have refined the select code so that, when you are doing a one-to-one or
one-to-many select, if an appropriate index exists for the child table, KirbyBase automatically uses it.
- I have changed the designation for a one-to-one link from Link-> to
Lookup-> after googling helped me see that this is a more correct term
for what I am trying to convey with this link type.
2005-10-10: | Version 2.3 Production
|
- Added the ability to designate a table field as the "key" field,
for Lookup purposes. This simply makes it easier to define Lookup fields.
- This led me to finally give in and add "the Hal Fulton Feature"
as I am forever going to designate it. You can now specify a Lookup field
simply by specifying it‘s field type as a table, for example:
:manager, :person (where :manager is the field name, and :person is the
name of a table). See the docs for the specifics or ask Hal. :)
- Added a new column type: :Time. Thanks to George Moschovitis for coding
this enhancement.
- Added more functionality to Memo and Blob fields. They are no longer just
read-only. You can now also write to them from KirbyBase. The interface for Memo and Blob fields
has changed because of this.
- Added the ability to specify, when you initialize a database connection, a
base directory where memo/blob fields will be stored.
- Changed the way indexes are handled by KBTable in client/server mode. Now,
when KBTable grabs an index from KBEngine, it will hold onto it and re-use
it unless it has been modified since the last time it grabbed it. This
speeds up subsequent queries on the same index.
- Removed the restriction that the child table had to exist before you could
define a Link_many field in create_table. I did this so that it would
possible to now define many-to-many links. See the example in the
distribution. This also goes for Lookup fields.
- Added two sample scripts: kbserverctl.rb and kbserver_daemon.rb, that show
how to set up a KirbyBase server process as a
Windows Service. Thanks to Daniel Berger for his excellent package,
win32-service.
- Thouroughly revised the manual. I used the excellent text document
formatter, AsciiDoc. Many thanks to Stuart Rackham for developing this
great tool.
- Fixed a bug in KBTable#clear that was causing the recno counter not to be
reset. Thanks to basi for this.
- Fixed a subtle bug in KBTable#create_indexes.
- Added the following new methods to KBTable: add_index, drop_index,
rename_column, change_column_type, change_column_default_value, and
change_column_required.
- Added the ability to specify a default column value at table creation time.
- Added the ability to specify, at table creation time, that a column value
is required when inserting or updating records.
- Removed add_table_column and drop_table_column from KirbyBase class and added add_column and
drop_column to KBTable class. I felt like it made more sense to have these
methods in the table‘s class rather than the database‘s class.
- Added KirbyBase#rename_table method.
- Added the ability to, upon database initialization, specify that index
creation should not happen until a table is actually opened. This speeds up
database initialization at the cost of slower table initialization later.
- Fixed a bug that had broken encrypted tables.
- Changed KBTable#pack method so that it raises an error if trying to execute
when :connect_type==:client.
- Fixed a bug where it was possible to insert records missing a required
field if using a hash. Thanks to Adam Shelly for this.
- Fixed a bug that occurred when you tried to update records using a block
and you tried to reference a field in the current record inside the block.
Much thanks to Assaph Mehr for reporting this.
- Fixed a bug that allowed you to have duplicate column names. Thanks to
Assaph Mehr for spotting this.
- Changed the way KBTable#set works with memo/blob fields.
- Started creating unit tests.
- Changed the KBTable#clear method to return number of records deleted.
Thanks to Assaph Mehr for this enhancement.
- Moved build_header_string from KBEngine class to KirbyBase class.
- Added KirbyBase::VERSION constant.
- Changed the behavior of KBTable#insert method. If user explicitly specifies
nil for a field value and there is a default value for that field, the
default value will no longer override the user specified nil value. Thanks
to Assaph Mehr for suggesting this.
- Removed NilClass#method_missing. I have replaced it with a new class called
KBNilClass. Thanks to a host of people for help on this, including: Assaph
Mehr, James Edward Gray II, Matthew Desmarais, Logan Capaldo, Trans, John
Carter, Dave Burt and anyone else I missed.
- Added conditional require logic so that KirbyBase will use FasterCVS if it is available.
Thanks to James Edward Gray II for this.
- You can now delay index creation in local mode. Thanks to Nicholas Rahn for
this.
- Added ability to allow for a custom record class with no kb_create or
kb_defaults methods. KirbyBase will return
each result record as an instance of the custom record class, and will
attempt to set attributes with the same names as the table‘s field
names equal to the values of the table record‘s fields. Thanks to Hal
Fulton for this idea.