valkeyrie provides a Go native library to store metadata using Distributed Key/Value stores (or common databases).

A storage backend in valkeyrie implements (fully or partially) the Store interface.

Etcd versions >= 2.0 with APIv2 (deprecated)

Support for etcd comes with two API versions: APIv2 and APIv3. We recommend you use the new APIv3 because of incompatibilities of APIv2 with other stores. Use APIv2 only if you plan to support older versions of etcd.

In the case you plan to support etcd with APIv2, please be aware of some pitfalls.

etcd with APIv2 makes the distinction between keys and directories. The result with valkeyrie is that when using the etcd driver:

• You cannot store values on directories
• You cannot invoke WatchTree (watching on child values), on a regular key

This is fundamental difference from stores like Consul and zookeeper which are more permissive and allow the same set of operations on keys and directories (called a Node for zookeeper).

etcd cannot put values on directories, so this puts a major restriction compared to Consul and zookeeper.

If you want to support all those three backends, you should make sure to only put data on leaves.

For example:

package example

import (
	"context"

	"github.com/kvtools/valkeyrie/store"
)

func foo(ctx context.Context, kv store.Store) {
	_ = kv.Put(ctx, "path/to/key/bis", []byte("foo"), nil)
	_ = kv.Put(ctx, "path/to/key", []byte("bar"), nil)
}

Will work on Consul and zookeeper but fail for etcd. This is because the first Put in the case of etcd will recursively create the directory hierarchy and path/to/key is now considered as a directory. Thus, values should always be stored on leaves if the support for all backends is planned.

When initializing the WatchTree, the natural way to do so is through the following code:

package example

import (
	"context"

	"github.com/kvtools/valkeyrie/store"
)

func foo(ctx context.Context, kv store.Store) error {
	key := "path/to/key"
	exists, _ := kv.Exists(ctx, key, nil)
	if !exists {
		err := kv.Put(ctx, key, []byte("data"), nil)
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
	}

	events, err := kv.WatchTree(key, nil, nil)
	// ...

	return nil
}

The code above will not work across backends and etcd with APIv2 will fail on the WatchTree call. What happens exactly:

• Consul will create a regular key because it has no distinction between directories and keys. This is not an issue as we can invoke WatchTree on regular keys.
• zookeeper is going to create a node that can either be a directory or a key during the lifetime of a program, but it does not matter as a directory can hold values and be watchable like a regular key.
• etcd is going to create a regular key. We cannot invoke WatchTree on regular keys using etcd.

To use WatchTree with every supported backend, we need to enforce a parameter that is only interpreted with etcd APIv2 and which asks the client to create a directory instead of a key.

package example

import (
	"context"

	"github.com/kvtools/valkeyrie/store"
)

func foo(ctx context.Context, kv store.Store) error {
	key := "path/to/key"
	exists, _ := kv.Exists(ctx, key, nil)
	if !exists {
		// We enforce IsDir = true to make sure etcd creates a directory
		err := kv.Put(ctx, key, []byte("data"), &store.WriteOptions{IsDir: true})
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
	}

	events, err := kv.WatchTree(ctx, key, nil)
	// ...

	return nil
}

The code above will work for all backends but make sure not to try to store any value on that path as the call to Put will fail for etcd (you can only put at path/to/key/foo, path/to/key/bar for example).