Best way to serilize Itemstack to Database (using a string)

Plugins Plugin Development
1

I am looking for the best way to save an ItemStack to a database, I attempted to just flat out add it and there were, lets just say, issues.

I know that I have done this before with bukkit, but sadly I cant use that snippet here.

I also know that you can serialize it using a configNode, but I am not sure if that is the best possible way to do so.

As always, any help given is greatly appreciated!

2

ItemStacks are DataSerializable. Take a look at sponge’s DataSerializable TypeSerializer: https://github.com/SpongePowered/SpongeCommon/blob/stable-7/src/main/java/org/spongepowered/common/config/DataSerializableTypeSerializer.java

3

I have made a few methods that will turn an ItemStack into a configurationNode, but I am not sure how I can turn that into a string and how to load that string back into a node.

4

To persist an ItemStack, or any other kind of DataSerializable, you should use the toContainer method to serialize it, and use DataContainer's getSerializable method to deserialize it. To convert a DataContainer / DataView to a data format, use an instance of DataFormat; there are ones for NBT and JSON provided in DataFormats. I am not sure why you are fixated on saving it as a string; it is far less efficient both in computation speed and in size to use a string. Instead, use a blob datatype, and save the item as NBT.
Example code:

DataContainer container = itemstack.toContainer();
PipedInputStream is = new PipedInputStream();
try (PipedOutputStream os = new PipedOutputStream(is)) {
    preparedStatement.setBlob(indexOfItem, is);
    DataFormats.NBT.writeTo(os, container);
}

Blob blob = resultSet.getBlob(indexOfItem);
try (InputStream is = blob.getBinaryStream()) {
    DataContainer container = DataFormats.NBT.readFrom(is);
    ItemStack itemstack = container.getSerializable(DataQuery.of(), ItemStack.class);
} finally {
    blob.free();
}
5

I appreciate the info, I will give it a try, as for why I am looking to make it a string, that is because I need to save it to a database and I cant save the ItemStack to a database nor can I save a ConfigurationNode. I know that I can store a string to the db however.

6

You can save a lot more than strings to databases. You can save numbers and datetimes and all sorts of line noise. More importantly, you can save raw binary, which is the correct format to store things that are best represented in raw binary, such as NBT data. I would hazard a guess that your primary keys are UUIDs stored as strings as well; this would be a good time to switch those over to BLOBs as well.

Also, the only time you should be using ConfigurationNode is when you’re working with configuration. It’s in the name. It’s optimized for reading and readability, not writing or compactness. You are attempting to store data, therefore you should use DataContainer and friends.

7

Yeah, I wasnt wanting to use configurationNodes, but it was suggested and I was giving it a shot. I will work on implementing BLOBs into my code to save the data to the database. Thanks again pie.

-Edit-
Ok, I have looked around for a while, and I cant seem to find anything else abouot BLOBs, and how to use them, What is the preparedStatement, and can you explain to me how exactly this works and what it does, or point me in to a document or something about it XD.

-Edit x2-
I am using Morphia which uses MongoDB to store the database. (in case that helps at all)