leveldb File format
<beginning_of_file>
[data block 1]
[data block 2]
...
[data block N]
[meta block 1]
...
[meta block K]
[metaindex block]
[index block]
[Footer] (fixed size; starts at file_size - sizeof(Footer))
<end_of_file>
The file contains internal pointers. Each such pointer is called
a BlockHandle and contains the following information:
offset: varint64
size: varint64
See varints
for an explanation of varint64 format.
-
The sequence of key/value pairs in the file are stored in sorted
order and partitioned into a sequence of data blocks. These blocks
come one after another at the beginning of the file. Each data block
is formatted according to the code inblock_builder.cc
, and then
optionally compressed. -
After the data blocks we store a bunch of meta blocks. The
supported meta block types are described below. More meta block types
may be added in the future. Each meta block is again formatted using
block_builder.cc
and then optionally compressed. -
A “metaindex” block. It contains one entry for every other meta
block where the key is the name of the meta block and the value is a
BlockHandle pointing to that meta block. -
An “index” block. This block contains one entry per data block,
where the key is a string >= last key in that data block and before
the first key in the successive data block. The value is the
BlockHandle for the data block. -
At the very end of the file is a fixed length footer that contains
the BlockHandle of the metaindex and index blocks as well as a magic number.metaindex_handle: char[p]; // Block handle for metaindex index_handle: char[q]; // Block handle for index padding: char[40-p-q];// zeroed bytes to make fixed length // (40==2*BlockHandle::kMaxEncodedLength) magic: fixed64; // == 0xdb4775248b80fb57 (little-endian)
“filter” Meta Block
If a FilterPolicy
was specified when the database was opened, a
filter block is stored in each table. The “metaindex” block contains
an entry that maps from filter.<N>
to the BlockHandle for the filter
block where <N>
is the string returned by the filter policy’s
Name()
method.
The filter block stores a sequence of filters, where filter i contains
the output of FilterPolicy::CreateFilter()
on all keys that are stored
in a block whose file offset falls within the range
[ i*base ... (i+1)*base-1 ]
Currently, “base” is 2KB. So for example, if blocks X and Y start in
the range [ 0KB .. 2KB-1 ]
, all of the keys in X and Y will be
converted to a filter by calling FilterPolicy::CreateFilter()
, and the
resulting filter will be stored as the first filter in the filter
block.
The filter block is formatted as follows:
[filter 0]
[filter 1]
[filter 2]
...
[filter N-1]
[offset of filter 0] : 4 bytes
[offset of filter 1] : 4 bytes
[offset of filter 2] : 4 bytes
...
[offset of filter N-1] : 4 bytes
[offset of beginning of offset array] : 4 bytes
lg(base) : 1 byte
The offset array at the end of the filter block allows efficient
mapping from a data block offset to the corresponding filter.
“stats” Meta Block
This meta block contains a bunch of stats. The key is the name
of the statistic. The value contains the statistic.
TODO(postrelease): record following stats.
data size
index size
key size (uncompressed)
value size (uncompressed)
number of entries
number of data blocks