Types

POD types

Since all types in the database are POD types, we must often provide mappings between outside types and the types actually stored in the database.

A common case is mapping infallible types to and from bitflags and/or their raw integer representation. For example, the OutputFlag type or bool types.

As types like enums, bools and chars cannot be casted from an integer infallibly, bytemuck::Pod cannot be implemented on it safely. Thus, we store some infallible version of it inside the database with a custom type and map them when fetching the data.

Lean types

Another reason why database crates define their own types is to cut any unneeded data from the type.

Many of the types used in normal operation (e.g. cuprate_types::VerifiedBlockInformation) contain lots of extra pre-processed data for convenience.

This would be a waste to store in the database, so in this example, the much leaner "raw" BlockInfo type is stored.