What is Oklahoma Mixer?

Oklahoma Mixer is a Ruby FFI interface to the C library for Tokyo Cabinet. It allows you to use the key-value store from Ruby.

Why not just use rufus-tokyo?

There is already a Ruby FFI interface to Tokyo Cabinet and more called rufus-tokyo. I am a huge fan of rufus-tokyo and have contributed to that project. I have learned a ton from working with rufus-tokyo and that code was my inspiration for this library.

That said, I did want to change some things that would require big changes in rufus-tokyo. Here are the things I plan to do differently with Oklahoma Mixer:

  • Tokyo Cabinet’s B+Tree Database has some neat features, like custom ordering functions, that are hard to expose through rufus-tokyo due to the way it is designed. I would have had to rewrite pretty much that entire section of the library anyway to add these features.

  • There are some places where rufus-tokyo uses more memory than it absolutely must or slows itself down a bit with extra iterations of the data. Again, this is a result of how it is designed. It allows more code reuse at the cost of some efficiency. I wanted to improve performance in those areas.

  • I’m working on some higher level abstractions for Tokyo Cabinet that I eventually plan to include in this library. These extra tools are the reason I needed to make these changes and additions.

  • Finally, rufus-tokyo paved the way to a Ruby-like interface for Tokyo Cabinet. Previous choices were scary in comparison. I wanted to push that movement even further though and get an even more Hash- and File-like interface, where possible.

It’s important to note though that rufus-tokyo does do some things better and it always will. Its advantages are:

  • It offers a nice Ruby interface over a raw C extension which is faster than using FFI. I have no intention of duplicating that interface, so rufus-tokyo will remain the right choice for raw speed when using MRI.

  • For now, rufus-tokyo is more full featured. It provides interfaces for Tokyo Tyrant and Tokyo Dystopia. I would like to add these eventually, but I’m starting with just Tokyo Cabinet.

  • It offers a pure Ruby interface for communicating with Tokyo Tyrant without needing the C libraries installed. I won’t be copying that either, so it will remain the right choice for a no dependency install.

  • For now, it’s more mature. A lot of developers have used it and contributed to it. It’s probably the safer library to trust for production applications at this time.

Why did you call it Oklahoma Mixer?

When I was in Japan, people would ask where I was from. When I would tell them, “Oklahoma, U.S.A.,” they often replied with, “Ah, I know the Oklahoma Mixer.” Some would even dance a little when they said it.

It turns out Oklahoma Mixer is a song in Japan. I had to track it down in a music store. It’s kind of a camp song medley, including things like the Hokey Pokey. I’m not too sure what that has to do with Oklahoma, but at least they had heard of where I’m from.

On a more practical side, this interface to Tokyo Cabinet is from Oklahoma. I intend it to mix together all of the great features of that library in some exciting new ways. Thus, Oklahoma Mixer it is.