Is Converting Google Datastore AllocateIDs to Strings Safe?

Can I Safely Convert AllocateIDs to Strings in Datastore?

Understanding Entity Identifiers

In Google Cloud Datastore, each entity has an identifier that can be either a string key name or an integer numeric ID (intID). The AllocateIDs function generates a continuous range of intIDs to prevent collision with IDs automatically assigned by the datastore.

Use Case for AllocateIDs

The primary use case for AllocateIDs is to manually assign unique identifiers to entities when it's not possible to rely on a unique property of the entity.

Converting AllocateIDs to Strings

While AllocateIDs generates integers, your requirement is to use strings as keys. It's technically possible to convert the generated intIDs to strings, but this poses a risk of collision. The datastore may assign the same intID to multiple entities, and converting these intIDs to strings could result in duplicate string keys.

Proper Use of AllocateIDs

Instead of converting AllocateIDs to strings, the recommended approach is to use the generated intIDs as integer keys. Here's how:

• Use the datastore.Key() constructor to create a key using the intID.
• Save the entity with the newly created key. This assigns the intID as the key.

Advantages of Using intIDs

Using intIDs has several advantages over string keys:

• Performance: Integer operations are generally faster than string operations.
• Compactness: intIDs are more compact than strings, reducing storage costs.
• Range Queries: Numerical ranges can be specified for efficient querying.

Conclusion

While it's possible to convert AllocateIDs to strings, it's not a recommended practice due to the risk of collision. Using intIDs as integer keys provides better performance, compactness, and querying capabilities.

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