Now that we have a functional Enmap structure (which we'll always refer to as myEnmap), we're ready to start writing data to it, and getting data from it.

The code samples on this page assume that you have correctly initialized myEnmap, and awaited its initialization if it's persistent.

Writing Data

In terms of Enmap, "writing", "adding" and "editing" data is essentially the same thing. When using the basic set() method, if the key does not exist it's created, and if it does, it's modified.

Enmap supports most native JavaScript data types, with a few small exceptions.

• Complex objects like Set(), Map(), etc, are not supported.

• Class instances and Functions are not supported.

As a general rule, except for null and undefined, anything that can be handled by JSON.stringify() will work as expected in Enmap. This includes:

• String

• Number

• Integer

Objects and Arrays are a little more complex to deal with, so they have their own page. See for more information.

The usage for the set() method is simple:

• key must be a string or integer. A key should be unique, otherwise it will be overwritten by new values using the same key.

• value must be a supported native data type as mentioned above.

Here are a few examples of writing simple data values:

Retrieving Data

Getting data back from an Enmap is just as simple as writing to it. All you need is the key of what you want to retrieve, and you get its value back!

That's pretty much it for only retrieiving a single data value. There are more complex operations that are available, take a look at for the more advanced things you can do on Enmap's data!

Persistence requires an additional Provider module.

Official Enmap Providers:

• Enmap-SQLite: Recommended, supports sharding locally.

• Enmap-Rethink: Best for sharding if you can install a rethinkdb server. Supports updating from the database on all shards (enmap-rethink 2.1.0 and higher)

• : Postgresql database provider. Supports Sharding.

• : Mongodb database provider. Supports Sharding.

• Sort of not recommended at this point, doesn't support sharding, no longer the most efficient/faster provider.

When using any provider, it's very important to understand that it takes time to load the data from the database. Certain providers also take some time to even open the database connection, and that's also something to consider.

Using defer

To make sure that all your data is loaded before you start working, Enmap provides a handy property called defer , which is a promise that is resolved once the provider is ready and all the data has been loaded into memory. There are a few ways to use defer , since it's a promise.

While Enmap is a Map enhanced with Array methods, Enmap also offers some enhanced array methods for the data stored inside of it. Talk about ArrayCeption!

So what do I mean by methods for your stored data? I mean that you can store arrays inside Enmap, and directly push, pull, add and remove from those arrays. There are methods to work both on direct arrays, as well as arrays stored inside of an object.

Let's take a look at two example entries in enmap that we can use. The first is a direct array, the second is an array inside an object.

myEnmap.set("simpleArray", [1,2,3,4,5]);

myEnmap.set("arrInObj", {
  name: "Bob",
  aliases: ["Bobby", "Robert"]
});

Adding to the array

There are two methods to push to an array, one for simple arrays and one for arrays inside objects. Pushing in an enmap array is the same as a regular array push: it adds the element to the end of the array.

The second parameter in pushIn is the "path" to the array in an object. It works the same as the properties path used in .

Removing from the array

Similarly, you can remove from an array. Note, however, that this will only work if you're removing a string or number. Removing an object from an array is not supported.

Some quick docs:

enmap.math(key, operation, operator, [objectPath])

Possible Operators (accepts all variations listed below, as strings):

• +, add, addition: Increments the value in the enmap by the provided value.

• -, sub, subtract: Decrements the value in the enmap by the provided value.

enmap.inc(key, [objectPath])

enmap.dec(key. [objectPath])

To account for people that might use a large number of enmaps in the same project, I've created a new `multi()` method that can be used to instanciate multiple peristent enmaps together.

The method takes 3 arguments:

• An array of names for the enmaps to be created.

Enmap is a great way to store structured data, and offers a few helper features that directly affect both objects and arrays.

Let's assume for a moment that we want to store the following data structure in Enmap:

This structure has 5 "properties": first, second, changeme, isCool, sub. The sub property has 2 properties of its own, yay and thing.

To store this structure in Enmap, you can use a variable, or just straight-up write the object:

Note: All further methods require the value to be an object. If you attempt to get, set, modify or remove using the below methods and your value isn't an object, Enmap will throw an error.

Getting properties

Retrieving a specific property from an object is done through the get() method, by specifying both the key and the "path" to the property you want.

The exact method is <Enmap>.get(key, path).

Checking if a property exists

You can also check if a specific property exists or not. This is done through the has method, with a key, and path to the property:

Modifying Properties

There are a few various ways to modify properties of both Objects and Arrays. The very basic way to set a property on an object or array is through .set(key, value, path) like the following examples:

As you can see, setProp() and getProp() work on the same concept that the path can be as complex as you want.

Arrays have additional helper methods, .

Inside your script, initialize a new Enmap:

const Enmap = require("enmap");

// Initialize an instance of Enmap
const myCollection = new Enmap();

// Adding data is simply a `set` command: 
myCollection.set("myKey", "a value");

// Getting a value is done by key 
let result = myCollection.get("myKey");

As described in the home page, one disadvantage of Enmap is that it loads all your data in memory, so you're sacrificing RAM in order to gain speed. In larger projects, this might become a concern fairly quickly - or when using larger data sets that take more memory.

For this purpose, I surrepticiously added a new option somewhere around Enmap 2.0 called "fetchAll", which defaults to "true" if you don't specify it - which is the old behaviour, and current default at the same time. But, if you set fetchAll to false in the Enmap options, data is not fetched on load.

What does it mean if the data isn't loaded?

If fetchAll is set to false, no data (by default) will be loaded from the database - the Enmap will be completely empty. This means that doing a .size check returns 0, looping and filtering doesn't return anything, and get() requests all return null.

Ok but... how's that useful? It's useful because if you don't need the data, it's not loaded. To load data, there are 2 different methods available.

Fetching Data

• enmap.fetchEverything() will, of course, fetch all the data from the database - this is the method that's called on init() if fetchAll is true. This means you can stagger your loading time, or that you can decide, later, under certain conditions, you do want to load everything.

• enmap.fetch(key) can fetch a single key from the database, saves it to enmap, and returns a promise with the fetched value.

That's it!

Yup. Those are the only things you really need to know for the current version of Enmap's fetchAll feature.

Upcoming Features:

I'm working on the following features in future versions of enmap, related to fetch methods:

• Add the ability to check if the DB has a key without fetching

• Add a method to uncache a key from enmap

• Add a method to count keys in the DB (like enmap.keyCount() maybe?)