Data Types

Apache Ignite uses a sophisticated system of serializable data types to store and retrieve user data, as well as to manage the configuration of its caches through the Ignite binary protocol.

The complexity of data types varies from simple integer or character types to arrays, maps, collections and structures.

Each data type is defined by its code. Type code is byte-sized. Thus, every data object can be represented as a payload of fixed or variable size, logically divided into one or more fields, prepended by the type_code field.

Most of Ignite data types can be represented by some of the standard Python data type or class. Some of them, however, are conceptually alien, overly complex, or ambiguous to Python dynamic type system.

The following table summarizes the notion of Apache Ignite data types, as well as their representation and handling in Python. For the nice description, as well as gory implementation details, you may follow the link to the parser/constructor class definition. Note that parser/constructor classes are not instantiatable. The class here is used mostly as a sort of tupperware for organizing methods together.

Note: you are not obliged to actually use those parser/constructor classes. Pythonic types will suffice to interact with Apache Ignite binary API. However, in some rare cases of type ambiguity, as well as for the needs of interoperability, you may have to sneak one or the other class, along with your data, in to some API function as a type conversion hint.

type_code	Apache Ignite docs reference	Python type or class	Parser/constructor class
Primitive data types
0x01	Byte	int	ByteObject
0x02	Short	int	ShortObject
0x03	Int	int	IntObject
0x04	Long	int	LongObject
0x05	Float	float	FloatObject
0x06	Double	float	DoubleObject
0x07	Char	str	CharObject
0x08	Bool	bool	BoolObject
0x65	Null	NoneType	Null
Standard objects
0x09	String	Str	String
0x0a	UUID	uuid.UUID	UUIDObject
0x21	Timestamp	tuple	TimestampObject
0x0b	Date	datetime.datetime	DateObject
0x24	Time	datetime.timedelta	TimeObject
0x1e	Decimal	decimal.Decimal	DecimalObject
0x1c	Enum	tuple	EnumObject
0x67	Binary enum	tuple	BinaryEnumObject
Arrays of primitives
0x0c	Byte array	iterable/bytearray	ByteArrayObject
0x0d	Short array	iterable/list	ShortArrayObject
0x0e	Int array	iterable/list	IntArrayObject
0x0f	Long array	iterable/list	LongArrayObject
0x10	Float array	iterable/list	FloatArrayObject
0x11	Double array	iterable/list	DoubleArrayObject
0x12	Char array	iterable/list	CharArrayObject
0x13	Bool array	iterable/list	BoolArrayObject
Arrays of standard objects
0x14	String array	iterable/list	StringArrayObject
0x15	UUID array	iterable/list	UUIDArrayObject
0x22	Timestamp array	iterable/list	TimestampArrayObject
0x16	Date array	iterable/list	DateArrayObject
0x23	Time array	iterable/list	TimeArrayObject
0x1f	Decimal array	iterable/list	DecimalArrayObject
Object collections, special types, and complex object
0x17	Object array	tuple[int, iterable/list]	ObjectArrayObject
0x18	Collection	tuple[int, iterable/list]	CollectionObject
0x19	Map	tuple[int, dict/OrderedDict]	MapObject
0x1d	Enum array	iterable/list	EnumArrayObject
0x67	Complex object	object	BinaryObject
0x1b	Wrapped data	tuple[int, bytes]	WrappedDataObject