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Markus Ast
Markus Ast

Posted on • Originally published at ma.rkusa.st

Store SQLite in Cloudflare Durable Objects

#sqlite #webassembly #rust #cloudflare

This is my journey of creating a proof-of-concept of persisting an SQLite database in a Cloudflare Durable Object. It is not meant as a tutorial, but rather as something I myself can get back to it, to revisit what and why I did certain things.

tl;dr: A custom SQLite virtual file system and some WASM/WASI compilation magic allow to run SQLite on a Cloudflare Worker and persist it into a Durable Object. POC source can be found at github.com/rkusa/do-sqlite.

The Plan

Everything started with me wanting a way of saving an SQLite database close to my Cloudflare workers (just Workers in the following).

Where to store SQLite on Cloudflare?

While Workers can easily interact with anything that speaks HTTP, I'd like to be able to use something serverless, and preferably something that also lives on the edge, or at least close to it. Cloudflare offers two persistent storage products for its workers right now. There are Workers KV (KV in the following) and Durable Objects (DO in the following). Soon there is also R2 Storage, a S3 compatible object storage, which I am not going to cover here as I don't have access to it yet.

Both Workers KV and Durable objects are key-value stores. The main difference between both is their consistency guarantees. Workers KV is eventually-consistent while Durable Objects is strongly-consistent. All other differences are mostly a result of those different consistencies.

So which one to choose?

First, let's look at their limitations. KV can store values of up to 25 MiB with no total limit for paid accounts (KV Limits). DO has a total limit of 10 GB per account (can be raised by contacting Cloudflare) and a value limit of 128 KiB (DO Limits).

Neither 25 MiB nor 128 KiB is enough as an upper limit for an SQL database. Fortunately, this is not a deal-breaker, as we can split up the SQLite database file into blocks and persist one block as one value.

The SQLite file conveniently consists of one or multiple pages of the same size. The size of a page is a power of two between 512 and 65536 inclusive (see SQLite File Format). The default page size is 4096 bytes. One single read/write call of SQLite never crosses page boundaries. This makes splitting the file into blocks particularly easy.

The maximum page size fits both KV and DO, so neither of them is ruled out yet. Let's think about their consistencies next. If the database file is split across multiple key-value pairs, we have to make sure that all pages (all key-value pairs) are always up to date when accessing the database. This is not guaranteed to be the case with an eventually-consistent storage, so KV is not an option here.

With DO being strongly-consistent, we have our SQLite store. It of course comes with drawbacks compared to KV that are necessary to achieve the higher consistency guarantees. In a nutshell, one DO only exists once. It is unique. Calls to it are routed to its point-of-presence that owns it. This leads to higher latencies compared to KV. The latency depends on where a request hits the Cloudflare network and where the DO is located.

The DO introduction blog post also confirmed that DO is a reasonable choice for this use-case:

That said, every big distributed database – whether it be relational, document, graph, etc. – is, at some low level, composed of "chunks" or "shards" that store one piece of the overall data. The job of a distributed database is to coordinate between chunks.

We see a future of edge databases that store each "chunk" as a Durable Object. By doing so, it will be possible to build databases that operate entirely at the edge, fully distributed with no regions or home location. These databases need not be built by us; anyone can potentially build them on top of Durable Objects. Durable Objects are only the first step in the edge storage journey.

How to store the SQLite database file in a DO?

This is fortunately not as difficult as it might sound. SQLite already offers pluggable file systems - aka. virtual file systems (VFS). So I just have to write my own virtual file system, which stores each page of the database file into a separate DO key-value, and plug it into SQLite.

How to run SQLite on Workers?

SQLite is written in C, while workers is based on V8 isolates, so it mainly runs JavaScript. Fortunately, it also supports running WASM through initialising and calling WASM modules via JavaScript. Emscripten can be used to build WASM from C, but I'd rather use it through Rust (using rusqlite), so this is what I focus on right away. Workers can also be written entirely in Rust using worker-rs.

The initial plan

With that all out of the way, the initial plan is to write a worker using worker-rs. Use rusqlite to create and use the SQLite database. Save each page of the database file into a separate DO key-value and persisted into the DO using a custom virtual file system.

Compile SQLite to WASM for target wasm-unknown-unknown

With worker-rs this should just be a matter of using rusqlite and building the project via wrangler dev or wrangler publish. With a plain Rust project, it would be a matter of building via cargo build --target wasm32-unknown-unknown. I am using the bundled feature for the build:

rusqlite = { version = "0.26", features = ["bundled"] }
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Does it work? Nope.

It doesn't like the usage of <stdio.h>.

warning: sqlite3/sqlite3.c:13699:10: fatal error: 'stdio.h' file not found
warning: #include <stdio.h>
warning:          ^~~~~~~~~
warning: 1 error generated.
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Fortunately, there is an open PR to improve the WASM compatibility: rusqlite/rusqlite#1010.

Let's try using the fork instead:

rusqlite = { git = "https://github.com/trevyn/rusqlite.git", branch = "wasm32-unknown-unknown", features = ["bundled"] }
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Which brings us to:

...
  CC = Some("/usr/local/opt/llvm/bin/clang")
...
error occurred: Failed to find tool. Is `clang` installed?
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I am on a MacBook and /usr/local/opt/llvm/bin/clang indeed doesn't exist on my machine. My solution was to first install llvm via Homebrew:

brew install llvm
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And then instruct Cargo via environment variables where my clang is located:

CC=/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin/clang \
  cargo build --release --target wasm32-unknown-unknown
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Still nope:

error occurred: Failed to find tool. Is `/usr/local/opt/llvm/bin/llvm-ar` installed?
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Let's also tell it where llvm-ar is located:

CC=/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin/clang \
AR=/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin/llvm-ar \
  cargo build --release --target wasm32-unknown-unknown
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Aaannnnd ... it builds!

Build the Virtual File System

Building a VFS for SQLite is a matter of subclassing three objects: sqlite3_vfs, sqlite3_io_methods, and sqlite3_file. A demo implementation that uses POSIX functions is provided, too.

With that, I had enough information to build sqlite-vfs, a Rust library that wraps all the necessary interactions with the C SQLite library and exposes a much simpler Rust trait. I'll not go into the details of this library here.

Implementing this trait is enough for a simple VFS. I only implemented as much as was necessary for my use-case (e.g. I skipped memory-mapped files). The trait is:

pub trait File: Read + Seek + Write {
    fn file_size(&self) -> Result<u64, std::io::Error>;
}

pub trait Vfs {
    type File: File;

    fn open(&self, path: &Path, flags: OpenFlags) -> Result<Self::File, std::io::Error>;
    fn delete(&self, path: &Path) -> Result<(), std::io::Error>;
    fn exists(&self, _path: &Path) -> Result<bool, std::io::Error>;

    fn access(&self, _path: &Path, _write: bool) -> Result<bool, std::io::Error> {
        Ok(true)
    }
}
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The implementation of the trait for saving each page as a separate object works as follows.

The PagesVfs is a struct that is generic over the page size.

pub struct PagesVfs<const PAGE_SIZE: usize>;
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It uses a Pages struct as the File associate type, which in return is a map of page index to Page, the count of pages in total, and the current offset for reading and writing. Each Page is simply its data and a dirty flag to keep track of whether it changed. The structs use the rather new Rust feature of const generics.

impl<const PAGE_SIZE: usize> Vfs for PagesVfs<PAGE_SIZE> {
    type File = Pages<PAGE_SIZE>;

    // ...
}

struct Page<const PAGE_SIZE: usize> {
    data: [u8; PAGE_SIZE],
    dirty: bool,
}

pub struct Pages<const PAGE_SIZE: usize> {
    count: usize,
    offset: usize,
    blocks: HashMap<u32, Page<PAGE_SIZE>>,
}
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The implementation of the trait is rather straight forward. I'll spare you all the boring details. Just a summary of how reading and writing works.

For reading, I wrote a method to get the current page based on the current offset into the database file. This method is used in the std::io::Read implementation. It reduces everything down to a get_page method that takes an index and returns the page data for it. With a fixed block/page size, it is quite easy to get the current page (self.offset / PAGE_SIZE), as well as the offset into it (self.offset % PAGE_SIZE).

impl<const PAGE_SIZE: usize> Pages<PAGE_SIZE> {
    fn current(&mut self) -> Result<&mut Page<PAGE_SIZE>, std::io::Error> {
        let index = self.offset / PAGE_SIZE;

        if let Entry::Vacant(entry) = self.pages.entry(index as u32) {
            let data = Self::get_page(index as u32);
            entry.insert(Page {
                data: data.unwrap_or_else(|| [0; PAGE_SIZE]),
                dirty: false,
            });
        }

        Ok(self.pages.get_mut(&(index as u32)).unwrap())
    }

    pub fn get_page(ix: u32) -> Option<[u8; PAGE_SIZE]> {
        // TODO: retrieve page
    }
}

impl<const PAGE_SIZE: usize> Read for Pages<PAGE_SIZE> {
    fn read(&mut self, buf: &mut [u8]) -> std::io::Result<usize> {
        let offset = self.offset % PAGE_SIZE;
        let page = self.current()?;
        let n = (&page.data[offset..]).read(buf)?;
        self.offset += n;
        Ok(n)
    }
}
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For writing (the std::io::Write implementation), I only update the in memory state of the page and mark it as changed. Actually persisting the changes happens as part of the flush implementation. It iterates through all loaded pages and persists them by calling put_page.

impl<const PAGE_SIZE: usize> Write for Pages<PAGE_SIZE> {
    fn write(&mut self, buf: &[u8]) -> std::io::Result<usize> {
        let offset = self.offset % PAGE_SIZE;
        let page = self.current()?;
        let n = (&mut page.data[offset..]).write(buf)?;
        page.dirty = true;
        self.offset += n;

        let count = (self.offset / PAGE_SIZE) + 1;
        if count > self.count {
            self.count = count;
        }

        Ok(n)
    }

    fn flush(&mut self) -> std::io::Result<()> {
        for (index, page) in &mut self.pages {
            if page.dirty {
                Self::put_page(*index, &page.data);
                page.dirty = false;
            }
        }
        Ok(())
    }
}

impl<const PAGE_SIZE: usize> Pages<PAGE_SIZE> {
    fn put_page(ix: u32, data: &[u8; PAGE_SIZE]) {
        // TODO
    }
}
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The whole code can be found here: github.com/rkusa/wasm-sqlite/blob/main/wasm/src/vfs.rs. By reducing all down to the two methods get_page and put_page (to which I get back later in the post), the VFS ended up being a generic VFS for when you want to persist SQLite pages as separate files/objects. Using it anywhere else than a DO would just be a matter of providing a different implementation to those two methods.

Use the VFS in a DO

Using the VFS in a DO is – in theory – as simple as interacting with the DO's Transactional storage API inside of the get_page and put_page methods in the previous code block.

This, however, doesn't work. The VFS is synchronous while calls to the storage are asynchronous. For example, the get method has the following signature:

get<T>(key: string, options?: Object): Promise<T | undefined>
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The worker runs, same as the browser, as a single thread using cooperative multitasking. It is thus impossible to await an asynchronous method in the synchronous context of the VFS. One might think one could just have an endless loop polling the promise (or future in the Rust context) until it is completed. But this is impossible in a single-threaded environment, since the endless loop would block forever and never switch to actually running any other async task. It would require at least two threads to do that (and it would be a bad idea even then).

Fortunately, the wasm-opt tool has an option to asyncify methods in a WASM. It, therefore, rewrites the WASM and allows to pause and resume the execution. This is exactly what I need to call async functions from within the sync context of the VFS.

It has one drawback though. I need control over how the WASM module is initialised so that I can use the Asyncify wrapper and provide the corresponding async imports. This is something I don't easily have control over using worker-rs, since worker-rs takes care of generating all the necessary JavaScript glue code for me.

So one step back. worker-rs cannot be used. At least for now – I am sure there is a way to make it work. But the easier way forward is to write the worker and DO in JavaScript and write a WASM module that only takes care of querying the SQLite database.

Target: wasm32-unknown-unknown vs wasm32-wasi

Before diving into the asyncification, I have to take full control over the WASM initialisation and thus its imports and exports.

While I could theoretically still build for wasm32-unknown-unknown, this target has a major drawback. A lot of libraries automatically use wasm-bindgen as soon as you build for it.

I want control over the module initialisation, which means that I am writing the glue code for JavaScript myself. This doesn't work if my dependencies assume wasm-bindgen and generate an endless amount of __wbindgen imports and exports. Let's inspect the build for wasm32-unknown-unknown.

wasmer inspect target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/release/do_sqlite.wasm
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Excerpt of the output:

Imports:
  Functions:
    "__wbindgen_placeholder__"."__wbindgen_describe": [I32] -> []
    "__wbindgen_placeholder__"."__wbg_getRandomValues_98117e9a7e993920": [I32, I32] -> []
    "__wbindgen_placeholder__"."__wbg_randomFillSync_64cc7d048f228ca8": [I32, I32, I32] -> []
    "__wbindgen_placeholder__"."__wbg_process_2f24d6544ea7b200": [I32] -> [I32]
    "__wbindgen_placeholder__"."__wbindgen_is_object": [I32] -> [I32]
    "__wbindgen_placeholder__"."__wbg_versions_6164651e75405d4a": [I32] -> [I32]
    ...
  Memories:
  Tables:
  Globals:
Exports:
  Functions:
    "__wbindgen_describe___wbg_crypto_98fc271021c7d2ad": [] -> []
    "__wbindgen_describe___wbg_getRandomValues_98117e9a7e993920": [] -> []
    "__wbindgen_describe___wbg_modulerequire_3440a4bcf44437db": [] -> []
    "__wbindgen_describe___wbg_randomFillSync_64cc7d048f228ca8": [] -> []
    "__wbindgen_describe___wbg_msCrypto_a2cdb043d2bfe57f": [] -> []
    ...
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I had to trim down the output a lot. There are 716 imports/exports in total that have the __wbindgen prefix.

So wasm32-unknown-unknown simply isn't going to work. I need kind of a neutral WASM target. Let's see what WASM targets we can choose from:

% rustup target list | grep wasm
wasm32-unknown-emscripten (installed)
wasm32-unknown-unknown (installed)
wasm32-wasi (installed)
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The emscripten target also assumes JavaScript glue code from my experience, so wasm32-wasi is the only one left - so I am going with that.

Build SQLite for WASI for wasm32-wasi

If you are wondering, WASI is a modular system interface for WebAssembly. Head over to wasi.dev for a more detailed introduction.

There is some work required to get rusqlite to build for wasm32-wasi. Let's walk through all errors and their solutions.

cargo build --target wasm32-wasi
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Similar to trying to build for wasm32-unknown-unknown, it complains about not finding stdio.h.

cargo:warning=sqlite3/sqlite3.c:13699:10: fatal error: 'stdio.h' file not found
cargo:warning=#include <stdio.h>
cargo:warning=         ^~~~~~~~~
cargo:warning=1 error generated.
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The previously mentioned PR for wasm32-unknown-unknown compatibility solved this by including libc .c files from OpenBSD. My go to solution is different though. I prefer to build using the wasi-sdk (a WASI-enabled WebAssembly C/C++ toolchain).

At first we need to build the wasi-sdk. Here is a shell script I am using for that in various projects (you might have to install cmake and/or ninja: brew install cmake ninja):

#!/usr/bin/env sh
set -e
cd wasm
git clone --branch wasi-sdk-14 https://github.com/WebAssembly/wasi-sdk.git
cd wasi-sdk
git submodule update --init --recursive
NINJA_FLAGS=-v make package
tar -xzf dist/wasi-sdk-*.tar.gz -C dist
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This clones and builds the wasi-sdk into ./wasm/wasi-sdk. The build toolchain can then be found at ./wasm/wasi-sdk/dist/wasi-sdk-14.0/bin, and the WASI sysroot at ./wasm/wasi-sdk/dist/wasi-sdk-14.0/share/wasi-sysroot. The build will take a while (~15min on my M1). Alternatively, if you are not on a Mac ARM, you can use a prebuild sysroot and binaries instead.

I found that the easiest way to get cargo to use all the build tools from the wasi-sdk is to prepend the PATH env var with the bin directory of the wasi-sdk build. While I usually prefer calling cargo directly and set up everything else in .config/cargo.toml, I couldn't find a way to set all build tools in .config/cargo.toml. So a Makefile it is. After putting everything together, the Makefile (at ./wasm/Makefile) looks like:

ifndef DEBUG
    cargo_build_flags += --release
endif

.PHONY: build
build:
    PATH="$(shell pwd)/wasi-sdk/dist/wasi-sdk-14.0/bin:${PATH}" \
    CFLAGS="--sysroot=$(shell pwd)/wasi-sdk/dist/wasi-sdk-14.0/share/wasi-sysroot" \
        cargo build --target wasm32-wasi $(cargo_build_flags)
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With the Makefile above, make build creates a release build, and make build DEBUG=1 builds a debug build.

Let's try building again:

make build
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The previous error is fixed, but a new one is thrown. It now complains about not finding pthread.h.

cargo:warning=sqlite3/sqlite3.c:27215:10: fatal error: 'pthread.h' file not found
cargo:warning=#include <pthread.h>
cargo:warning=         ^~~~~~~~~~~
cargo:warning=1 error generated.
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The wasi-sdk doesn't have support for pthread.h yet (see WebAssembly/wasi-libc#209). A workaround for most libraries is to look at build flags that remove everything related to pthreads from the library you are trying to build.

In case of SQLite, I found various flags to achieve that. One being SQLITE_THREADSAFE=0, which disables code used to operate sqlite safely in multithreaded environments. I'd assume our WASM to be single-threaded, so I think I'd be safe to disable it. However, I didn't dig deeper into this, because adding this build flag brings us to the next set of errors:

cargo:warning=#error "WASI lacks a true mmap; to enable minimal mmap emulation, \
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This looks a lot like OS-specific stuff that is not available in WASI. While looking into how to get rid of this code, I found the SQLITE_OS_OTHER flag. When this flag is set, built-in OS interfaces (for Unix, Windows, and OS/2) are omitted. Exactly what I was looking for.

Let's try building again.

make build
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Aaannndd... it builds!

I also found out that with SQLITE_OS_OTHER being set, it doesn't seem to matter anymore whether SQLITE_THREADSAFE is set to 1 or 0 - both build.

There is a PR for rusqlite now, to fix its WASI compatibility (rusqlite/rusqlite#1116; someone beat me to it).

While it builds now, does it also run? Nope. Trying to run it fails with:

WebAssembly.instantiate(): Import #1 module=\"env\" function=\"sqlite3_os_init\" error: function import requires a callable
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But this was to be expected, as the docs clearly state:

Applications must also supply implementations for the sqlite3_os_init() and sqlite3_os_end() interfaces. The usual practice is for the supplied sqlite3_os_init() to invoke sqlite3_vfs_register(). SQLite will automatically invoke sqlite3_os_init() when it initializes.

A minimal sqlite3_os_init would simply register a custom virtual file system:

#[no_mangle]
extern "C" fn sqlite3_os_init() -> i32 {
    ffi::sqlite3_vfs_register(CUSTOM_VFS, false as i32)
}
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As a side-note, if sqlite3_os_init isn't registering a VFS, or if it isn't returning 0 (as in no error), you might get a rather unhelpful error like:

RuntimeError: unreachable
    at wasm://wasm/010bf20e:wasm-function[1716]:0x2a1b64
    at wasm://wasm/010bf20e:wasm-function[1764]:0x2a84cb
    at wasm://wasm/010bf20e:wasm-function[1782]:0x2aa2e3
    at wasm://wasm/010bf20e:wasm-function[1829]:0x2b3a23
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With being able to build SQLite for wasm32-wasi, we can continue looking into how to initialise and use it.

WASI imports

When inspecting the build WASM module, you find various required imports:

wasmer inspect target/wasm32-wasi/release/do_sqlite.wasm
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Imports:
  Functions:
    "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."random_get": [I32, I32] -> [I32]
    "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."clock_time_get": [I32, I64, I32] -> [I32]
    "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."fd_write": [I32, I32, I32, I32] -> [I32]
    "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."poll_oneoff": [I32, I32, I32, I32] -> [I32]
    "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."environ_get": [I32, I32] -> [I32]
    "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."environ_sizes_get": [I32, I32] -> [I32]
    "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."proc_exit": [I32] -> []
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WASI offers a huge amount of methods. Fortunately, it is modular and our module will only require the ones that are actually used. We have to provide the once it uses or the WASM module isn't going to run otherwise.

While there is a WASI implementation for Workers: cloudflare/workers-wasi, I prefer to implement each import manually - especially when there are so few and especially while I am still experimenting. This helps me to keep the full picture of what's going on.

Providing my own implementation basically looks like:

const instance = await WebAssembly.instantiate(module, {
  wasi_snapshot_preview1: {
    // "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."random_get": [I32, I32] -> [I32]
    random_get(offset: number, length: number) {
      const buffer = new Uint8Array(
        instance.exports.memory.buffer,
        offset,
        length
      );
      crypto.getRandomValues(buffer);

      return ERRNO_SUCCESS;
    },

    // "wasi_snapshot_preview1"."clock_time_get": [I32, I64, I32] -> [I32]
    clock_time_get() {
      throw new Error("clock_time_get not implemented");
    },

    // ...
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The imports are specified when instantiating the WASM module, and are added under the wasi_snapshot_preview1 namespace. As hinted in the snippet above (for clock_time_get), I usually throw a not implemented error for all imports at first, and only implement them when I see them being used.

The fd_write is a special one, because I usually only implement it for stdout and stderr and not any other file descriptor (so not for actual files):

fd_write(
  fd: number,
  iovsOffset: number,
  iovsLength: number,
  nwrittenOffset: number
) {
  if (fd !== 1 && fd !== 2) {
    return ERRNO_BADF;
  }

  const decoder = new TextDecoder();
  const memoryView = new DataView(instance.exports.memory.buffer);
  let nwritten = 0;
  for (let i = 0; i < iovsLength; i++) {
    const dataOffset = memoryView.getUint32(iovsOffset, true);
    iovsOffset += 4;

    const dataLength = memoryView.getUint32(iovsOffset, true);
    iovsOffset += 4;

    const data = new Uint8Array(
      instance.exports.memory.buffer,
      dataOffset,
      dataLength
    );
    const s = decoder.decode(data);
    nwritten += data.byteLength;
    switch (fd) {
      case 1: // stdout
        console.log(s);
        break;
      case 2: // stderr
        console.error(s);
        break;
      default:
        return ERRNO_BADF;
    }
  }

  memoryView.setUint32(nwrittenOffset, nwritten, true);

  return ERRNO_SUCCESS;
}
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With that out of the way, it is time to get back to asyncifying the WASM module.

Asyncify WASM

As a recap, the asyncification is necessary to call the async storage APIs from the sync VFS.

The asyncification is achieved by unwinding and rewinding the local stack. With wasm-opt, this is done on a WASM level as post-build transformation. This makes it a language-agnostic approach. Once a WASM module is asyncified it needs to be used through the JavaScript wrapper Asyncify. A good introduction to asyncify can be found here: Using asynchronous web APIs from WebAssembly.

This is how it is used. First I had to add WASM imports, which correspond to external functions in Rust:

extern "C" {
    pub fn get_page(ix: u32) -> *mut u8;
    pub fn put_page(ix: u32, ptr: *const u8);
}
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I am then using those imports in my VFS:

impl<const PAGE_SIZE: usize> Pages<PAGE_SIZE> {
    pub fn get_page(ix: u32) -> Option<[u8; PAGE_SIZE]> {
        unsafe {
            let ptr = crate::get_page(ix);
            if ptr.is_null() {
                None
            } else {
                let slice = slice::from_raw_parts_mut(ptr, PAGE_SIZE);
                slice[..].try_into().ok()
            }
        }
    }

    fn put_page(ix: u32, data: &[u8; PAGE_SIZE]) {
        unsafe {
            crate::put_page(ix, data.as_ptr());
        }
    }
}
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With that integrated, I can build the WASM file as done previously and once build, post-process it via wasm-opt:

wasm-opt -O --asyncify --pass-arg asyncify-imports@env.put_page,env.get_page \
  wasm/target/wasm32-wasi/release/do_sqlite.wasm \
  -o dist/do_sqlite.wasm
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The flags --asyncify --pass-arg asyncify-imports@env.put_page,env.get_page tell the tool that both the put_page and get_page imports are asynchronous.

I then have to initialise the WASM module using the Asyncify wrapper and provide async implementations of get_page and put_page:

const instance = await Asyncify.instantiate(module, {
  env: {
    async get_page(ix: number): Promise<number> {
      const page: Array<number> =
        (await storage.get<Array<number>>(String(ix))) ?? new Array(4096);

      const offset: number = await instance.exports.alloc(
        4096
      );
      const dst = new Uint8Array(
        instance.exports.memory.buffer,
        offset,
        4096
      );
      dst.set(Array.from(new Uint8Array(page)));

      return offset;
    },

    async put_page(ix: number, ptr: number) {
      const page = new Uint8Array(
        instance.exports.memory.buffer,
        ptr,
        4096
      );
      await storage.put(String(ix), Array.from(page), {});
    },
  },
});
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That's it. The WASM module is now able to interact with the async storage APIs.

Increase Asyncify Stack Size

With all pieces together now, does it run? Yes and no. Depending on the query I've tested, I ran into yet another very helpful error:

RuntimeError: unreachable
    at wasm://wasm/010bf772:wasm-function[1833]:0x2b3c6e
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Some println!() debugging later, I've found that the error happens once the WASM execution is resumed. When the WASM execution is paused, all locals at the point of pausing are saved. Before execution is resumed, all those locals are restored. Asyncify allocates memory to persist those locals between pausing and resuming. This memory has a size of 1024 bytes and is apparently simply not enough for this use-case.

The stack size is unfortunately not configurable. According to Asyncify's code, it assumes that the first 1024 bytes of the WASM memory are unused and uses that. I'd rather properly allocate memory for it. Since it is writing the stack start and end locations at an offset of 16, I simply overwrite those values with the location of a bigger and properly allocated memory location for now:

const STACK_SIZE = 4096;
const DATA_ADDR = 16;
const ptr = await exports.alloc(STACK_SIZE);
new Int32Array(exports.memory.buffer, DATA_ADDR, 2).set([
  ptr,
  ptr + STACK_SIZE,
]);
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That's it. With that I had SQLite running in a Cloudflare Durable Object.

I am not sharing a link to my demo, as I haven't estimated the to be expected costs yet. But if you are curious, you can give it a try yourself using github.com/rkusa/do-sqlite.

Conclusion

Let me emphasise again: this is just an experiment. It is not in a state where I'd use it for an actual app yet. Here are some open points / concerns / future work:

  • I am setting SQLite's journal mode to memory right now, which could lead to data loss. I'd have to extend the VFS to be capable of also persisting the journal file into the DO.
  • I am not happy with the the overhead that comes with pausing/resuming via Asyncify.
  • I have a bad feeling about Asyncify's stack size. I could imagine that I'd have to increase it further the more the database grows / or the larger the query result is.
  • The 128MB memory size of Workers might be a limiting factor when the database grows to a certain size. A possible improvement here would be to use an LRU cache for the pages and basically dispose pages that have been read in the past, but were not used recently.
  • I need to make some more research and testing to be sure that the DO isn't writing to the storage concurrently.
  • The current solution isn't capable of running DB transactions across multiple calls to the DO (and might never be actually).
  • I'd need to make an estimation of the expected costs of running SQLite on a DO to feel safe actually deploying it for an app.
  • A replication between multiple DO's living on different Cloudflare locations would be neat (maybe based on litestream.io).

The code can be found here:

I'll continue experimenting.

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