slap_kv

slap_kv provides a partitioned key-value store, with data stored durably in object storage.

slap_kv is built on slap_cluster and slap_slatedb. Each row is addressed by a partition and a key. A partition's rows are stored together, in key order, in one of a fixed number of SlateDB databases, called shards. Writes are acknowledged once they are durable, reads return only durable rows, and a write can be made conditional on a row's version.

Use slap_kv when you need records grouped by a partition, such as a user's settings or a document's metadata. It routes each partition to a shard, supports listing keys in order, and uses versions to detect concurrent updates. This saves you from building shard ownership and conditional writes on top of slap_slatedb. If you need direct SlateDB transactions or a different key layout, use slap_slatedb instead. slap_kv does not support cross-partition scans or cross-partition transactions.

slap_kv runs inside your application, on one node or several. You start Slap.KV.Cluster, call Slap.KV in-process, and can mount Slap.KV.HTTP.Router in your Plug pipeline. A call for a partition goes to the node that owns its shard. The slap package runs slap_kv as a standalone server (mix slap.server --kv --store memory).

About Slap {: .info}

This package is part of Slap.

Slap provides Elixir bindings for SlateDB (an embedded key-value engine optimized for storing data in object storage), as well as services built on top of these bindings. The services run inside your application, on one node or several.

Services:

• slap_streams: a Durable Streams server, with HTTP, long polling, and SSE
• slap_kv: partitioned key-value storage with conditional writes, ordered scans, and an HTTP API
• slap_files: file storage with metadata and conditional replacement; small files are kept in slap_kv records, which saves object-store PUTs
• slap_yjs: Yjs documents for collaborative editing, with replication and presence across nodes

Building blocks:

• slap_slatedb: the SlateDB bindings
• slap_cluster: SlateDB databases run as shards across nodes, with placement, routing, and failover
• slap_snapshot_log: an append-only log of changes that can be condensed into snapshots

Complete distribution:

• slap: all Slap libraries and a standalone HTTP server for evaluating and benchmarking slap_streams and slap_kv

The slap package pulls in all seven libraries. If you only need a subset, add those packages directly.

Installation

Requires Elixir 1.18 or later.

To depend on slap_kv directly, add it to the dependencies in your application's mix.exs:

defp deps do
  [
    {:slap_kv, "~> 0.3.0"}
  ]
end

Run mix deps.get. API documentation is on HexDocs.

Example

In an application that depends on slap_kv, run this in iex -S mix with a fresh local directory:

iex> {:ok, _} = Slap.KV.Cluster.start_link(store: {:local, "/tmp/slap-kv"}, path: "kv", shards: 8); :ok
:ok

iex> {:ok, v1} = Slap.KV.put("user:42", "profile", "Ada", if_version: :absent); :ok
:ok
iex> {:ok, %{value: value, version: ^v1}} = Slap.KV.get("user:42", "profile"); value
"Ada"
iex> {:error, {:conflict, ^v1}} = Slap.KV.put("user:42", "profile", "other", if_version: :absent); :conflict
:conflict
iex> {:ok, v2} = Slap.KV.put("user:42", "profile", "Ada Lovelace", if_version: v1); :ok
:ok
iex> {:ok, %{rows: rows, cursor: nil}} = Slap.KV.scan("user:42", prefix: "pro"); rows
[{"profile", "Ada Lovelace"}]
iex> :ok = Slap.KV.delete("user:42", "profile", if_version: v2)
:ok

An application can define its own cluster module and pass it to KV calls and the HTTP router:

defmodule MyApp.KVCluster do
  use Slap.KV.Cluster, otp_app: :my_app
end

children = [{MyApp.KVCluster, store: {:local, "/tmp/slap-kv"}, shards: 8}]

Add these children to your supervision tree. Once it is running, pass the cluster module to each operation:

{:ok, _} = Slap.KV.put("users", "42", "Ada", cluster: MyApp.KVCluster)

Supervise one KV cluster per VM. A Streams cluster can run on the same VM. Run one Slap.Cluster.Peers per VM; its connections to other nodes serve every cluster on that VM.

A failed store probe normally prevents the cluster and its supervising application from starting. With probe: :background, the cluster starts without shards and retries the probe. Operations return {:error, :unavailable} until the shards open.

Flush interval

A durable write waits for SlateDB to flush its write-ahead log (WAL) to object storage. Slap.KV.Cluster sets flush_interval to 10 ms; SlateDB's default is 100 ms. Pass settings: %{flush_interval: "50ms"} to change it. Other settings leave the 10 ms default intact.

Lower intervals reduce the wait for acknowledgements but increase object-store PUTs. Each shard with pending writes can issue up to one WAL PUT per interval; idle shards issue none. Choose the interval for the expected write rate, shard count, and store pricing. For :memory and {:local, dir} tests, settings: %{flush_interval: "2ms"} reduces the wait without request charges.

Semantics

• Versions. A row's version is the SlateDB sequence number of the write that stored it, so it changes with every write and only increases within a shard. put/4 and delete/3 accept if_version: version, and put/4 also accepts if_version: :absent. When the condition fails, the call returns {:error, {:conflict, current}}, where current is the row's current version, or nil if the row does not exist.
• Durability. A write returns once SlateDB reports it durable. Reads (get/3, scan/2) use SlateDB's :remote durability: they see only durable rows, so they never return a write that could still be lost.
• Uncertain writes. An :unavailable or :timeout reply means the write may still become durable. Read the row to find out; nothing retries a write on its own.
• Scans. Each page is a separate read of durable rows, not a snapshot across pages. The opaque cursor identifies the last key returned. Scan rows omit versions by default; with_versions: true includes them. There are no scans or writes across partitions.

How it works

• Placement. A partition is on shard xxh64(partition) mod N (Slap.KV.Cluster.shard_for/1). Operations run on the shard's owner through Slap.Cluster.call/4.
• Writers. Each shard's database has one SlateDB writer: the handle its owner opened. slap_cluster places the owner on one node, and SlateDB fences any other. On that node, each partition has one partition writer, the only process that writes the partition's rows. Each shard runs partition_writers partition writers (a cluster child_options key, 16 by default), and all of them write through the shard's one handle. A partition belongs to the partition writer :erlang.phash2(partition, partition_writers). A shard reads the setting when it starts its partition writers, and keeps that count until it starts them again.
• Conditions and pending writes. A partition writer checks a condition with a normal read, which sees its own writes even before they are durable. It writes without waiting and replies once the write is durable, so several writes can be in flight at once. Replies go out in request order, behind the writes in flight.
• Conflicts are confirmed. Under a placement without leases, a node can lose a shard after a pause without knowing it. Its partition writers then judge conditions from old state. So before reporting a conflict, a partition writer writes a reserved key and waits for that write to be durable. On a fenced handle the write fails, and the request gets :unavailable instead of a conflict that may be wrong. Successful writes need no confirmation, because they fail on a fenced handle anyway. Reads on such a node may be stale until it finds that it has been fenced, as with streams.
• Writer recovery. A write error fails every request in flight with :unavailable and stops the partition writer. Its supervisor starts a new one, which first waits until every write made through the shard's database is durable. So the new writer never checks a condition against state that could still be lost.

HTTP

Slap.KV.HTTP.Router serves KV over HTTP, under /v1/kv by default. To try it, install and run the standalone server from slap in another terminal:

elixir -e 'Mix.install([:slap]); Mix.Task.run("slap.server", System.argv())' -- \
  --kv --store memory --kv-shards 4

The memory store loses its data when the server stops. Then:

curl -X PUT --data-binary 'hello' -H 'If-None-Match: *' -i http://localhost:4437/v1/kv/p/greeting
curl -i http://localhost:4437/v1/kv/p/greeting
curl 'http://localhost:4437/v1/kv/p?prefix=gr&limit=10'

The PUT returns 204 and an ETag containing the new version; the GET returns 200 with the value and the same ETag. To replace or delete the row, send that value in If-Match. A stale version returns 412 with the current ETag.

Partitions and keys are percent-encoded path segments. In scan responses, keys, values, and the cursor are unpadded base64url. A 503 response (with Retry-After) means that the shard was unavailable or the request timed out; a write may still have been applied. The router does not authenticate requests.

Storage

A row's SlateDB key is the partition's length (16 bits), the partition, then the key, so a partition is one contiguous key range and scans never cross into another partition. Keys may be up to SlateDB's limit of 65,535 bytes once encoded. Deletes are SlateDB deletes (tombstones, removed by compaction).

Limits

• A conditional write of a row that is not in memory waits for a read from the store, and its partition writer's other writes wait behind it. Unconditional writes do not read. Partition writers are independent, so this delays only the partitions that share that writer; see Benchmarks.
• No batches, TTLs or cross-partition operations yet.
• No backpressure: a shard's writes in flight are not capped.

Benchmarks

Follow the repository's development setup, then run from slap_kv/:

mix run bench/partition_writers.exs --store memory

bench/partition_writers.exs measures throughput, latency, and writer mailbox length with unconditional, warm conditional, and cold conditional writes. A cold conditional write waits for a store read and blocks its partition writer; increasing partition_writers spreads that delay across partitions. Measure on the intended store before changing the default of 16.

Tests

Run from slap_kv/ after the development setup above:

mix test          # SLAP_KV_PROP_RUNS=1000 for more model sequences

The model test covers conditional writes, scans, writer replacement, and cluster restarts. test/durability_test.exs checks durable replies, pending writes, and fencing. Set SLAP_KV_PROP_RUNS to run more model sequences.

License

Slap is released under the terms of the Apache License 2.0.

Copyright (c) 2026, Michael Russo.