librrd(3)							      rrdtool								 librrd(3)

NAME

       librrd - RRD library functions

DESCRIPTION

       librrd contains most of the functionality in RRDTool.  The command line utilities and language bindings are often just wrappers around the
       code contained in librrd.

       This manual page documents the librrd API.

       NOTE: This document is a work in progress, and should be considered incomplete as long as this warning persists.  For more information
       about the librrd functions, always consult the source code.

CORE FUNCTIONS

       rrd_dump_cb_r(char *filename, int opt_header, rrd_output_callback_t cb, void *user)
	   In some situations it is necessary to get the output of "rrd_dump" without writing it to a file or the standard output. In such cases
	   an application can ask rrd_dump_cb_r to call an user-defined function each time there is output to be stored somewhere. This can be
	   used, to e.g. directly feed an XML parser with the dumped output or transfer the resulting string in memory.

	   The arguments for rrd_dump_cb_r are the same as for rrd_dump_opt_r except that the output filename parameter is replaced by the user-
	   defined callback function and an additional parameter for the callback function that is passed untouched, i.e. to store information
	   about the callback state needed for the user-defined callback to function properly.

	   Recent versions of rrd_dump_opt_r internally use this callback mechanism to write their output to the file provided by the user.

	       size_t rrd_dump_opt_cb_fileout(
		   const void *data,
		   size_t len,
		   void *user)
	       {
		   return fwrite(data, 1, len, (FILE *)user);
	       }

	   The associated call for rrd_dump_cb_r looks like

	       res = rrd_dump_cb_r(filename, opt_header,
		   rrd_dump_opt_cb_fileout, (void *)out_file);

	   where the last parameter specifies the file handle rrd_dump_opt_cb_fileout should write to. There's no specific condition for the
	   callback to detect when it is called for the first time, nor for the last time. If you require this for initialization and cleanup you
	   should do those tasks before and after calling rrd_dump_cr_r respectively.

UTILITY FUNCTIONS

       rrd_random()
	   Generates random numbers just like random().  This further ensures that the random number generator is seeded exactly once per process.

       rrd_add_ptr(void ***dest, size_t *dest_size, void *src)
	   Dynamically resize the array pointed to by "dest".  "dest_size" is a pointer to the current size of "dest".	Upon successful realloc(),
	   the "dest_size" is incremented by 1 and the "src" pointer is stored at the end of the new "dest".  Returns 1 on success, 0 on failure.

	       type **arr = NULL;
	       type *elem = "whatever";
	       size_t arr_size = 0;
	       if (!rrd_add_ptr(&arr, &arr_size, elem))
		   handle_failure();

       rrd_add_strdup(char ***dest, size_t *dest_size, char *src)
	   Like "rrd_add_ptr", except adds a "strdup" of the source string.

	       char **arr = NULL;
	       size_t arr_size = NULL;
	       char *str  = "example text";
	       if (!rrd_add_strdup(&arr, &arr_size, str))
		   handle_failure();

       rrd_free_ptrs(void ***src, size_t *cnt)
	   Free an array of pointers allocated by "rrd_add_ptr" or "rrd_add_strdup".  Also frees the array pointer itself.  On return, the source
	   pointer will be NULL and the count will be zero.

	       /* created as above */
	       rrd_free_ptrs(&arr, &arr_size);
	       /* here, arr == NULL && arr_size == 0 */

       rrd_mkdir_p(const char *pathname, mode_t mode)
	   Create the directory named "pathname" including all of its parent directories (similar to "mkdir -p" on the command line - see mkdir(1)
	   for more information). The argument "mode" specifies the permissions to use. It is modified by the process's "umask". See mkdir(2) for
	   more details.

	   The function returns 0 on success, a negative value else. In case of an error, "errno" is set accordingly. Aside from the errors
	   documented in mkdir(2), the function may fail with the following errors:

	   EINVAL
	       "pathname" is "NULL" or the empty string.

	   ENOMEM
	       Insufficient memory was available.

	   any error returned by stat(2)

	   In contrast to mkdir(2), the function does not fail if "pathname" already exists and is a directory.

AUTHOR

       RRD Contributors <rrd-developers@lists.oetiker.ch>

1.4.3								    2009-11-15								 librrd(3)