Storage & Backups

Your database lives in server/data/ as a tree of data.json files. The server keeps the entire tree in memory and writes dirty subtrees back to disk on a 5-second debounce (or sooner under load). You don't normally need to touch these files — but it helps to know how they're laid out.

The split tree

To keep individual JSON files from growing unbounded, NukeBase splits any object that would exceed roughly 400 MB serialized into a subdirectory. The parent file references the child via a $split marker:

server/data/
├── data.json                  # { "users": "$split", "posts": [...] }
└── users/
    ├── data.json              # { "alice": {...}, "bob": "$split" }
    └── bob/
        └── data.json          # { ...bob's subtree... }

Splits happen automatically when an object grows past the threshold, and the inverse — coalescing back into the parent file — happens automatically on startup if a child has shrunk under the threshold. Migration from a legacy single server/data.json file is also automatic on first run.

Atomic writes & crash safety

Each data.json is written via a tmp + fsync + rename sequence, so a crash mid-write leaves either the previous file or the new file on disk — never a partially-written one. Any leftover .tmp files from a crashed write are swept on startup before the data is loaded. Pending in-memory writes are flushed on SIGTERM/SIGINT for graceful shutdown.

Daily backup

Every 24 hours the server flushes pending writes and copies server/data/ to server/backup/<YYYY-MM-DD>/. Same-day re-runs overwrite the existing snapshot. No configuration is required.