Outline file storage.
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hardSystem Design
How would you design a file storage service like Dropbox?
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01
Understand the problem
file-storage
02
Attempt it yourself
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Nudge consolestandby
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03
Study the solution
Step 1: Outline use cases and constraints
Gather requirements and scope the problem. Ask questions to clarify use cases and constraints. Discuss assumptions.
Use cases
We'll scope the problem to handle only the following use cases
- User performs core action described in How would you design a fil
Solution ready — 2 min read
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04
Read the code
Content-hash chunk dedup
Run Playgroundimport hashlib
store = {} # content-addressed blocks: hash -> bytes (S3 in production)
def put_file(data, chunk_size=4):
manifest = []
for i in range(0, len(data), chunk_size):
c = data[i:i + chunk_size]
h = hashlib.sha256(c).hexdigest()[:8]
if h not in store: # only upload NEW blocks (dedupe)
store[h] = c
print("upload", h, repr(c))
else:
print("skip (already stored)", h)
manifest.append(h)
return manifest # file = ordered list of chunk hashes
v1 = put_file(b"hello world data")
print("--- edit the end, re-sync ---")
v2 = put_file(b"hello world DATA") # leading chunks unchanged -> reused
print("v1:", v1)
print("v2:", v2)05
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