981. Time Based Key-Value Store | LeetCode Solution

 981. Time Based Key-Value Store

Design a time-based key-value data structure that can store multiple values for the same key at different time stamps and retrieve the key's value at a certain timestamp.

Implement the TimeMap class:

• TimeMap() Initializes the object of the data structure.
• void set(String key, String value, int timestamp) Stores the key key with the value value at the given time timestamp.
• String get(String key, int timestamp) Returns a value such that set was called previously, with timestamp_prev <= timestamp. If there are multiple such values, it returns the value associated with the largest timestamp_prev. If there are no values, it returns "".

 

Example 1:

Input
["TimeMap", "set", "get", "get", "set", "get", "get"]
[[], ["foo", "bar", 1], ["foo", 1], ["foo", 3], ["foo", "bar2", 4], ["foo", 4], ["foo", 5]]

Output
[null, null, "bar", "bar", null, "bar2", "bar2"]

Explanation
TimeMap timeMap = new TimeMap();
timeMap.set("foo", "bar", 1);  // store the key "foo" and value "bar" along with timestamp = 1.
timeMap.get("foo", 1);         // return "bar"
timeMap.get("foo", 3);         // return "bar", since there is no value corresponding to foo at timestamp 3 and timestamp 2, then the only value is at timestamp 1 is "bar".
timeMap.set("foo", "bar2", 4); // store the key "foo" and value "bar2" along with timestamp = 4.
timeMap.get("foo", 4);         // return "bar2"
timeMap.get("foo", 5);         // return "bar2"

 

Constraints:

• 1 <= key.length, value.length <= 100
• key and value consist of lowercase English letters and digits.
• 1 <= timestamp <= 107
• All the timestamps timestamp of set are strictly increasing.
• At most 2 * 105 calls will be made to set and get.

What to learn:

Imagine we have the following timestamps: [5, 10, 15].

If we query, say, 20, upper_bound returns end(), so the result is the label for 15 (prev(end())).
Now, if we query 3, upper_bound returns begin(), and that means we do not have a label (the result is an empty string).

Another interesting case is when we query the exact timestamp, say, 10. upper_bound will return 15 and prev(15) will gives us the correct label. We could have used lower_bound, but we will have to add an equality check.