pubway

Lets say you have four nodes in a system:

• Client A
• Client B
• Server C
• Database D

These four nodes go through these two scenarios:

1. Client A sends a change request to Server C which applies the change to Database D and responds with the new data.
2. Client B sends a change request to Server C which applies the change to Database D and responds with the new data.

Both scenarios end with each client missing the changed data the other made. There are two ways to combat this obstacle:

• The Client periodically asks for the subset or set of data. (Polling)
• The Client is told of the subset that changed. (Publish/Subscribe)

Assuming you've decided the latter option is the correct choice you now have the task of figuring out how you're going to publish/subscribe and the application layer protocol for handling these messages. For example, one problem you'll encounter is that messages can have a content limitation. Pusher for example has 10kB message limit. Since data can be variable in size I don't think it's a good idea to assume we can send the entire resource "up the wire".

I will leave the former problem up to the market (Pusher, Firebase, etc). The latter problem is something I can solve! Now that we've got the situation laid out here is what pubway.js does:

pubway.js is a SDK for publish/subscribe sockets or an application layer protocol for the messages. pubway.js is told the data stores your client has and how to initiate state changes. An example would be a server telling clients of an account changing it's name:

PATCH /resources/accounts/f26c1cb0-c7a1-44a7-8b72-2843568406bd/name

Seem similar? It matches the first line in an HTTP request! Here's the pattern broken down:

intent path

• intent: One of PATCH or DELETE, where PATCH means "this resource has changed" and DELETE means "This resource no longer exists".
• path: This is intended to be the path of a tree, but can be decoded as anything you want.

Here's what a redux-based pubway usage would look like:

import pusher from "pusher-js"
import pubway from "pubway"

import store from "./store"

pusher.listen("updates-channel", pubway(({intent, path}) => store.dispatch(changeResources(intent, path))))

You can also define multiple side-effects:

import pusher from "pusher-js"
import pubway from "pubway"

import store from "./store"

pusher.listen("updates-channel", pubway([
  ({intent, path}) => store.dispatch(changeResources(intent, path)),
  ({intent, path}) => window.update(intent, path)
]))

Okay, so what if path contains confidential information? Well we can still operate much the same way:

GET /jwt/e257e5f087ff1490b417412f7f3d49f74fbaad1b188f0e3588e70e0c9a49cc7a

And now here's what our adapter looks like:

import pusher from "pusher-js"
import pubway from "pubway"

import store from "./store"
import decode from "./decode"

pusher.listen("updates-channel", pubway(({intent, path}) => store.dispatch(changeEncryptedResources(intent, path))))