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views

Eventually consistent external materialized views.

Version 2

Version 2.0.0 represents the merging of Gered King's branch with ours. A big thanks to Gered whose changes make the view library much more user friendly and better documented.

The views library allows you to manage a view system which is a collection of views and a list of subscribers to those views. Subscribers will get sent view refreshes in realtime when the data represented by the views they are subscribed to changes. Relevant changes are found through the use of hints which are added to the view system by anything that is actually changing the data at the instant it is changed.

A view is similar in concept to a materialized view, though in practice it may not actually keep a copy of the underlying data represented by the view and instead just keep a copy of a query or the location of where the data can be retrieved from when it is needed (e.g. when view refrehses need to be sent out).

A view is represented by the protocol views.protocols/IView:

(defprotocol IView
  (data [this namespace parameters])
  (relevant? [this namespace parameters hints])
  (id [this]))

id simply returns a unique identifier for this view. data returns a copy of the underlying data represented by this view. relevant? determines if a collection of hints is relevant to the view and is called by the view system whenever new hints are received to determine if view refreshes need to be sent out for this view.

A hint is a map of the form:

{:namespace ...
 :type ...
 :hint ...}

:type represents the type of view (e.g. :sql-table-name) and is defined by the view implementation that this hint is intended for. :hint is the hint information and its contents will differ depending on the type of view it's intended for. As an example, it may be a list of database table names for an SQL-based view.

Namespaces can be used to isolate multiple sets of the same type of data being represented by the views within the view system. As an example, for SQL views a namespace could be used to represent the database to connect to if your system is comprised of multiple similar databases. A view is not specifically tied to a namespace, however the hints processed by the view system are only relevant for the namespace specified in the hint.

Int determining the relevance of any given hint, a view's relevant? predicate will compare all the properties of a hint, including the namespace and type to ensure that view refreshes aren't issued incorrectly or too frequently.

Subscribers can be registered within the view system. A subscription can be created within the view system by specifying the view to subscribe to, identified by its view ID, a namespace, and any parameters that the view might take. These 3 properties go together to form a view signature or view sig. A view sig is represented by a map:

{:namespace ...
 :view-id ...
 :parameters ...}

Subscriptions are considered unique for a subscriber based on all 3 of these properties combined. As such, a subscriber can have multiple concurrent subscriptions to the same view if the namespace and/or parameters are different for all of them.

A subscriber is uniquely identified by its subscriber key. Common subscriber key values include user ID, Session ID, or other identifiers like client ID used in libraries such as Sente for websocket connections.

When hints are processed by the view system and found to be relevant for any of the views (through the use of the relevant? check mentioned earlier), view refreshes are sent out to all of the subscribers of the view. Up-to-date data for the view is retrieved via the view's data function and then sent out.

Whenever data is refreshed, a hash is kept and is compared to on each refresh to make sure that we don't send out another refresh if the data is unchanged from the last refresh sent.

Usage

To explain basic usage of the views library, we'll walk through an example building up a simple system so you can see how it works interactively.

To begin, we'll need to use functions from the views.core namespace.

(require '[views.core :as views])

View System Initialization

We first need to create the view system. This will be kept in an atom and will be passed around to the different views library functions also as an atom as the views system needs to maintain it's own internal state.

(def view-system (atom {}))

For a fully working view system, we also need to provide a function that will be used to send view refreshes to subscribers. For now we'll just print view refreshes out in the REPL, but in a real system you'd want it to send them to a connected Websocket client, or out over some kind of distributed messaging service, etc.

(defn send-fn
  [subscriber-key [view-sig view-data]]
  (println "view refresh" subscriber-key view-sig view-data))

Now we're ready to actually create the view system. To do this, we call init! which takes a set of options. We provide our send function above using the :send-fn option. For a description of all the options available, see views.core/default-options.

(views/init! view-system {:send-fn send-fn})

At this point, the view system is ready.

Right now there are some background threads running, one of which is the refresh watcher which handles incoming hints and checks them for relevancy. When relevant hints are found, view refresh requests are dispatched to one or more refresh worker threads which actually perform the work of retrieving updated view data and sending it off to subscribers.

Now, let's talk about setting up some views, as we have none in our view system.

Adding Views

For demonstration purposes, we'll set up views for an in-memory datastore:

(def memory-datastore
  (atom {:a {:foo 1 
             :bar 200 
             :baz [1 2 3]}
         :b {:foo 2 
             :bar 300 
             :baz [2 3 4]}}))

To retrieve or modify data within this memory datastore, we'd likely want to use a path made up of keywords, e.g. [:a :bar] would correspond with the value 200, and [:b :baz 2] with the value 4 using the initial data defined above.

So, let's create a MemoryView:

(require '[views.protocols :refer [IView]])

(def memory-view-hint-type :ks-path)

(defrecord MemoryView [id ks]
  IView
  (id [_] id)
  (data [_ namespace parameters]
    (get-in @memory-datastore 
            (-> [namespace]
                (into ks)
                (into parameters))))
  (relevant? [_ namespace parameters hints]
    (some #(and (= namespace (:namespace %))
                (= ks (:hint %))
                (= memory-view-hint-type (:type %)))
          hints)))

Nothing particularly special here, data simply returns a value from memory-datastore using a path made by combining namespace with a sequence of keywords ks and then finally adding parameters (which is a collection of parameters) to the end of the path.

Note that with this method of referencing data within memory-datastore, the keys :a and :b are being used as namespaces.

relevant? simply compares all 3 values of each of the hints passed in to make sure they all match. memory-view-hint-type is, as its name implies, a value that is used to identify hints as being those intended for memory views and not for, e.g. SQL views (if we had a view system with multiple different types of views in it). The function returns true if at least one of the passed in hints was found to be relevant.

Now we can add some views to our view system:

(views/add-views!
  view-system
  [(MemoryView. :foo [:foo])
   (MemoryView. :bar [:bar])
   (MemoryView. :baz [:baz])])

We now have 3 views, :foo, :bar and :baz which each refer to data under that same path. Note that these views do not define a namespace. That is for subscribers to specify when they register a subscription. As well, code that updates memory-datastore will create hints for the view system as we'll soon see, and at that time it will include a namespace in any created hints.

Most applications will probably want to just pass in a list of views via views.core/init! through the :views option. However, there is nothing wrong with using add-views! like this if you prefer, or if you need to change views on the fly.

Keep in mind though that adding views via add-views! will replace existing views in the view system with the same ID. We only recommend doing this during development.

Subscribing to Views

As mentioned previously, view subscriptions are keyed by a view signature or view sig, which we can create using a helper function if we wish:

(views/->view-sig :a :foo [])
=> {:namespace :a, :view-id :foo, :parameters []}

We create a subscription by calling views.core/subscribe!. For this demonstration, we'll simply make up a subscriber key. The last argument is where we could pass in some application/user context data that would be helpful to use when doing subscription authorization (which we'll discuss later and just ignore for now). For now, we'll just pass in nil context.

(views/subscribe! 
  view-system                        ; view system atom
  (views/->view-sig :a :foo [])      ; view sig of the view to subscribe to
  123                                ; subscriber key
  nil)                               ; context

subscribe! returns a future which will be realized when the subscription finishes. Whenever a new subscription is added, the subscriber is sent an initial set of data for the view. This view refresh is done in a separate thread via a future.

We can see that a view refresh was sent out as a result of this subscription as our send-fn function from before was called and the following output should have appeared

view refresh 123 {:view-id :foo, :parameters []} 1

right away after the call to subscribe!. The 1 at the end corresponds to the data in memory-datastore under the path [:a :foo].

Note that an initial view refresh is always sent out to the subscriber when a subscription is first created. This happens even if the view data has not changed since the last refresh for this view occurred, as obviously the new subscriber was not part of that refresh.

Hints and View Refreshes

Adding hints to the view system triggers refreshes of views for which they are relevant towards. Our application code that changes data which these views are based on needs to have a way of adding views to the view system.

Hints

As mentioned previously, a hint is simply a map that contains a namespace, a type and some data that will differ based on the types of views in the view system. There is a helper function to create this map:

(views/hint :a [:foo] memory-view-hint-type)
=> {:namespace :a, :hint [:foo], :type :ks-path}

Generally speaking the :type value will be the same for all hints which are intended for the same types of views. For example, all of our MemoryView views expect the type to be :ks-path, because the :hint values they expect to compare against are all keyword paths.

Adding Hints to the View System

There are two main ways to do this:

Queue hints which will be picked up by the refresh watcher thread on a regular interval (set by the option :refresh-interval).
Immediately trigger a refresh for a list of hints.

Using option 2 all the time generally does result in much more responsive feeling system from the user's perspective. But you should also consider just how frequently your code could end up triggering refreshes.

Queueing hints as in option 1 will help to guard against duplicate hints triggering excessive view refreshes as duplicate hints added to the queue are dropped. But queued hints are not processed until the refresh watcher thread runs at the next :refresh-interval, so you lose some responsiveness by going this route.

There are more factors to consider in addition to all of this though. As hints are processed, they are internally turned into view refresh requests and dispatched to the refresh worker threads by adding them to an internal queue. This refresh queue also drops duplicate requests, but only if there is a backlog of refresh requests waiting in the queue (which would happen if some views are taking too long to refresh, e.g. slow SQL queries, overloaded server/network, not enough worker threads, etc). If the worker threads are able to process refresh requests very quickly, then the internal queue will usually be empty or near-empty and some or all duplicate refresh requests might make it through.

Also, keep in mind that hashes of view data are computed and compared each time a view refresh is about to be sent out. While the underlying view data must still be retrieved on each refresh request, the data will not be sent out to subscribers if the hash of the new data matches the stored hash.

Ultimately, there isn't really a right or wrong answer as to which method you choose. It will usually make the most sense to default to option 2 for most actions that need to add hints to the view system. This will generally result in a more responsive system. But you'll want to continually evaluate whether some actions should possibly be switched over to queue up hints instead.

Option 1: Queueing Hints

Use queue-hints! and pass in a collection of hints. They will be added to the queue and the refresh watcher thread will process them on the next refresh interval.

(views/queue-hints! 
  view-system 
  [(views/hint :a [:foo] memory-view-hint-type)])

Option 2: Immediately Trigger Refreshes From Hints

Use refresh-views! and pass in a collection of hints. They will be processed immediately and refresh requests will be dispatched for all views for which there were relevant hints (and subscribers) for.

(views/refresh-views! 
  view-system 
  [(views/hint :a [:foo] memory-view-hint-type)])

But Wait -- View Data Must Be Changed First!

If you were following along and tried the above examples out, you would have noticed that our send-fn function was never called. As mentioned previously, each time a view refresh is processed a hash is taken of the data and compared against the previous refresh's hash. Only if the data is found to have been changed is a refresh sent out.

We haven't changed any of the data in memory-datastore yet, so none of the hints we add to the system will trigger a view refresh to be sent. This is a good thing!

Normally in your application you'll want to add hints to the view system at the same place you do some operation that changes data. So, we can add a function to allow us to change the data in memory-datastore and add an appropriate hint about what was changed to the view system at the same time:

(defn memdb-assoc-in!
  [vs namespace ks v]
  (let [path  (into [namespace] ks)
        hints [(views/hint namespace ks memory-view-hint-type)]]
    (swap! memory-datastore assoc-in path v)
    (views/refresh-views! vs hints)))

And then we can use it to change data relevant to the view we're subscribed to (:foo):

(memdb-assoc-in! view-system :a [:foo] 42)

As soon as you run this you should see that send-fn was called to send out a view refresh:

view refresh 123 {:view-id :foo, :parameters []} 42

And of course, memory-datastore was updated correctly at the same time:

@memory-datastore
=> {:a {:foo 42, :bar 200, :baz [1 2 3]}, :b {:foo 2, :bar 300, :baz [2 3 4]}}

As we would expect given the current subscriptions in our view system, view refreshes will only be sent out if we change the data under [:a :foo] as refreshes are only processed if there are subscribers for a view.

Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing a subscriber is done through views.core/unsubscribe! and the arguments are the same:

(views/unsubscribe! 
  view-system                        ; view system atom
  (views/->view-sig :a :foo [])      ; view sig of the view to unsubscribe from
  123                                ; subscriber key
  nil)                               ; context

Remember that subscriptions are keyed by view sig, so to unsubscribe from a view, you must use the exact same namespace and parameters that was used to subscribe to it in the first place.

If you need to unsubscribe from all of a subscriber's current subscriptions, you can use views.core/unsubscribe-all! which essentially completely removes a subscriber from the views system.

(views/unsubscribe-all! view-system 123)   ; where '123' is the subscriber key

Shutting Down the Views System

You can stop the views system by simply calling views.core/shutdown!

(views/shutdown! view-system)

This function will by default block until the refresh watcher and all refresh worker threads have finished (they are sent interrupt signals when shutdown! is called). If for some reason you do not wish to block, you can pass an additional argument to shutdown!:

(views/shutdown! view-system true)   ; don't block waiting for threads to terminate

Subscription Authorization

By default, no subscriptions require authorization. If you wish for some or all views to require some kind of authorization, you should provide an :auth-fn option to views.core/init!.

This is a function of the form:

(fn [view-sig subscriber-key context]
  ; ...
  )

It should return true if the subscription is authorized. context is the exact value that was passed in as the context argument to subscribe!. You might wish to pass in a Ring request map or a user profile for example.

If subscription authorization fails, subscribe! returns nil.

You can also provide the :on-unauth-fn option to views.core/init! and set it to a function that will be called in the event that subscription authorization failed. This function takes the same arguments as :auth-fn. The return value is not used.

Your application may or may not need this depending on how you have things set up (the fact that subscribe! returns nil if unauthorized may be enough for you). It is just provided as an extra convenience.

Namespaces

As has been mentioned already, namespaces can be used to isolate subscriptions to views and view refreshes. Typical use of namespaces within a views system would be to set them to something that specifies which database to retrieve view data from when you have multiple databases all with an identical structure.

Namespace information is not included in the actual view refresh data that gets sent to subscribers. It is just considered to be a server-side concern.

Depending on your application, you may be perfectly ok with just passing in the specific namespace needed when creating view subscriptions. However, you can also specify a :namespace-fn option in your call to views.core/init! and provide a function that will return the namespace to use for all calls to subscribe! and unsubscribe! that get passed a view sig which does not include a namespace in it.

The :namespace-fn function should be of the form:

(fn [view-sig subscriber-key context]
  ; ...
  )

context will be whatever was passed in as the context argument to subscribe!/unsubscribe!.

It bears repeating that :namespace-fn will not be called even if it was set if you use a view sig that includes a :namespace key.

For this reason the helper function ->view-sig includes an extra overload that does not set a namespace.

; a view sig that will result in namespace-fn being called (if one is set)
(views/->view-sig :foo [])
=> {:view-id :foo, :parameters []}

; a view sig that will always use :a as the namespace, even if a namespace-fn is set
(views/->view-sig :a :foo [])
=> {:namespace :a, :view-id :foo, :parameters []}

View System Initialization Options

There are a number of options that can be provided to views.core/init!. The only one that absolutely must be provided for a working system is :send-fn while all the other default options will generally suffice for a non-distributed relatively low-load application.

The default options are defined in views.core/default-options.

`:send-fn`

A function that is used to send view refresh data to subscribers.

(fn [subscriber-key [view-sig view-data]]
  ; ...
  )

`:views`

A list of IView instances. These are the views that can be subscribed to. Views can also be added/replaced in the system after initialization by calling views.core/add-views!.

`:put-hints-fn`

A function that typically will be used by the different views plugin libraries providing view implementations (such as views.sql or views.honeysql) to add hints to the view system.

This function is used as a common configurable way for these different plugin libraries to add hints because the application can provide an alternate implementation to e.g. send hints out over a distributed messaging service and it will affect all views in the system (which would not be possible if all or just some were hard-coded to use queue-hints! or refresh-views!).

(fn [^Atom view-system hints]
  ; ...
  )

The default implementation is:

(fn [^Atom view-system hints]
  (refresh-views! view-system hints))

`:refresh-queue-size`

The size of the internal refresh request queue used to hold refresh requests for the refresh worker threads. If you notice some refresh requests being dropped, you may wish to increase this (after of course seeing if you have some slow views that could be improved).

Default is 1000.

`:refresh-interval`

An interval in milliseconds at which the refresh watcher thread will check for queued up hints and dispatch relevant view refresh requests to the refresh worker threads.

Default is 1000.

`:worker-threads`

The number of refresh worker threads that continually poll for refresh requests and handle sending view refreshes to subscribers.

Default is 8.

`:auth-fn`

A function that authorizes view subscriptions. It should return true if the subscription is authorized. If this function is not set, no view subscriptions will require authorization.

(fn [view-sig subscriber-key context]
  ; ...
  )

`:on-unauth-fn`

A function that is called when subscription authorization fails. The return value of this function is not used.

(fn [view-sig subscriber-key context]
  ; ...
  )

`:namespace-fn`

A function that is used during subscription and unsubscription only if no namespace is specified in the view sig passed in. This function should return the namespace to be used for the subscription/unsubscription.

(fn [view-sig subscriber-key context]
  ; ...
  )

`:stats-log-interval`

Interval in milliseconds at which a logger will output an INFO log entry with some view system statistics (refreshes/sec, dropped-refreshes/sec, duplicate-refreshes/sec). If not set, no logging is done.

Considerations for Distributed Systems

If you're looking to use a views system with an application that will be running on multiple servers, all you really need to do to get the views system working consistently across all the nodes is to make sure that when new hints are to be added to the views system, they are sent to all application nodes.

For example, you can set up a messaging service (such as RabbitMQ, etc) and when you need to add hints to the views system, instead of calling queue-hints! or refresh-views! with the new hints, you simply send them to the messaging service.

Most of the views plugin libraries providing view implementations (such as views.sql) will call views.core/put-hints! to add hints to the system. put-hints! uses whatever the :put-hints-fn function was set to in the options passed to views.core/init!. The default :put-hints-fn implementation simply calls refresh-views!, but you can easily provide an alternative function that sends the hints to a messaging service.

Then, your application nodes need to listen for hints being received from the messaging service. You should then call queue-hints! or refresh-views! with the hints received this way.

Contributors

In alphabetical order:

Alexander Hudek (https://github.com/akhudek)
Dave Della Costa (https://github.com/ddellacosta)
Gered King (https://github.com/gered)

License

Distributed under the MIT License.

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