better solution than timertask with scala in play framework - scala

I need to regularly check the database for updated records. I currently use TimerTask which works fine. However, I've found its efficiency is not good and consumes a lot of server resouces. Is there a solution which can fulfill my requirement but is better?
def checknewmessages() = Action{
request =>
TimerTask(5000){
//code to check database
}
}

I can think of two solutions:
You can use the ReactiveMongo driver for Play which is completely non-blocking and async and capped collection in Mongo DB.
Please see this for an example -
https://github.com/sgodbillon/reactivemongo-tailablecursor-demo
How to listen for changes to a MongoDB collection?
If you are using a database that doesn't support a push mechanisms you can implement that using an Actor by scheduling messages to itself at regular intervals.

If your logic is in your database (stored procedures etc) you could simply create a cron job.
You could also create a command line script that encapsulates the logic and schedule (cron again).
If you have your logic in your web application, you could again create a cron job that simply makes an API call to your app.

Related

Can I assume that all databases will return a promise?

I am designing a set of unit and integration tests with a friend of mine, and we had a doubt. We know the answer, at least, what is more likely to be true. However, we would like to hear your thoughts.
We are designing a test for MongoDB, and we expect that we should receive a promise, after asking to save a document. So far so good.
What about if we change the database??? can we assume for sure that all databases when queried will return a promise??
I guess regarding the _id, it depends from database to database, we are using _id from MongoDB for testing reasons.
We are using the following test using in Jest
create://this method do exist on service, however, at the moment of testing, it is empty, just a placeholder
jest.fn().mockImplementation((cat: CreateCatDto) =>
Promise.resolve({ _id: 'a uuid', ...cat })
)
The idea is to design backends that do not depend on the database, but for testing and developing reasons, we are using MongoDB and PostgreSQL.
Keep in mind the term promise doesn't exist as a concept for all databases, and to provide a conclusive answer to your question for all databases is not possible.
That being said, if by promise you mean the primary key or identity (in general database terms) after inserting new data, then the answer is no, there is no guarantee, not even on PostgreSQL that'll you be able to do that. It's possible for tables, even in PostgreSQL, to exist without those constraints.
Otherwise, if by promise, you mean specifically the concept in a procedural or functional language like JavaScript (as your example code in your update indicates), then yes, you should always receive a promise object if your application code is utilizing asynchronous calls appropriately.
But that would be regardless of what the asynchronous call was to whether it's a database directly (and regardless of what database system that was), an API endpoint, or another piece of application code. Also, in that case, your question (or any follow up questions) would be better suited for StackOverflow.com.
Can I assume that all databases return a promise?
No. Most if not all database wire protocols are synchronous, meaning the client blocks until it gets a response. Even the databases that expose some sort of RESTful APIs are synchronous, because HTTP.
Some client-side drivers may wrap this synchronous logic and exhibit asynchronous behaviour by returning something like JavaScrpt Promises or Java Futures, but it is entirely up to the driver implementation you choose to use.

Vertx to mongoDB connections

I'm working on a Java/vertx project where the backend is MongoDB (I used to work with Elixir/Erlang since some time, and I'm quite new to vertx but I believe it's the best fit). Basically, I have an http API handled by some HttpServerVerticles which need to store data to (or retrieve data from) the mongo db and to send the appropriate reply to the API caller. I'm looking for the right pattern to implement the queries and the handling of the replies.
From the official guide and some tutorials, I see that for a relational JDBC database, it is necessary to define a dedicated verticle that will handle queries asynchronously. This was my first try with the mongo client but it introduces a lot of boilerplate.
On the other hand, from the mongo client documentation I read that it's Completely non-blocking and that it has its own connection pool. Does that mean that we can safely (from vertx event loop point of view), define and use the mongo client directly in the http verticle ?
Is there any alternative pattern ?
Versions : vertx:3.5.4 / mongodb:4.0.3
It's like that: mongo connection pool is exactly like SQL-db pool synchronous and blocking in it's nature, but is wrapped with non-blocking vert.x API around.
So, instead of a normal blocking way of
JsonObject obj = mongo.get( someQuery )
you have rather a non-blocking call out of the box:
mongo.findOne( 'collectionName', someQuery ){ AsyncResult<JsonObject> res ->
JsonObject obj = res.result()
doStuff( obj )
}
That means, that you can safely use it directly on the event-loop in any type of verticle without reinventing the asyncronous wheel over and over again.
At our client we use mongodb-driver-rx. Vertx has support for RX (vertx-rx-java) and it fits pretty well on mongodb-driver-rx.
For more information see:
https://mongodb.github.io/mongo-java-driver-rx/
https://vertx.io/docs/vertx-rx/java/
https://github.com/vert-x3/vertx-examples/blob/master/rxjava-2-examples/src/main/java/io/vertx/example/reactivex/database/mongo/Client.java

Service Fabric Actors - save state to database

I'm working on a sample Service Fabric project, where I have to maintain a shopping list. For this I have a ShoppingList actor, which is identifiable by a specific id. It stores the current list content in its state using StateManager. All works fine.
However, in parallel I'd like to maintain the shopping list content in a sql database. In particular:
store all add/remove item request for future analysis (ML)
on first actor initialization load list content from db (e.g. after cluster has been re-created)
What is the best approach to achieve that? Create a custom StateProvider (how? can't find examples)?
Or maybe have another service/actor for handling all db operations (possibly using queues and reminders)?
All examples seem to completely rely on default StateManager, with no data persistence to external storage, so I'm not sure what's the best practice.
The best way will be to have a separate entity responsible for storing data to DB. And actor will just send an event (not implying SF events) with some data about performed operation, and another entity will catch it and perform the rest of the work.
But of course you can implement this thing in actor itself, but it will bring two possible issues:
Actor will be not able to process other requests if there will be some issues with DB or connectivity between actor and DB or if there will be high loading of DB itself and it will process requests slowly. The actor would have to wait till transferring to DB successfully completes.
Possible overloading of DB with many single connections from many actors instead of one or several connection from another entity and batch insertion.
So, your final solution will depend on workload of your system. But definitely you will need a reliable queue to safely store data in DB if value of such data is too high to afford a loss.
Also, I think you could use default state manager to store logs and information about transactions before it will be transferred to DB and remove from service's state after transaction completes. There is no need to have permanent storage of such data in services.
And another things to take into consideration — reading from DB. Probably, if you have relationship database and will update with new records only one table + if there will be huge amount of actors that will query such data on activation, you will have performance degradation as this table will be locked for reading or writing if you will not configure it to behave differently. So, probably, you will need caching system to read data for actors activation — depends on your workload.
And about implementing your custom State Manager: take a look at this example. Basically, all you need to do is to implement IReliableStateManagerReplica interface and pass it to StatefullService constructor.

Querying a list of Actors in Azure Service Fabric

I currently have a ReliableActor for every user in the system. This actor is appropriately named User, and for the sake of this question has a Location property. What would be the recommended approach for querying Users by Location?
My current thought is to create a ReliableService that contains a ReliableDictionary. The data in the dictionary would be a projection of the User data. If I did that, then I would need to:
Query the dictionary. After GA, this seems like the recommended approach.
Keep the dictionary in sync. Perhaps through Pub/Sub or IActorEvents.
Another alternative would be to have a persistent store outside Service Fabric, such as a database. This feels wrong, as it goes against some of the ideals of using the Service Fabric. If I did, I would assume something similar to the above but using a Stateless service?
Thank you very much.
I'm personally exploring the use of Actors as the main datastore (ie: source of truth) for my entities. As Actors are added, updated or deleted, I use MassTransit to publish events. I then have Reliable Statefull Services subscribed to these events. The services receive the events and update their internal IReliableDictionary's. The services can then be queried to find the entities required by the client. Each service only keeps the entity data that it requires to perform it's queries.
I'm also exploring the use of EventStore to publish the events as well. That way, if in the future I decide I need to query the entities in a new way, I could create a new service and replay all the events to it.
These Pub/Sub methods do mean the query services are only eventually consistent, but in a distributed system, this seems to be the norm.
While the standard recommendation is definitely as Vaclav's response, if querying is the exception then Actors could still be appropriate. For me whether they're suitable or not is defined by the normal way of accessing them, if it's by key (presumably for a user record it would be) then Actors work well.
It is possible to iterate over Actors, but it's quite a heavy task, so like I say is only appropriate if it's the exceptional case. The following code will build up a set of Actor references, you then iterate over this set to fetch the actors and then can use Linq or similar on the collection that you've built up.
ContinuationToken continuationToken = null;
var actorServiceProxy = ActorServiceProxy.Create("fabric:/MyActorApp/MyActorService", partitionKey);
var queriedActorCount = 0;
do
{
var queryResult = actorServiceProxy.GetActorsAsync(continuationToken, cancellationToken).GetAwaiter().GetResult();
queriedActorCount += queryResult.Items.Count();
continuationToken = queryResult.ContinuationToken;
} while (continuationToken != null);
TLDR: It's not always advisable to query over actors, but it can be achieved if required. Code above will get you started.
if you find yourself needing to query across a data set by some data property, like User.Location, then Reliable Collections are the right answer. Reliable Actors are not meant to be queried over this way.
In your case, a user could simply be a row in a Reliable Dictionary.

How to rollback transaction in Grails integration tests on MongoDB

How I can (should) configure Grails integration tests to rollback transactions automatically when using MongoDB as datasource?
(I'm using Grails 2.2.1 + mongodb plugin 1.2.0)
For spock integration tests I defined a MongoIntegrationSpec that gives some control of cleaning up test data.
dropDbOnCleanup = true // will drop the entire DB after every feature method is executed.
dropDbOnCleanupSpec = true // will drop the entire DB after after the spec is complete.
dropCollectionsOnCleanup = ["collectionA", "collectionB", ...] // drops collections after every feature method is executed.
dropCollectionsOnCleanupSpec = ["collectionA", "collectionB", ...] // drops collections after the spec is complete.
dropNewCollectionsOnCleanup = true // after every feature method is executed, all new collections are dropped
dropNewCollectionsOnCleanupSpec = true // after the spec is complete, all new collections are dropped
Here's the source
https://github.com/onetribeyoyo/mtm/tree/dev/src/test/integration/com/onetribeyoyo/util/MongoIntegrationSpec.groovy
And the project has a couple usage examples too.
I don't think that it's even possible, because MongoDB doesn't support transactions. You could use suggested static transactional = 'mongo', but it helps only if you didn't flush your data (it's rare situation I think)
Instead you could cleanup database on setUp() manually. You can drop collection for a domain that you're going to test, like:
MyDomain.collection.drop()
and (optinally) fill with all data require for your test.
Can use static transactional = 'mongo' in integration test and/or service class.
Refer MongoDB Plugin for more details.
MongoDB does not support transactions! And hence you cannot use it. The options you have are
1. Go around and drop the collections for the DomainClasses you used.
MyDomain.collection.drop() //If you use mongoDB plugin alone without hibernate
MyDomain.mongo.collection.drop() //If you use mongoDB plugin with hibernate
Draw back is you have to do it for each domain you used
2. Drop the whole database (You don't need to create it explicitly, but you can)
String host = grailsApplication.config.grails.mongo.host
Integer port = grailsApplication.config.grails.mongo.port
Integer databaseName = grailsApplication.config.grails.mongo.databaseName
def mongo = new GMongo(host, port)
mongo.getDB(databaseName).dropDatabase() //this takes 0.3-0.5 seconds in my machin
The second option is easier and faster. To make this work for all your tests, extend IntegrationSpec and add the code to drop the database in the cleanup block (I am assuming you are using Spock test framework) or do a similar thing for JUnit like tests!
Hope this helps!