So assume I have a class that has an init method that does something like... grabs some data off the net in xml format and parses it to initialize some of its properties. My concern is how should I handle the case where the network is down or the xml data my object receives is bad?
Normally in C i would use return values to indicate an error and what kind and then that would get propagated back till I could report it to the user. I don't really think that will work in this situation.
Use asynchronous network requests.
Create the UI and show it with
either dummy replacement for the
actual values (like pictures) or no
data (for example empty table).
Then create and send the request for
data and register handler that gets
called with data.
When you receive data your handler
gets called with them.
You parse the data and update the
UI. In case of data being invalid
you can now update UI to inform the
user.
You can use timeouts to cancel
requests in case of network problem
and functions not returning with
data within specific time.
There was an example in last year Stanford's CS193p class (iPhone programming but the same applies to desktop apps) with showing empty user interface and updating it when data coming back. You can probably find references to it on net or otherwise there'll be new example this year.
For network down you have a few options
Alert the user you cannot retrieve the needed data
Show stale (last loaded, maybe not stale?) data
For Bad Data:
Alert the user
Try again
Show old data
Try to fix the data (missing a closing tag? etc)
Show a subset of the data (maybe you can extract something that is usable?)
As far as error codes, you can do:
Return codes ie bad_data -1, no_network -2, etc.
You can throw exceptions, catch them and map them to user friendly display messages
Related
I have an an activity diagram with two swimlanes (Client and Server). I want to model a request call from Client to Server.
Is it correct to use Signals Notation for Calls between systems? Are there alternatives?
The call is parametrized, Client wants to send something which was created before. How to model this?
Thankful for any hint! Here's my example:
My answer has to be improved, but here is a first step.
The norm/spec says: "A SendSignalAction is an InvocationAction that creates a Signal instance and transmits the instance to the object given on its target InputPin. A SendSignalAction must have argument InputPins corresponding, in order, to each of the (owned and inherited) Properties of the Signal being sent, with the same type, ordering and multiplicity as the corresponding attribute.
And a SendSignalAction has an association to a target objet which is an input pin.
So for your question about Request:item I would use input pin, one for the object from which the Signal is created and one to define the Target. (in the schema the target comes from an output pin but a data store may be use). Then after sending the request, the client is waiting the answer. The AcceptEvent is linked to a trigger (not shown on the schema) which a signal, the one created by the server. But you can not link SendRequest of Client to ReceiveRequest of Server because this is not how it runs.
For the server, you can do similar reasoning.
Concerning the parametrization of the call I would use InputPin to model the arguments of the Call i.e. the Object sent by the Call as shown below.
Signal and Call Notations are correct for me but I am not used to have the sending and receive action in the same diagram so will suggest two alternatives.
1) First remove them...
2) Separate Client and Server Modelling
Let me know what you think about that and what seems to be clear for you...
I also recognize the tool you used so please find my project at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s1mx46cb3linop0/Project1.zip?dl=0
As I see it, it should be modeled like this:
The server runs in an independent loop and starts with waiting for a request. There's a object flow between Create request and Query result set. This symbolizes data placed in a queue (or what ever is appropriate). The receipt of the result set would be done below in a similar way, I just left that out for brevity.
You can also draw an object for the query set
instead of the ActionPins.
TL;DR
What's the best way to handle dependency between types of data that is loaded asynchronously from different backend endpoints?
Problem
My app fetches data from a backend, for each entity I have an endpoint to fetch all instances.
For example api.myserver.com/v1/users for User model and api.myserver.com/v1/things for Thing model.
This data is parsed and placed into data store objects (e.g. UserDataStore and ThingDataStore) that serve these models to the rest of the app.
Question
What should I do if the data that comes from /things depends on data that comes from /users and the fetch operations are async. In my case /things returns the id of a user that created them. This means that if /things returns before /users, then I won't have enough data to create the Thing model.
Options
Have /things return also relevant /users data nested.
This is bad because:
I'll then have multiple model instances User for the same actual user - one that came from /users and one that came nested in /things.
Increases the total payload size transferred.
In a system with some permission policy, data that is returned for /users can be different to /things, and then it'll allow partially populated models to be in the app.
Create an operational dependency between the two data stores, so that ThingsDataStore will have to wait for UserDataStore to be populated before it attempts to load its own data.
This is also bad because:
Design-wise this dependency is not welcome.
Operational-wise, it will very quickly become complicated once you throw in another data stores (e.g. dependency cycles, etc).
What is the best solution for my problem and in general?
This is obviously not platform / language dependent.
I see two possible solutions:
Late initialization of UserDataStore in ThingDataStore. You will have to allow for creation an object that is not fully valid. And you will also need to add method that will give you an information whether UserDataStore is initialized or not. Not perfect, because for some time there will exists an invalid instance.
Create some kind of proxy or maybe a buider object for ThingDataStore that will hold all information about particular thing and will create ThingDataStore object as soon as UserDataStore related with this instance will be received.
Maybe it will help you. Good luck!
We are currently using visjs version 3 to map the dependencies of our custom built workflow engine. This has been WONDERFUL because it helps us to visualize the flow and find invalid or missing dependencies. What we want to do next is simplify the process of building the dependencies using the visjs manipulation feature. The idea would be that we would display a large group of nodes and allow the user to order them correctly. We then want to be able to submit that json structure back to the server for processing.
Would this be possible?
Yes, this is possible.
Vis.js dispatches various events that relate to user interactions with graph (e.g. manipulations, or position changes) for which you can add handlers that modify or store the data on change. If you use DataSets to store nodes and edges in your network, you can always use the DataSets' get() function to retrieve all elements in you handler in JSON format. Then in your handler, just use an ajax request to transmit the JSON to your server to store the entire graph in your DB or by saving the JSON as a file.
The oppposite for loading the graph: simply query the JSON from your server and inject it into the node and edge DataSets' using the set method.
You can also store the networks current options using the network's getOptions method, which returns all applied options as json.
When I creating same type objects and save them into database, should I send a list of that objects in one request or should I send individually for each one?
For example, I would like to create a todo list, I can create multiple todos, then click save to send a list of todos, or when I finish editing one todo, I save it directly.
The first way can save request numbers, only one request needed to create many objects. But is the first way RESTful? All infomation about create in REST is creating a single object, but will there be poblems if increasing requests numbers?
----Edit
Thank you guys answering me.
For a more spicific usecase, I am using Django Rest Framework. I created a Todo model and a corresponding serializer. I am wondering, how could I create a list of Todos? I tried to send a list of Todos to serializer, and expecting serializer can automatically loop through it as same as getting a list of instance. But that doesn't work. I know I may be able to create a loop to call create method everytime. But is there a better way to do it?
There is nothing in REST that tells you what kind of payload you are allowed to use. You can POST/PUT whatever you want - one entity representation or many representations, in lists, dictionaries, XML, URL-encoded key/values or JSON, what ever suits your use case best.
In your case you might even want to send a delta/diff list of changes on the client: Lets for instance say your client loads some existing 3 todo items. Then the user modifies one of them, deletes another one and adds a new one. You can either do that in three requests or one single request with add/modify/delete operations encoded in it. Both ways are valid and the best solution depends on your use case and constraints like bandwidth, processing power and network round-trip time.
I'm connecting to a third-party web service to retrieve rows from the underlying database. I can optionally pass a parameter like this:
http://server.com/resource?createdAfter=[yyyy-MM-dd hh:ss]
to get only the rows created after a given date.
This means I have to store the current timestamp (using #[function:datestamp:...], no problem) in one message scope and then retrieve it in another.
It also implies the timestamp should be preserved in case of an outage.
Obviously, I could use a subflow containing a file endpoint, saving in a designated file on a path. But, intuitively, based on my (very!) limited experience, it feels hackish.
What's the correct idiom to solve this?
Thanks!
The Object Store Module is designed just for that: to allow you to save bits of information from your flows.
See:
http://mulesoft.github.io/mule-module-objectstore/mule/objectstore-config.html
https://github.com/mulesoft/mule-module-objectstore/