pouch-clerk

PouchDB worker reacting to document changes.

Each document has a state. A clerk listens to changes in one or more PouchDB databases and react to document state changes.

When reacting to a document state change, the clerk can:

• change the document
• say what the next state is going to be

Install

$ npm install pouch-clerk --save

Use

Require package and create clerk:

var Clerk = require('pouch-clerk');
 
var transitions = {
  // document defining state transition handlers
};
 
var options = {
  initialState: 'start', // defaults to `start`
  finalState: 'finished', // defaults to `finish`
  reconnectMaxTimeoutMS: 3000, // defaults to 3000 ms
  transitions: transitions,
};
 
var clerk = Clerk(options);

Options

• initialState (string): the state to give new documents with no state yet
• finalState (string or string array): the end state (or states, if you pass an array)
• reconnectMaxTimeoutMS (number): the maximum number of miliseconds to wait before trying to (re)connect
• transitions (object): the state transition handlers. Object where the keys are the state names and the values are functions.
• asyncUpdaters: an array of functions that start and stop async updaters. See Async Updaters section.

The state transition handlers

The options.transitions should contain an object with a key for each state. The value for each state should be a handler function, like this:

var transitions = {
  'start': function(doc, next) {
    // ...
  }
}

Example:

var transitions = {
  'start': function(doc, next) {
    somethingAsynchronous(function(err, result) {
      if (err) {
        doc.error(err);
      } else {
        doc.result = result;
        next(null, 'waiting for driver'); // jump into next state
      }
    });
  },
 
  'waiting for driver': function(doc, next) {
    // ...
  }

Reentering the same state

You can force reentry on the same state (watch out for infinite loops), by passing a true as third argument to the next callback:

var transitions = {
  'waiting for driver': function(doc, next) {
    next(null, 'waiting for driver', true);
  }
}

Adding and removing databases

A clerk can react to one or more databases. During runtime you just add or remove a database:

var PouchDB = require('pouchdb');
var db = new PouchDB('somedatabase');
 
clerk.add(db);

clerk.remove(db);

Name databases

You can also remove by database name:

clerk.add(db, 'mydb');
clerk.remove('mydb');

You can also find out if a named database exists:

if (!clerk.has('mydb')) {
  clerk.add(db, 'mydb');
}

Async updaters

You can push async updates into documents like this:

var asyncUpdater = {
  start: function(doc) {
    this._interval = setInterval(function() {
      doc.merge(function(currentDoc) {
        currentDoc.counter = currentDoc.counter + 1;
      })
    }, 1000);
  },
  stop: function() {
    clearInterval(this._interval);
  }  
}
 
var options = {
  asyncUpdaters: [asyncUpdater]  
};
 
var clerk = Clerk(options);

(Each document creates an async updater instance, which you can reference by this inside the start or stop methods).

Async updater API

The Async Updater start method gets a doc instance for each document that is being handled. Using this document you can:

get the ID of the document

function start(doc) {
  console.log(doc._id);
}

get the latest document version:

function start(doc) {
  doc.get(function(err, latestDoc) {
    // ...
  })
}

update the document:

function start(doc) {
  doc.put(doc, function(err) {
 
  });
}

merge some attributes into the latest version of the document:

function start(doc) {
  doc.merge(function(latest) {
    latest.counter ++;
  }, function(err) {
    // handle err
  });
}

Error handling

The error handling strategy depends on the type of error happening.

User-land errors

If an error occurs while you're processing a state transition, you should call the next callback with that error as the first argument:

var transitions = {
  'waiting for driver': function(doc, next) {
    somethingAsynchronous(function(err) {
      if (err) return next(err);
      /// ...
    });
  }
};

This will make the document transition into the error state.

You should define an error state handler (if you don't that error will be handled as an internal error — see the next section about internal errors).

var transitions = {
  'error': function(err, doc, next) {
    // you can recover from error:
    next(null, 'some next state');
  }
}

Internal errors

Internal errors can occurr when saving document changes. You can listen for those errors on the clerk object:

clerk.on('error', function(err) {
  
});

(if you don't, an uncaught exception will be thrown);

Stop clerk

clerk.stop(callback);

License

ISC