Jayant

Posted on Aug 28

Singleton Pattern, Backend State management and Pub Subs

#backend #redis #redux #webdev

Stateless vs Stateful Backends

Stateless - We don't store any state in the backend. We rely on DB for state. Advantages a. User can connect to random server. b. we can scale very easily.
Stateful - We store some state in the server. Mostly used in games, stockes exchanges app,chats app or you want to store some cache in the server for some time. if you building some game app or something that uses ws and needs a room to operate. Then you have to add stickiness to your app. stickiness means user interested in same room gets connected to same server.

In the above image we have implemented the stickiness.

Example

export class Cache {
   private inMemoryDb: Map<
    string,
    {
      value: any;
      expiry: number;
    }
   >;
   // Singleton Pattern used, read the blog for more info
   private static instance: Cache;
   // constructor is private so no one is able to access and can't create multiple instance
   private constructor() {
    this.inMemoryDb = new Map<
    string,
    {
    value: any;
    expiry: number;
    } >();
    }

    static getInstance() {
    if (!this.instance) {
    this.instance = new Cache();
    }

        return this.instance;

    }

    set(
    type: string,
    args: string[],
    value: any,
    expirySeconds: number = parseInt(process.env.CACHE_EXPIRE_S || '100', 10),
    ) {
    this.inMemoryDb.set(`${type} ${JSON.stringify(args)}`, {
    value,
    expiry: new Date().getTime() + expirySeconds \* 1000,
    });
    }

    get(type: string, args: string[]) {
    const key = `${type} ${JSON.stringify(args)}`;
    const entry = this.inMemoryDb.get(key);
    if (!entry) {
    return null;
    }
    if (new Date().getTime() > entry.expiry) {
    this.inMemoryDb.delete(key);
    return null;
    }
    return entry.value;
    }

    evict(type: string, args: string[]) {
    const key = "${type} ${JSON.stringify(args)}";
    this.inMemoryDb.delete(key);
    return null;
    }
    }

Best Way to use State in TS

Keep it in a seprate folder called store.ts, acting as an single source of truth.

interface Game {
    whitePlayer: string;
    blackPlayer: string;
    moves: string[];
}

export const games: Game[] = [];

But there is a problem to this, if we need to do any operation on the games object then we have do something like this,

games.push({
    ...data
);

games[0].name="jayant";
games[0].moves.push("E2");

That's not the best way you do this task.

Better way is to use the Classes and user can call the methods to do the operations also, with this we only have to change our code logic in only one place. We will make a GameManager class.

interface Game {
    id: string;
    whitePlayer: string;
    blackPlayer: string;
    moves: string[];
}

export class GameManager {
    private games: Game[] = [];

    public addGame(game: Game) {
        this.games.push(game);
    }

    public getGames() {
        return this.games;
    }

    public addMove(gameId: string, move: string) {
        const game = this.games.find((game) => game.id === gameId);
        if (game) {
            game.moves.push(move);
        }
    }

    public logState() {
        console.log(this.games);
    }
}

But there is also a problem in this, user can create multiple instances of this class and each instance will have different data.
To solve this issue you must create only single instance.
Something like this

// use this at every place.
export const gameManager = new GameManager();

But we can still create an instance of this by calling the class constructor.

To solve this issue we need to use the concept of singleton pattern. a. Make the constructor function private, so that it will only be called inside the Class. b. Use Static keyword. In JavaScript, the keyword static is used in classes to declare static methods or static properties. Static methods and properties belong to the class itself, rather than to any specific instance of the class. Means if we use static keyword then the variable or method now attached to class instead of object.

class Example {
    // count is attached to class instead to any object, so can't be redeclared
    static count = 0;

    constructor() {
        Example.count++; // Increment the static property using the class name
    }
}

let ex1 = new Example();
let ex2 = new Example();
console.log(Example.count); // Outputs: 2