react-native-persistent-job

• Run parametized asynchronous functions (called jobs) that will re-run in cases of failure, connection loss, application crash or user forced shutdowns.
• Runs on both android and iOS.

Why?

When you develop an application you usually focus on the 'happy flow', where everything runs smoothly, the user has perfect connection, he only leaves the app through the exit button, the app never crashes and your backend or any of the services you use never fail.
Well... it is not usually like that.
Things will fail and might leave your application in an unstable state.
This repository aims to help deal with that.

Installation

Install package from npm

npm install --save react-native-persistent-job

Usage

There are 2 main apis. One for initialization, registering job types and applying modifiers (initializeStore) and one for running jobs (createJob).

initializeStore

initializeStore is used to set up options & run stored jobs. As soon as initializeStore is called the stored jobs that did not finish execution run.
To run any kind of persistent job you must call initializeStore first.

Arguments:

• storeName?: string - optional store name that identifies your instance when you call createJob
• jobHandlers: Array<{jobType: string, handleFunction: (...args: any) => Promise<void>}> - an array of job type (the key that identifies the job) and an handle function to run when the job type is called
• modifyJobStream?: Rx.Observable<JobNumbered> => RxObservable<JobNumbered> - Modifies the stream that runs the jobs (more on that later in the readme)
• modifyRetryStream?: Rx.Observable<JobNumbered> => RxObservable<JobNumbered> - Modifies the stream that retries the jobs (more on that later in the readme)
• concurrencyLimit?: number - Limit the number of jobs that can run concurrently, other jobs will have to wait until the running jobs finish before they can run.

createJob

createJob is used to run the jobs, it accepts the job type as an argument and returns the function of that job type wrapped with persistent-job functionality. For example if I want to run a function (a, b, c) => console.log(a, b, c) that has a jobType console I will run it like this: persistentJob.store().createJob('console')('valueForA', 'valueForB', 'valueForC')

Arguments:

• jobType: string - the job type for the job you want to run that you registered beforehand in initializeStore with the jobHandlers param
• ...args: any[] - the args that the function accepts

example for initializeStore and createJob

import persistentJob from 'react-native-persistent-job'

const logIt = (a, b, c) => console.log(a, b, c)

await persistentJob.initializeStore({
	jobHandlers: [{jobType: 'logIt', handleFunction: logIt}]
})

const persistentLogIt = persistentJob.store().createJob('logIt')
persistentLogIt('valueForA', 'valueForB', 'valueForC')
persistentLogIt('AnotherValueForA', 'AnotherValueForB', 'AnotherValueForC')

Job & Retry streams

The jobs run on a stream that can be modified using rx. There are some built-in modifiers which can be used to modify the stream.

runWhenOnline

Will only run the jobs once the device is connected to the internet.

• example

import persistentJob, {streamModifiers} from 'react-native-persistent-job'

const logIt = (a, b, c) => console.log(a, b, c)

await persistentJob.initializeStore({
	storeName: 'online-jobs',
	jobHandlers: [{jobType: 'logIt', handleFunction: logIt}]
	modifyJobStream: streamModifiers.runWhenOnline
})

const persistentLogIt = persistentJob.store('online-jobs').createJob('logIt')
persistentLogIt('valueForA', 'valueForB', 'valueForC')

withBackoff

Will run failed jobs with delay based on a backoff method (right now either exponential or fibonacci)

• Api:

streamModifiers.retryStream.withBackoff.{exponential / fibonacci}(initialWaitTime: number, maxWaitTime?: number)

• Example:

import persistentJob, {streamModifiers} from 'react-native-persistent-job' 

const failureOfAJob = (msg) => {
	console.log(msg)
	throw 'I failed'
}

const failingJobsStore = await persistentJob.initializeStore({
	storeName: 'failing-jobs',
	jobHandlers: [{jobType: 'failureOfAJob', handleFunction: failureOfAJob}]
	modifyRetryStream: streamModifiers.retryStream.withBackoff.exponential(10, 50)
})

const persistentFailureOfAJob = failingJobsStore.createJob('failureOfAJob') 
persistentFailureOfAJob('I will fail while running')

Stateful & stateless jobs

Usually you will want to use stateless jobs.
Sometimes however, it is more convenient for a job to have a state, then whenever it runs after a failure it will remember the last state it was at.
To do that your function will have to have a prefix with 2 arguments currentState and updateState.
Here is an example with both a stateless and a stateful job:

const statelessJob = async (name) => {
	for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
		console.log('Hello name', i)
	}
}

const statefulJob = (currentState, updateState) => async (name) => {
	const start = currentState || 0
	for (let i = start; i < 10; i++) {
		console.log('Hello name', i)
		await updateState(i)
	}
}

await persistentJob.initializeStore({
	storeName: 'stateless-stateful',
	jobHandlers: [
		{jobType: 'stateless', handleFunction: statelessJob},
		{jobType: 'stateful', handleFunction: statefulJob, isStateful: true}
	]
})

const persistentStatelessJob = persistentJob.store('stateless-stateful').createJob('stateless')
const persistentStatefulJob = persistentJob.store('stateless-stateful').createJob('stateful')
persistentStatelessJob('john')
persistentStatefulJob('mary')

jobHandlerModifiers

limitJobRuns

Limits the number of possible failures a particular job can have before it is terminated

• example

import persistentJob, {jobHandlerModifiers} from 'react-native-persistent-job'

const logIt = (a, b, c) => console.log(a, b, c)

await persistentJob.initializeStore({
	jobHandlers: [
		jobHandlerModifiers.limitJobRuns(3)({jobType: 'logIt', handleFunction: logIt}) // here we modify the handler to run failing jobs only 3 times max.
	]
})

const persistentLogIt = persistentJob.store().createJob('logIt')
persistentLogIt('valueForA', 'valueForB', 'valueForC') // will only run 3 times

Subscriptions

Many times when async operations are running it's good to give some sort of indication for better user experience. Like for example if we made an http request that fetches some data for the user we might want to show a spinner that indicated the request is still active. The most convenient way to do that is with subscriptions (calling the state management library from within the jobs is also an option but not as convenient). To subscribe to a job we must first give the job a topic. Like this:

const jobWithTopic = persistentJob.store().createJob('myJob', 'some_topic')
jobWithTopic()

Then we can subscribe to the topic like this (it is also possible to subscribe to a topic before we run the job, the first value we will receive is JOB_NOT_FOUND though, after that we will receive the rest of the states):

// subscribing the job
const unsubscribe = persistentJob.store().subscribe('some_topic', (jobTopicOutput) => {
	console.log('do something')
})

// to unsubscribe
unsubscribe()

• Subsciptions will also work after an application crash, meaning that if we subscribe to a job that failed in the last application run the subscription will still get data from it.

• The subscription function returns a function to unsubscribe

• When the subscription function is called it is passed an object of the following structure:

{jobState: 'JOB_STARTED' | 'JOB_DONE' | 'JOB_NOT_FOUND' | 'JOB_INTERMEDIATE' | 'JOB_FAILED', value?: any}

Each jobState meaning is displayed in the console.log functions in this example:

const unsubscribe = persistentJob.store().subscribe('some_topic', (jobTopicOutput) => {
	if (jobTopicOutput.jobState === 'JOB_STARTED') console.log('job is just starting')
	if (jobTopicOutput.jobState === 'JOB_DONE') {
		console.log('job finished in this current application run')
		console.log(`This is the value the job finished with: ${jobTopicOutput.value}`)
	} 
	if (jobTopicOutput.jobState === 'JOB_NOT_FOUND') console.log('job finished in some other application run or was never started')
	if (jobTopicOutput.jobState === 'JOB_INTERMEDIATE') {
		console.log('Only stateful jobs have intermediate state, it also has a value which is the current state of the stateful job')

		console.log(`This is the intermediate state value: ${jobTopicOutput.value}`)
	}

	if (jobTopicOutput.jobState === 'JOB_FAILED') {
		console.log('Job failed in this application run, it might restart soon though')

		console.log(`This is the error ${jobTopicOutput.value}`)		
	} 
})