shoulder-tap

Allows clients to connect to a server and signal via a light-weight shoulder-tap event to indicate that work is available. It utilizes UDP. It was implemented to reduce latency and need for high frequency polling when implementing reliable distributed tra

Usage no npm install needed!

<script type="module">
  import shoulderTap from 'https://cdn.skypack.dev/shoulder-tap';
</script>

README

Requirements

Node 10+

Usage

Configuration Options

Configuration options with defaults that can be passed to the constructor.

options

Server

import ShoulderTapServer from 'shoulder-tap'

const shoulderTapServer = new ShoulderTapServer({
  type: 'udp4', // udp4 or udp6
  HOST: '127.0.0.1', // bind address
  PORT: 3131, // bind port
})

shoulderTapServer.addListener(key, func)
shoulderTapServer.removeListener(key)

Client

import ShoulderTapClient from 'shoulder-tap'

const shoulderTapClient = new ShoulderTapClient({
  type: 'udp4', // udp4 or udp6
  HOST: '127.0.0.1', // destination address
  PORT: 3131, // destination port
})

shoulderTapClient.setErrorListener((err) => {
  log.error(err)
})

shoulderTapClient.sendBestEffort(JSON.stringify({ key: 'testKey', value: 'testValue' }))

Configuration

const config = {
  disabled: process.env.SHOULDER_TAP_DNS_DISABLE === 'true',
  dnsTtlMs: process.env.SHOULDER_TAP_DNS_CACHE_TTL_MS || 10000, // when to refresh actively used dns entries (10 sec)
  cacheGraceExpireMultiplier: process.env.SHOULDER_TAP_DNS_CACHE_EXPIRE_MULTIPLIER || 2, // maximum grace to use entry beyond TTL
  dnsIdleTtlMs: process.env.SHOULDER_TAP_DNS_CACHE_IDLE_TTL_MS || 1000 * 60 * 60, // when to remove entry entirely if not being used (1 hour)
  backgroundScanMs: process.env.SHOULDER_TAP_DNS_BACKGROUND_SCAN_MS || 5000, // how frequently to scan for expired TTL and refresh (5 sec)
  dnsCacheSize: process.env.SHOULDER_TAP_DNS_CACHE_SIZE || 100, // maximum number of entries to keep in cache
  // pino logging options
  logging: {
    name: 'shoulder-tap-cache-dns-resolve',
    // enabled: true,
    level: process.env.SHOULDER_TAP_DNS_LOG_LEVEL || 'info', // default 'info' others trace, debug, info, warn, error, and fatal
    // timestamp: true,
    prettyPrint: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'DEBUG' || false,
    useLevelLabels: true,
  },
}

Statistics

Statistics are available via getStats()

Recommend exposing this through consuming service health statistic/metrics endpoints.

const stats = {
  dnsEntries: 0,
  refreshed: 0,
  hits: 0,
  misses: 0,
  idleExpired: 0,
  errors: 0,
  lastError: 0,
  lastErrorTs: 0,
}

Getting started

npm i -S shoulder-tap

Testing

Command line

Ubuntu

npm run testServer
npm run testClient

OR

echo -n "{\"key\":\"hello\"}" >/dev/udp/localhost/3131

OR

echo -n "{\"key\":\"hello\"}" | nc -4u -w0 localhost 3131

More information

See the tests and implementation files.