todos: redo vanadium installation documentation

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Change-Id: I0147224839249ad9794c398e487dfdeb7bf1e887
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tree: 0ffefdc99b4ff0e0993294a67b075815bcdb0134
  1. android/
  2. browser/
  3. public/
  4. stylesheets/
  5. third_party/
  6. tools/
  7. .gitignore
  8. .jshintignore
  9. .jshintrc
  10. AUTHORS
  11. CONTRIBUTING.md
  12. CONTRIBUTORS
  13. demo.md
  14. LICENSE
  15. Makefile
  16. package.json
  17. PATENTS
  18. README.md
  19. server.js
  20. VERSION
README.md

Todos app

Todos is an example app that demonstrates use of Syncbase, and is originally based on the Meteor Todos demo app. The high-level requirements for this app are described here.

Running the web application

We assume you‘ve followed the installation instructions to install prerequisites and fetch the Vanadium repositories, and installed the Syncbase and Node.js profiles using jiri profile install syncbase nodejs. We also assume that you’ve installed the Vanadium Chrome extension.

The commands below assume that the current working directory is $JIRI_ROOT/release/projects/todos.

First, build all necessary binaries.

DEBUG=1 make build

Next, if you haven't already, generate credentials to use for running the local daemons (mounttabled and syncbased). Leave the blessing extension field empty.

make creds

Next, start local daemons (in another terminal). This script runs mounttabled and syncbased at ports $PORT+1 and $PORT+2 respectively, and configures Syncbase to persist its data under tmp/syncbase_$PORT. It expects to find credentials in creds.

PORT=4000 ./tools/start_services.sh

# Or, start from a clean slate.
rm -rf tmp && PORT=4000 ./tools/start_services.sh

Finally, start the web app.

DEBUG=1 PORT=4000 make serve

Visit http://localhost:4000 in your browser to access the app.

Using Syncbase

By default, the web app will use an in-memory (in-browser-tab) local storage engine, and will not talk to Syncbase at all. To configure the app to talk to Syncbase, add d=syncbase to the url query params, or simply click the storage engine indicator in the top right corner to toggle it.

When using Syncbase, by default the app attempts to contact the Vanadium object name /localhost:($PORT+1)/syncbase, where /localhost:($PORT+1) is the local mount table name and syncbase is the relative name of the Syncbase service. To specify a different mount table name, add mt=<name> to the url query params, e.g. mt=/localhost:5001. To specify a different Syncbase service name, add sb=<name>, e.g. sb=/localhost:4002.

Beware that start_services.sh starts Syncbase with completely open ACLs. This is safe if Syncbase is only accessible on the local network (the default), but more dangerous if this Syncbase instance is configured to be accessible via a global mount table.

Design and implementation

Todos is implemented as a single-page JavaScript web application that communicates with a local Syncbase daemon through the Vanadium Chrome extension. The app UI is built with HTML and CSS, using React as a model-view framework.

The data layout and conflict resolution policies for this app are detailed here, and the v0 sync setup is described here. The basic data layout is as follows, where todos, db, and tb are the Syncbase app, database, and table names respectively.

todos/db/tb/<listId>                               --> List
todos/db/tb/<listId>/todos/<todoId>                --> Todo
todos/db/tb/<listId>/todos/<todoId>/tags/<tagName> --> nil

For now, when an item is deleted, any sub-items that were added concurrently (on some other device) are orphaned. Eventually, we‘ll GC orphaned records; for now, we don’t bother. This orphaning-based approach enables us to use simple last-one-wins conflict resolution for all records stored in Syncbase.

At startup, the web app checks whether its backing store (e.g. Syncbase) is empty; if so, it writes some todo lists to the store (see browser/defaults.js). Next, the app proceeds to render the UI. To do so, it scans the store and sets up in-memory data structures representing the user's todo lists, then draws the UI (using React) based on the state of these in-memory data structures.

When a user performs a mutation through the UI, the app issues a corresponding method call against its dispatcher (see browser/dispatcher.js), which ends up writing to the backing store and emitting a 'change' event. The web app listens for 'change' events; when one is received, it re-reads any pertinent state from the backing store (again, via the dispatcher interface), updates its in-memory data structures, and redraws the UI.

When changes are received via Syncbase sync, the dispatcher discovers these changes (currently via polling; soon, via watch) and emits a 'change' event, triggering the same redraw procedure as described above.

Debugging notes

Commands

Signature

$JIRI_ROOT/release/go/bin/vrpc -v23.credentials=creds signature /localhost:4002

Method call

$JIRI_ROOT/release/go/bin/vrpc -v23.credentials=creds call /localhost:4002 GetPermissions
$JIRI_ROOT/release/go/bin/vrpc -v23.credentials=creds call /localhost:4002/todos/db/tb Scan '""' '""'

Glob

$JIRI_ROOT/release/go/bin/namespace -v23.credentials=creds glob "/localhost:4002/..."

Debug

$JIRI_ROOT/release/go/bin/debug -v23.credentials=creds glob "/localhost:4002/__debug/stats/rpc/server/routing-id/..."
$JIRI_ROOT/release/go/bin/debug -v23.credentials=creds stats read "/localhost:4002/__debug/stats/rpc/server/routing-id/c61964ab4c72ee522067eb6d5ddd22fc/methods/BeginBatch/latency-ms"

Integration test setup

For debugging performance issues, it can be helpful to use the JS integration test configuration. To do so, first run the integration test as follows.

cd $JIRI_ROOT/release/javascript/syncbase
NOQUIT=1 NOHEADLESS=1 make test-integration-browser

This command starts a local mount table, identityd, and Syncbase mounted at test/syncbased, then launches an instance of Chrome with a custom-built Vanadium extension configured to talk to the local mount table and identityd.

Scroll up in the test output to get the test environment configuration, in particular the mount table endpoint, V23_NAMESPACE. Glob the locally mounted syncbase as follows.

$JIRI_ROOT/release/go/bin/namespace -v23.credentials=/usr/local/google/home/sadovsky/vanadium/release/javascript/syncbase/tmp/test-credentials glob "/@5@ws@127.0.0.1:41249@7d24de5a57f6532b184562654ad2c554@m@test/child@@/test/syncbased/..."

Visit http://localhost:4000/?d=syncbase&sb=test/syncbased in the launched Chrome instance to talk to your test syncbase.

Performance benchmarking

To run a simple benchmark (parallel 100 puts, followed by a scan of those rows), specify query param bm=1. For meaningful performance measurements, be sure to close the Chrome JavaScript console.