com.pushtechnology.diffusion.client.topics.details

Interface TopicSpecification

public interface TopicSpecification

Topic specifications provide the information required to create a topic. Topics can be created from a topic specification using TopicControl.addTopic(String, TopicSpecification, AddCallback).

Topic specifications allow an application to introspect the type and capabilities of a topic. Topic specifications are provided to value streams and topic notification listeners.

A topic specification has a topic type and a map of property settings which define the behavior of the topic. A default topic specification for a topic type can be created using Diffusion.newTopicSpecification(TopicType). Topic specifications with different properties can be derived from a default instance using the withProperties(Map) and withProperty(String, String) builder methods.

Topic Properties

Depending on the topic type, some properties must be included in the specification when creating a topic and some properties have no effect. The required and optional properties for each the topic type are set out in the following table. Properties unsupported by the topic type are ignored.

	Default when optional		STRING JSON BINARY	DOUBLE INT64	RECORD_V2	TIME_SERIES
COMPRESSION	low		Optional	—	Optional	Optional
CONFLATION	conflate		Optional	Optional	Optional	†
DONT_RETAIN_VALUE	false		Optional	Optional	Optional	—
OWNER			Optional	Optional	Optional	Optional
PERSISTENT	true		Optional	Optional	Optional	Optional
PRIORITY	default		Optional	Optional	Optional	Optional
PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY	false		Optional	—	Optional	Optional
REMOVAL			Optional	Optional	Optional	Optional
SCHEMA			—	—	Optional	—
TIDY_ON_UNSUBSCRIBE	false		Optional	Optional	Optional	Optional
TIME_SERIES_EVENT_VALUE_TYPE			—	—	—	Required
TIME_SERIES_RETAINED_RANGE	limit 10		—	—	—	Optional
TIME_SERIES_SUBSCRIPTION_RANGE	As documented		—	—	—	Optional
VALIDATE_VALUES	false		Optional	Optional	Optional	Optional

†

TIME_SERIES topics have restricted values for the CONFLATION property. They are only allowed to have the values off or unsubscribe.

Since:

5.7

Field Summary

Fields

Modifier and Type	Field and Description
static String	COMPRESSION Key of the topic property that allows the compression policy to be set on a per-topic basis.
static String	CONFLATION Key of the topic property that specifies the conflation policy of the topic.
static String	DONT_RETAIN_VALUE Key of the topic property that specifies a topic should not retain its last value.
static String	OWNER Key of the topic property that allows the creator of a topic to extend READ_TOPIC, MODIFY_TOPIC, and UPDATE_TOPIC permissions to a specific principal, in addition to the permissions granted by the authorisation rules in the security store.
static String	PERSISTENT Key of the topic property that can be used to prevent a topic from being persisted when the server is configured to enable persistence.
static String	PRIORITY Key of the topic property that specifies the topic delivery priority.
static String	PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY Key of the topic property that specifies whether a topic should publish only values.
static String	REMOVAL Key of the topic property that specifies a removal policy for automatic removal of the topic (and/or other topics).
static String	SCHEMA Key of the topic property that specifies a schema which constrains topic values.
static String	TIDY_ON_UNSUBSCRIBE Key of the topic property that specifies the 'tidy on unsubscribe' option for a topic.
static String	TIME_SERIES_EVENT_VALUE_TYPE Key of the topic property that specifies the event data type for a time series topic.
static String	TIME_SERIES_RETAINED_RANGE Key of the topic property that specifies the range of events retained by a time series topic.
static String	TIME_SERIES_SUBSCRIPTION_RANGE Key of the topic property that specifies the range of time series topic events to send to new subscribers.
static String	VALIDATE_VALUES Key of the topic property that specifies whether a topic should validate inbound values.

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
Map<String,String>	getProperties() Returns the topic properties.
TopicType	getType() Returns the topic type.
TopicSpecification	withoutProperties(String... propertyNames) Returns a new specification that does not have the specified properties.
TopicSpecification	withProperties(Map<String,String> properties) Creates a new specification with the specified properties.
TopicSpecification	withProperty(String key, String value) Creates a new specification with the specified property value set.

Field Detail

PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY

static final String PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY

Key of the topic property that specifies whether a topic should publish only values.

By default, a topic that supports delta streams will publish the difference between two values (a delta) when doing so is more efficient than publishing the complete new value. Subscribing sessions can use a value stream to automatically apply the delta to a local copy of the topic value to calculate the new value.

Setting PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY to true disables this behavior so that deltas are never published. Doing so is usually not recommended because it will result in more data being transmitted, less efficient use of network resources, and increased transmission latency. On the other hand, calculating deltas can require significant CPU from the server or, if update streams are used, from the updating client. The CPU cost will be higher if there are many differences between successive values, in which case delta streams confer fewer benefits. If successive values are unrelated to each other, consider setting PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY to true. Also consider setting PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY to true if the network capacity is high and the bandwidth savings of deltas are not required.

See Also:

DONT_RETAIN_VALUE, Constant Field Values

VALIDATE_VALUES

static final String VALIDATE_VALUES

Key of the topic property that specifies whether a topic should validate inbound values.

By default, the server does not validate received values before sending them on to client sessions. Invalid or corrupt values will be stored in the topic and passed on to sessions. If this property is set to "true", the server will perform additional validation on values to check that they are valid instances of the data type, and if it is not then it will return an error to the updater and not update the topic.

If this value is not set (or set to something other than "true"), no server validation of inbound values is performed. This is the recommended setting as there is a performance overhead to validation and a session using topic update cannot send invalid values anyway.

See Also:

Constant Field Values

TIDY_ON_UNSUBSCRIBE

static final String TIDY_ON_UNSUBSCRIBE

Key of the topic property that specifies the 'tidy on unsubscribe' option for a topic.

By default, if a session unsubscribes from a topic, it will receive any updates for that topic that were previously queued but not sent.

If this property is set to "true", when a session unsubscribes from the topic, any updates for the topic that are still queued for the session are removed. There is a performance overhead to using this option as the client queue must be scanned to find topic updates to remove, however it may prove useful for preventing unwanted data being sent to sessions.

Since:

6.0

See Also:

Constant Field Values

TIME_SERIES_EVENT_VALUE_TYPE

static final String TIME_SERIES_EVENT_VALUE_TYPE

Key of the topic property that specifies the event data type for a time series topic.

The value is the type name of a data type.

Since:

6.0

See Also:

DataTypes.getByName(String), Constant Field Values

TIME_SERIES_RETAINED_RANGE

static final String TIME_SERIES_RETAINED_RANGE

Key of the topic property that specifies the range of events retained by a time series topic.

When a new event is added to the time series, older events that fall outside of the range are discarded.

If the property is not specified, a time series topic will retain the ten most recent events.

Time series range expressions

The property value is a time series range expression string composed of one or more constraint clauses. Constraints are combined to provide a range of events from the end of the time series.

limit constraint

A limit constraint specifies the maximum number of events from the end of the time series.

last clause

A last constraint specifies the maximum duration of events from the end of the time series. The duration is expressed as an integer followed by one of the following time units.

MS – milliseconds;
S – seconds;
H – hours.

If a range expression contains multiple constraints, the constraint that selects the smallest range is used.

Property value	Meaning
limit 5	The five most recent events
last 10s	All events that are no more than ten seconds older than the latest event
last 10s limit 5	The five most recent events that are no more than ten seconds older than the latest event

Range expressions are not case sensitive: limit 5 last 10s is equivalent to LIMIT 5 LAST 10S.

Since:

6.0

See Also:

Constant Field Values

TIME_SERIES_SUBSCRIPTION_RANGE

static final String TIME_SERIES_SUBSCRIPTION_RANGE

Key of the topic property that specifies the range of time series topic events to send to new subscribers.

The property value is a time series range expression, following the format used for TIME_SERIES_RETAINED_RANGE.

If the property is not specified, new subscribers will be sent the latest event if delta streams are enabled and no events if delta streams are disabled. See the description of Subscription range in the time series feature documentation.

Since:

6.0

See Also:

Constant Field Values

SCHEMA

static final String SCHEMA

Key of the topic property that specifies a schema which constrains topic values.

This property is only used by RECORD_V2 topics. The property value can be generated using the Schema.asJSONString() method of a Schema created using a SchemaBuilder.

Since:

6.0

See Also:

Constant Field Values

DONT_RETAIN_VALUE

static final String DONT_RETAIN_VALUE

Key of the topic property that specifies a topic should not retain its last value.

By default, a topic will retain its latest value. The latest value will be sent to new subscribers. Setting this property to true disables this behavior. New subscribers will not be sent an initial value. No value will be returned for fetch operations that select the topic. This is useful for data streams where the values are only transiently valid.

Setting DONT_RETAIN_VALUE to true also disables delta streams, regardless of the PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY value. If subsequent values are likely to be related, delta streams usually provide performance benefits (see PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY). Consider leaving DONT_RETAIN_VALUE set to false to benefit from delta streams, even if there is no other requirement to retain the last value.

Bearing in mind the performance trade-offs of disabling delta streams, there are two reasons to consider setting DONT_RETAIN_VALUE to true. First, it stops the server and each subscribed client from keeping a copy of the value, reducing their memory requirements. Second, when a topic has a high update rate and is replicated across a cluster, it can significantly improve throughput because the values need not be persisted to the cluster.

Time series topics ignore this property and always retain the latest value.

Since:

6.0

See Also:

Constant Field Values

PERSISTENT

static final String PERSISTENT

Key of the topic property that can be used to prevent a topic from being persisted when the server is configured to enable persistence.

By default, a topic will be persisted if persistence is enabled at the server and the topic type supports persistence.

Setting PERSISTENT to false will prevent the topic from being persisted.

Since:

6.1

See Also:

Constant Field Values

REMOVAL

static final String REMOVAL

Key of the topic property that specifies a removal policy for automatic removal of the topic (and/or other topics).

This property is specified as an expression which defines one or more conditions that are to be satisfied before automatic removal occurs.

The expression takes the form:

when conditions [remove "selector"]

At least one condition must be supplied. If more than one is supplied, they must be separated by logical operators (and or or). The natural evaluation order of the operators may be changed by surrounding with parentheses (e.g. (condition and condition)).

The remove clause is optional. It provides a TopicSelector expression representing the topics to be removed. If a remove clause is specified, the topic with the removal policy will only be removed if its path matches the selector expression. The selector must be surrounded by either double or single quotes.

When many topics have the same removal policy, it is better to set the REMOVAL property for one of them, using a remove clause that selects all of the topics. This is more efficient because it allows the server to avoid evaluating the same condition many times.

The permissions that are applied at the time of removal are those defined by the roles of the principal that created the topic at the time of creation. The roles of that principal may therefore change before the removal with no effect, but if the permissions given to the roles change it may have an effect upon the final removal.

Only one occurrence of each of the following condition types may be included within the expression:

Condition Type	Format	Usage
time after	time after absoluteTime	Removal should occur after a specified absolute time. Absolute time may be specified as a number of milliseconds since the epoch (00:00:00 on 1 January 1970) or as a quoted date and time formatted in RFC_1123 date time format. Either single or double quotes may be used.
subscriptions less than	[local] subscriptions < n for forPeriod [after afterPeriod]	Removal should occur when the topic has had less than the specified number (n) of subscriptions for a given period (forPeriod) of time. Optionally, an initial period (afterPeriod) may be specified by which to delay the initial checking of this condition. See below for period formats. The optional local keyword restricts evaluation to only count subscriptions from sessions belonging to the local server or cluster, ignoring subscriptions from sessions belonging to downstream remote servers that host fanout replicas of the topic.
no updates for	no updates for forPeriod [after afterPeriod]	Removal should occur when the topic has had no updates for a given period (forPeriod) of time. Optionally, an initial period (afterPeriod) may be specified by which to delay the initial checking of this condition. See below for period formats.

Multiple occurrences of the following condition types may be included within the expression:

Condition Type	Format	Usage
no session has	no [local] session has "criteria" [for forPeriod] [after afterPeriod]	Removal should occur when there are no sessions satisfying certain criteria. Optionally the criteria can be required to be satisfied for a period of time (forPeriod). Optionally, an initial period (afterPeriod) can be specified to delay the initial check of the criteria. Session selection criteria are specified as defined in session filters and must be surrounded by single or double quotes. See below for period formats. The optional local keyword restricts evaluation to sessions belonging to the local server or cluster, ignoring sessions belonging to downstream remote servers that host fanout replicas of the topic.
	this session closes	This is a shorthand form of no local session has that may be used to indicate that the topic is to be removed when the session that created it closes.

Time periods are specified as a number followed (with no intermediate space) by a single letter representing the time unit. The time unit may be s (seconds), m(minutes), h (hours) or d (days). For example, 10 minutes would be specified as 10m.

If quotes or backslashes (\) are required within quoted values such as selectors or session criteria then they may be escaped by preceding with \. The convenience method Diffusion.escape(String) is provided to escape such characters in a value. The expression is validated only by the server and therefore if an invalid expression is specified it will be reported as an TopicControl.InvalidTopicSpecificationException.

Examples:

when time after 1518780068112
The topic will be removed when the date and time indicated by the specified number of milliseconds since the epoch has passed.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT"
The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" remove "*alpha/beta//"
The topic alpha/beta and all topics subordinate to it will be removed when the specified date and time has passed.

when subscriptions < 1 for 20m
The topic will be removed when it has had no subscriptions for a continuous period of 20 minutes.

when subscriptions < 2 for 20m after 1h
The topic will be removed when it has had less than 2 subscriptions for a continuous period of 20 minutes after one hour has passed since its creation.

when no updates for 3h
The topic will be removed when it has had no updates for a continuous period of 3 hours.

when no updates for 15m after 1d
The topic will be removed when it has had no updates for a continuous period of 15 minutes after one day has passed since its creation.

when this session closes
The topic will be removed when the session creating it closes.

when no session has '$Principal is "Alice"'
The topic will be removed when there are no sessions with the principal 'Alice'.

when no session has '$Principal is "Alice"' for 10m
The topic will be removed when there are no sessions with the principal 'Alice' for a continuous period of 10 minutes.

when no session has 'Department is "Accounts"' for 30m after 2h
The topic will be removed when there have been no sessions from the Accounts department for a continuous period of 30 minutes after 2 hours have passed since its creation.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" and subscriptions < 1 for 30m
The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed and the topic has had no subscriptions for a continuous period of 30 minutes after that time.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" and subscriptions < 2 for 10m after 1h
The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed and the topic has had less than 2 subscriptions for a continuous period of 10 minutes after that time plus one hour.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" or subscriptions < 2 for 10m after 1h
The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed or the topic has had less than 2 subscriptions for a continuous period of 10 minutes after one hour from its creation.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" and (subscriptions < 2 for 10m after 1h or no updates for 20m)
The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed and either the topic has had less than 2 subscriptions for a continuous period of 10 minutes after that time plus one hour or it has had no updates for a continuous period of 20 minutes. Note that the parentheses are significant here as without them the topic would be removed if it had had no updates for 20 minutes regardless of the time and subscriptions clause.

Notes and restrictions on use

The after time periods refer to the period since the topic was created or restored from persistence store after a server is restarted. They are designed as a 'grace' period after the topic comes into existence before the related condition starts to be evaluated. When not specified the conditions start to be evaluated as soon as the topic is created or restored.

The server will evaluate conditions on a periodic basis (every few seconds) so the exact removal time will not be precise for low periodic granularity.

The meaning of the for period in a no session has condition is subtly different from its use in other conditions. It does not guarantee that there has been no session satisfying the condition at some point between evaluations, only that when evaluated the given period of time has passed since it was last evaluated and found to have no matching sessions.

Subscriptions is the number of subscriptions to a topic.

Automatic topic removal is supported for a topic that is replicated across the local cluster, and for a topic with with fanout replicas on downstream remote servers. A subscriptions less than condition will be evaluated against the total number of subscriptions across the cluster and on all fanout replicas on downstream remote servers. A no session has condition will consider all sessions hosted across the cluster and all sessions hosted by downstream remote servers that have a fanout replica of the topic. The local keyword can be used to restrict evaluation to the local cluster, ignoring fanout replicas.

Since:

6.1

See Also:

Constant Field Values

CONFLATION

static final String CONFLATION

Key of the topic property that specifies the conflation policy of the topic. The policy specifies how the server manages queued topic updates. Conflation is applied individually to each session queue.

Conflation is the process of merging or discarding topic updates queued for a session to reduce the server memory footprint and network data. The server will conflate sessions that have a large number of queued messages to meet configured queue size targets. The sessions with the largest queues are typically slow consumers or have been disconnected – both will benefit from conflation. This property allows conflation behavior to be tuned on a topic-by-topic basis.

The supported policies are:

• off
• conflate
• unsubscribe
• always

The default policy used when the property is not specified and the topic type is not time series is conflate. The default policy used when the property is not specified and the topic type is time series is off.

The policy off disables conflation for the topic. This policy disables all conflation for the topic, so topic updates will never be merged or discarded.

The policy conflate automatically conflates topic updates when back pressure is detected by the server.

The policy unsubscribe automatically unsubscribes the topic when back pressure is detected by the server. The unsubscription is not persisted to the cluster. If a session fails over to a different server it will be resubscribed to the topic.

The policy always automatically conflates topic updates as they are queued for the session. This is an eager policy that ensures only the latest update is queued for the topic, minimising the server memory and network bandwidth used by the session.

The conflate and unsubscribe policies are applied when the server detects back pressure for a session. The server configuration places limits on the data queued for each session. If these limits are breached, the server will conflate the session queue to attempt to reduce its size. If the session queue still exceeds the limits after conflation, the session will be terminated.

Conflation can be disabled on a session-by-session basis. If conflation is disabled for a session the policy will not be applied to topic updates queued for the session but will be for other sessions that have conflation enabled.

The policies conflate and always are not supported for time series topics as they would cause missing events. Attempts to enable these policies with time series topics will cause the creation of the topic to fail, reporting that the specification is invalid.

Since:

6.1

See Also:

Constant Field Values

OWNER

static final String OWNER

Key of the topic property that allows the creator of a topic to extend READ_TOPIC, MODIFY_TOPIC, and UPDATE_TOPIC permissions to a specific principal, in addition to the permissions granted by the authorisation rules in the security store.

A session that has authenticated using the principal can update and remove the topic, so the principal can be considered the topic owner. To fetch or subscribe to the topic, the principal must also be granted the SELECT_TOPIC permission by the security store rules.

This may be used in the following cases:
1) A session creates a topic and makes its own principal the owner.
2) A session creates a topic and makes another principal the owner.

The format of the property value is:

$Principal is "name"

where name is the name of the principal. Single quotes may be used instead of double quotes and special characters can be escaped using Diffusion.escape(String) if required.

The purpose of this property is to allow a client to create topics on behalf of other users. This can be used in conjunction with the REMOVAL property so that such topics are removed when there are no longer any sessions for the named principal.

For example:

specification
.withProperty(OWNER, "$Principal is 'myPrincipal'")
.withProperty(REMOVAL, "when no session has '$Principal is \"myPrincipal\"' for 5s");

Since:

6.1

See Also:

Constant Field Values

COMPRESSION

static final String COMPRESSION

Key of the topic property that allows the compression policy to be set on a per-topic basis.

Compression reduces the bandwidth required to broadcast topic updates to subscribed sessions, at the cost of increased server CPU.

Changes to a topic's value are published to each subscribed session as a sequence of topic messages. A topic message can carry the latest value or the difference between the latest value and the previous value (a delta). The compression policy determines if and how published topic messages are compressed. Topic messages are not exposed through the client API; the client library handles decompression and decodes deltas automatically, passing reconstructed values to the application.

The compression policy for a topic is specified by setting this property to one of several values:

• off
• low
• medium
• high

The policies are listed in the order of increasing compression and increasing CPU cost. off disables compression completely for the topic and requires no additional CPU; high compresses the topic messages to the smallest number of bytes, but has the highest CPU cost. Generally some compression is beneficial, so the default value for this property is low.

Prior to version 6.4, only two values were allowed: true (equivalent to medium, and the previous default policy) and false (equivalent to off). These values are still supported.

This property is only one factor that determines whether a topic message will be compressed. Other factors include:

• Compression must be enabled in the server configuration.
• The client library must support the server's compression scheme. In this release, the server supports zlib compression, and also allows compression to be disabled on a per-connector basis. From 6.4, all client libraries are capable of zlib compression. A JavaScript client may or may not support zlib compression, depending on whether the zlib library can be loaded. The zlib library is packaged separately to reduce the download size of the core library.

Since:

6.2

See Also:

Constant Field Values

PRIORITY

static final String PRIORITY

Key of the topic property that specifies the topic delivery priority.

The supported delivery priorities are:

• low
• default
• high

The delivery priority affects the order of topic updates sent to a subscribed client session. When there are multiple topic updates for topics with different priorities in a session's outbound queue, updates for high priority topics will be delivered first, followed by updates for default priority topics, followed by updates for low priority topics. Topic subscription and unsubscription notifications are also delivered according to the topic delivery priority.

Using different delivery priorities is most beneficial when there is a large backlog of queued updates to deliver to a client session. On lightly loaded systems, updates typically remain in the outbound queue for a few milliseconds and so there is a lower chance of topic updates being reordered based on their priority. The backlog will be larger if the topic update rate is higher; the server or the client are more heavily loaded; the client session becomes temporarily disconnected; or if there is poor network connectivity between the server and the client.

Messages from the server to the client that are not topic updates, for example ping requests and responses, are queued with the default delivery priority.

Since:

6.4

See Also:

Constant Field Values

Method Detail

getType

TopicType getType()

Returns the topic type.

Returns:

type

getProperties

Map<String,String> getProperties()

Returns the topic properties.

Returns:

a map of the topic properties. This may be empty depending upon the level of detail requested

withProperty

TopicSpecification withProperty(String key,
                                String value)
                         throws IllegalArgumentException

Creates a new specification with the specified property value set.

Parameters:

key - the property key

value - the property value

Returns:

a new TopicSpecification based upon this one but with the specified property set to the specified value. All other property settings will be copied to the new specification.

Throws:

IllegalArgumentException - if key is not a supported property key

NullPointerException - if either the key or value is null

withProperties

TopicSpecification withProperties(Map<String,String> properties)
                           throws IllegalArgumentException

Creates a new specification with the specified properties.

Parameters:

properties - map of properties

Returns:

a new TopicSpecification based upon this one but with all properties replaced by those in the supplied map. Previous property settings will not be copied to the new specification.

Throws:

NullPointerException - if properties is null

IllegalArgumentException - any key is not a supported property key

NullPointerException - if any key or value in properties is null

withoutProperties

TopicSpecification withoutProperties(String... propertyNames)

Returns a new specification that does not have the specified properties.

Parameters:

propertyNames - a list of the property names that should be excluded

Returns:

a new TopicSpecification based upon this one but without those specified

Since:

6.2