ShareDB

ShareDB is a realtime database backend based on Operational Transformation (OT) of JSON documents. It is the realtime backend for the DerbyJS web application framework.

For questions, discussion and announcements, join the ShareJS mailing list.

Please report any bugs you find to the issue tracker.

Features

• Realtime synchronization of any JSON document
• Concurrent multi-user collaboration
• Synchronous editing API with asynchronous eventual consistency
• Realtime query subscriptions
• Simple integration with any database - MongoDB
• Horizontally scalable with pub/sub integration - Redis
• Projections to select desired fields from documents and operations
• Middleware for implementing access control and custom extensions
• Ideal for use in browsers or on the server
• Reconnection of document and query subscriptions
• Offline change syncing upon reconnection
• In-memory implementations of database and pub/sub for unit testing

Example apps

Simple app demonstrating realtime sync

Leaderboard app demonstrating live queries

Data model

In ShareDB's view of the world, every document has 3 properties:

• version - An incrementing number starting at 0
• type - An OT type. OT types are defined in share/ottypes. Documents which don't exist implicitly have a type of null.
• data - The actual data that the document contains. This must be pure acyclic JSON. Its also type-specific. (JSON type uses raw JSON, text documents use a string, etc).

ShareDB implicitly has a record for every document you can access. New documents have version 0, a null type and no data. To use a document, you must first submit a create operation, which will set the document's type and give it initial data. Then you can submit editing operations on the document (using OT). Finally you can delete the document with a delete operation. By default, ShareDB stores all operations forever - nothing is truly deleted.

Server API

Initialization

First, create a ShareDB server instance:

var ShareDB = require('sharedb');
var share = new ShareDB(options);

Options

• options.db (instance of ShareDB.DB) Store documents and ops with this database adapter. Defaults to ShareDB.MemoryDB().
• options.pubsub (instance of ShareDB.PubSub) Notify other ShareDB processes when data changes through this pub/sub adapter. Defaults to ShareDB.MemoryPubSub().

Database Adapters

• ShareDB.MemoryDB, backed by a non-persistent database with no queries
• ShareDBMongo, backed by a real Mongo database and full query support
• ShareDBMingoMemory, backed by a non-persistent database supporting most Mongo queries. Useful for faster testing of a Mongo-based app.

Pub/Sub Adapters

• ShareDB.MemoryPubSub can be used with a single process
• ShareDBRedisPubSub can be used with multiple processes using Redis' pub/sub mechanism

Listening to WebSocket connections

var WebSocketJSONStream = require('websocket-json-stream');

// 'ws' is a websocket server connection, as passed into
// new (require('ws').Server).on('connection', ...)
var stream = new WebSocketJSONStream(ws);
share.listen(stream);

For transports other than WebSockets, expose a duplex stream that writes and reads JavaScript objects. Then pass that stream directly into share.listen.

Middlewares

Middlewares let you hook into the ShareDB server pipeline. In middleware code you can read and also modify objects as they flow through ShareDB. For example, sharedb-access uses middlewares to implement access control.

share.use(action, fn) Register a new middleware.

• action (String) One of:
  • 'connect': A new client connected to the server.
  • 'op': An operation was loaded from the database.
  • 'doc': A snapshot was loaded from the database.
  • 'query': A query is about to be sent to the database
  • 'submit': An operation is about to be submited to the database
  • 'apply': An operation is about to be applied to a snapshot before being committed to the database
  • 'commit': An operation was applied to a snapshot; The operation and new snapshot are about to be written to the database.
  • 'after submit': An operation was successfully submitted to the database.
  • 'receive': Received a message from a client
• fn (Function(request, callback)) Call this function at the time specified by action. request contains a subset of the following properties, as relevant for the action:
  • action: The action this middleware is handing
  • agent: An object corresponding to the server agent handing this client
  • req: The HTTP request being handled
  • collection: The collection name being handled
  • id: The document id being handled
  • query: The query object being handled
  • op: The op being handled

Shutdown

share.close(callback) Closes connections to the database and pub/sub adapters.

Client API

The client API can be used from either Node or a browser. First, get a ShareDB.Connection object by connecting to the ShareDB server instance:

From Node:

// `share` should be a ShareDB server instance
var connection = share.connect();

To use ShareDB from a browser, use a client bundler like Browserify or Webpack. The following code connects to the ShareDB server instance over WebSockets:

var ShareDB = require('sharedb/lib/client');
var socket = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:8080');
var connection = new ShareDB.Connection(socket);

For transports other than WebSockets, create an object implementing the WebSocket specification and pass it into the ShareDB.Connection constructor.

Class: ShareDB.Connection

connection.get(collectionName, documentId) Get a ShareDB.Doc instance on a given collection and document ID.

connection.createFetchQuery(collectionName, query, options, callback) connection.createSubscribeQuery(collectionName, query, options, callback) Get query results from the server. createSubscribeQuery also subscribes to changes. Returns a ShareDB.Query instance.

• query (Object) A descriptor of a database query with structure defined by the database adapter.
• callback (Function) Called with (err, results) when server responds, or on error.
• options.results (Array) Prior query results if available, such as from server rendering.
• options.* All other options are passed through to the database adapter.

Class: ShareDB.Doc

doc.type (String) The OT type of this document

doc.id (String) Unique document ID

doc.data (Object) Document contents. Available after document is fetched or subscribed to.

doc.fetch(function(err) {...}) Populate the fields on doc with a snapshot of the document from the server.

doc.subscribe(function(err) {...}) Populate the fields on doc with a snapshot of the document from the server, and fire events on subsequent changes.

doc.destroy() Unsubscribe and stop firing events.

doc.on('load', function() {...}) The initial snapshot of the document was loaded from the server. Fires at the same time as callbacks to fetch and subscribe.

doc.on('create', function() {...}) The document was created. Technically, this means it has a type.

doc.on('before op'), function(op) {...}) An operation is about to be applied to the data.

doc.on('op', function(op) {...}) An operation was applied to the data.

doc.on('del', function(data) {...}) The document was deleted. Document contents before deletion are passed in as an argument.

doc.on('error', function(err) {...}) There was an error fetching the document or applying an operation.

doc.create(data[, type][, options][, function(err) {...}]) Create the document locally and send create operation to the server.

• data Initial document contents
• type (OT type) Defaults to 'ot-json0', for which data is an Object

doc.submitOp(op, [, options][, function(err) {...}]) Apply operation to document and send it to the server. op structure depends on the document type. See the operations for the default 'ot-json0' type. Call this after you've either fetched or subscribed to the document.

doc.del([options][, function(err) {...}]) Delete the document locally and send delete operation to the server. Call this after you've either fetched or subscribed to the document.

Class: ShareDB.Query

query.ready (Boolean) True if query results are ready and available on query.results

query.results (Array) Query results, as an array of ShareDB.Doc instances.

query.extra (Type depends on database adapter and query) Extra query results that aren't an array of documents. Available for certain database adapters and queries.

query.on('ready', function() {...})) The initial query results were loaded from the server. Fires at the same time as the callbacks to createFetchQuery and createSubscribeQuery.

query.on('error', function(err) {...})) There was an error receiving updates to a subscription.

query.destroy() Unsubscribe and stop firing events.

query.on('changed', function(results) {...})) (Only fires on subscription queries) The query results changed. Fires only once after a sequence of diffs are handled.

query.on('insert', function(docs, atIndex) {...})) (Only fires on subscription queries) A contiguous sequence of documents were added to the query result array.

query.on('move', function(docs, from, to) {...})) (Only fires on subscription queries) A contiguous sequence of documents moved position in the query result array.

query.on('remove', function(docs, atIndex) {...})) (Only fires on subscription queries) A contiguous sequence of documents were removed from the query result array.

query.on('extra', function() {...})) (Only fires on subscription queries) query.extra changed.

Error codes

ShareDB returns errors as plain JavaScript objects with the format:

{
  code: 5000,
  message: 'ShareDB internal error'
}

Additional fields may be added to the error object for debugging context depending on the error. Common additional fields include collection, id, and op.

4000 - Bad request

• 4001 - Unknown error type
• 4002 - Database adapter does not support subscribe
• 4003 - Database adapter not found
• 4004 - Missing op
• 4005 - Op must be an array
• 4006 - Create data in op must be an object
• 4007 - Create op missing type
• 4008 - Unknown type
• 4009 - del value must be true
• 4010 - Missing op, create or del
• 4011 - Invalid src
• 4012 - Invalid seq
• 4013 - Found seq but not src
• 4014 - op.m invalid
• 4015 - Document does not exist
• 4016 - Document already exists
• 4017 - Document was deleted
• 4018 - Document was created remotely
• 4019 - Invalid protocol version
• 4020 - Invalid default type
• 4021 - Invalid client id
• 4022 - Database adapter does not support queries
• 4023 - Cannot project snapshots of this type

5000 - Internal error

The 41xx and 51xx codes are reserved for use by ShareDB DB adapters, and the 42xx and 52xx codes are reserved for use by ShareDB PubSub adapters.

• 5001 - No new ops returned when retrying unsuccessful submit
• 5002 - Missing snapshot
• 5003 - Snapshot and op version don't match
• 5004 - Missing op
• 5005 - Missing document
• 5006 - Version mismatch
• 5007 - Invalid state transition
• 5008 - Missing version in snapshot
• 5009 - Cannot ingest snapshot with null version
• 5010 - No op to send
• 5011 - Commit DB method unimplemented
• 5012 - getSnapshot DB method unimplemented
• 5013 - getOps DB method unimplemented
• 5014 - queryPollDoc DB method unimplemented
• 5015 - _subscribe PubSub method unimplemented
• 5016 - _unsubscribe PubSub method unimplemented
• 5017 - _publish PubSub method unimplemented
• 5018 - Required QueryEmitter listener not assigned