circuit-state

A flexible circuit breaker state machine.

The intent of this module is to provide a means of tracking a circuit breaker without forming opinions about how something is called. Use this API to blend circuit breaking into anything.

The reasoning behind this module is that too many libraries mix in the concept of timeouts, fallbacks, and promises vs callbacks into the circuit breaker pattern. These are implementation details that ultimately will vary from use case to use case, whereas the state machine itself will not.

What is a circuit breaker?

A circuit breaker is used to provide stability and prevent cascading failures in distributed systems. These should be used in conjunction with judicious timeouts at the interfaces between remote systems to prevent the failure of a single component from bringing down all components. -- Akka Documentation on Circuit Breaker

API

• CircuitBreakerState(options) - Constructor. Options:
  • maxFailures - Maximum number of failures before circuit breaker flips open. Default 3.
  • resetTime - Time in ms before an open circuit breaker returns to a half-open state. Default 10000. If 0 or less, manual resets will be used.
• CircuitBreakerState.create(options) - Creates a new CircuitBreakerState instance.

Instance functions:

• succeed() - Record a success.
• fail() - Record a failure. This may trip open the circuit breaker.
• test() - Utility function to test for the state being open. If so, returns an error (may be returned to user).
• tryReset() - Flips to half-open and cancels reset timer (if any).
• open - Is true if this circuit breaker is open. Read-only.
• closed - Is true if this circuit breaker is closed. Read-only.
• halfOpen - Is true if this circuit breaker is half-open. Read-only.
• stats - The stats tracker object.
• maxFailures - Read-only.
• resetTime - Read-only.
• events - read only event emitter

Stats object:

• increment(name) - Increment the given name count.
• reset(name) - Reset the given name count.
• resetAll() - Reset all counts.
• snapshot() - Take a snapshot of the stats object.

Event emitter:

The events property on the CircuitBreakerState is an event emitter to which you can listen to the following events:

• opened
• closed
• half_opened
• succeeded
• failed

All of these events will receive a snapshot of the Stats object.

Example usage

Wrapping a callback based function.

const CircuitBreakerState = require('circuit-state');

class Circuit {
    constructor(func) {
        this._func = func;
        this._cb = new CircuitBreakerState();
    }
    run(...args) {
        const callback = args[args.length - 1];

        const error = this._cb.test();

        // Fail fast
        if (error) {
            setImmediate(() => {
                callback(error);
            });
            return;
        }

        // Wrap original callback
        args[args.length - 1] = (error, ...result) => {
            if (error) {
                // Record a failure
                this._cb.fail();
                callback(error);
                return;
            }
            // Record a success
            this._cb.succeed();
            callback(null, ...result);
        };

        return this._func.call(null, ...args);
    }
}

Here's an example with wrapping promises.

class Circuit {
    constructor(asyncFunc) {
        this._asyncFunc = asyncFunc;
        this._cb = new CircuitBreakerState();
    }
    async run(...args) {
        const error = this._cb.test();

        // Fail fast
        if (error) {
            throw error;
        }

        try {
            const result = await this._asyncFunc(...args);
            this._cb.succeed();
            return result;
        }
        catch (error) {
            this._cb.fail();
            throw error;
        }
    }
}