stream-demux

An consumable stream demultiplexer.

Lets you write data to multiple consumable streams from a central place without keeping any references to those streams. The StreamDemux class returns streams of class DemuxedConsumableStream (base class ConsumableStream).
See https://github.com/SocketCluster/consumable-stream

This library uses a queue which is implemented as a singly-linked list; this allows each loop to consume at its own pace without missing any events (supports nested await statements). An 'event' in the queue can be garbage-collected as soon as the slowest consumer moves its pointer past it.

Installation

npm install stream-demux

Usage

Consuming using async loops

let demux = new StreamDemux();

(async () => {
  // Consume data from 'abc' stream.
  let substream = demux.stream('abc');
  for await (let packet of substream) {
    console.log('ABC:', packet);
  }
})();

(async () => {
  // Consume data from 'def' stream.
  let substream = demux.stream('def');
  for await (let packet of substream) {
    console.log('DEF:', packet);
  }
})();

(async () => {
  // Consume data from 'def' stream.
  // Can also work with a while loop for older environments.
  // Can have multiple loops consuming the same stream at
  // the same time.
  // Note that you can optionally pass a number n to the
  // createConsumer(n) method to force the iteration to
  // timeout after n milliseconds of inactivity.
  let consumer = demux.stream('def').createConsumer();
  while (true) {
    let packet = await consumer.next();
    if (packet.done) break;
    console.log('DEF (while loop):', packet.value);
  }
})();

(async () => {
  for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    await wait(10);
    demux.write('abc', 'message-abc-' + i);
    demux.write('def', 'message-def-' + i);
  }
  demux.close('abc');
  demux.close('def');
})();

// Utility function for using setTimeout() with async/await.
function wait(duration) {
  return new Promise((resolve) => {
    setTimeout(() => {
      resolve();
    }, duration);
  });
}

Consuming using the once method

// Log the next received packet from the abc stream.
(async () => {
  // The returned promise never times out.
  let packet = await demux.stream('abc').once();
  console.log('Packet:', packet);
})();

// Same as above, except with a timeout of 10 seconds.
(async () => {
  try {
    let packet = await demux.stream('abc').once(10000);
    console.log('Packet:', packet);
  } catch (err) {
    // If no packets are written to the 'abc' stream before
    // the timeout, an error will be thrown and handled here.
    // The err.name property will be 'TimeoutError'.
    console.log('Error:', err);
  }
})();

Goal

The goal of this module is to facilitate functional programming patterns which decrease the probability of memory leaks and race conditions. It serves as an alternative to callback-based event handling.