#vector-clock-class#

Overview

A vector clock is a data structure for keeping track of logical time for a set of events, allowing them to be partially ordered.

Install it with

npm install --save vector-clock-class

API

var Clock = require('vector-clock-class')

Clock(
    String | Number id,
    (Integer start) | null
) -> vector_clock

• id should distinguish this clock from all the others. It is saved to the class instance as id
• start is an optional parameter which sets the version number from which the clock should start counting.

Methods and Attributes

In the methods below, id is a hashable object. Semantically, it should be the unique identifier of another clock.

###vector_clock.clock###

The vector clock-- a map from source_ids to version numbers. Like the C function from Lamport's paper. It's worth noting that this means this module plays well with npm.im/vectorclock, although this breaks the contract somewhat, since mixu's library expects object literals.

###vector_clock.get(id) -> Integer version###

Returns the version number for the specified id, or -Infinity if it cannot be found.

###vector_clock.update(id, version) -> Integer|false###

Bump the entry for a given id. version is required to ensure updates from this vector_clock which occur after the bump have a later version number. Note that the version is optional only if id === vector_clock.id. The return value is false if version is not specified when it should be. Otherwise it is the new version number for id.

###vector_clock.createReadStream() -> stream###

This method creates a stream; randomly orders the keys of the clock; pushes onto a newly-created readableStream one object of form {id: key, version: n} per key; and then closes the stream. It also vector_clock.update(vector_clock.id). This facilitates easily creating digests of all the updates the clock has seen, useful for the scuttlebutt

The competition

There's already another venerable vector clock library out there. This one more or less grew out of my scuttlebutt implementation. It differs from vectorclock in it's scope (slightly smaller), that it presents a way to stream clock data out of it, and it's API.