General purpose backend framework.
Features:
Check out the Documentation for more documentation.
The module supports several databases and includes ImageMagick interface so in order for such interfaces to be compiled the software must be installed on the system before installing the backendjs. Not everything is required, if not available the interface will be skipped.
The optional packages that the backendjs uses if available(resolving packages is done with pkg-config):
Installing dependencies on CentOS:
yum -y install libpng-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel postgresql-devel mysql-devel
Installing dependencies on Mac OS X using macports:
port install libpng jpeg tiff mysql56 postgresql93
To install the module with all optional dependencies if they are available in the system
Note: if for example ImageMagick is not istalled it will be skipped, same goes to all database drivers(PostgreSQL, MySQL) and nanomsg.
npm install backendjs
To force internal nanomsg and ImageMagick to be compiled in the module the following command must be used:
npm install backendjs --backend_nanomsg --backend_imagemagick
This may take some time because of compiling required dependencies like ImageMagick, nanomsg. They are not required in all applications but still part of the core of the system to be available once needed.
Simplest way of using the backendjs, it will start the server listening on port 8000
# node
> var bk = require('backendjs')
> bk.server.start()
Same but using the helper tool, by default it will use embedded Sqlite database and listen on port 8000
bkjs run-backend
To start the server and connect to the DynamoDB (command line parameters can be saved in the etc/config file, see below about config files)
bkjs run-backend -db-pool dynamodb -db-dynamodb-pool default -aws-key XXXX -aws-secret XXXX
or to the PostgreSQL server, database backend
bkjs run-backend -db-pool pgsql -db-pgsql-pool postgresql://postgres@127.0.0.1/backend
All commands above will behave exactly the same, all required tables will be automatically created
While the local backendjs is runnning the documentation is always available when the backend Web server is running at http://localhost:8000/doc.html
Go to http://localhost:8000/api.html for the Web console to test API requests. For this example let's create a couple of accounts, type and execute the following URLs in the Web console
/account/add?name=test1&secret=test1&login=test1@test.com
/account/add?name=test2&secret=test2&login=test2@test.com&gender=m&alias=Test%20User&birthday=1980-01-01
Now login with any of the accounts above, click on Login at the top-right corner and enter 'test1' as login and 'test1' as secret in the login popup dialog.
If no error message appeared after the login, try to get your current account details:
/account/get
To see all public fields for all accounts just execute
/account/select
Shutdown the backend by pressing Ctrl-C
To make your own custom Web app, create a new directory (somewhere else) to store your project and run the following command from that directory:
bkjs init-app
The app.js file is created in your project directory with 2 additional API endpoints /test/add and /test/[0-9] to show the simplest way
of adding new tables and API commands.
The app.sh script is created for convenience in the development process, it specifies common arguments and can be customized as needed.
Run new application now, it will start the Web server on port 8000:
./app.sh
Go to http://localhost:8000/api.html and issue command /test/add?id=1&name=1 and then /test/1 commands in the console to see it in action
Change in any of the source files will make the server restart automatically letting you focus on the source code and not server management, this mode is only enabled by default in development mode, check app.sh for parameters before running it in the production.
To start node.js shell with backendjs loaded and initialized, all command line parameters apply to the shell as well
bksh
To access the database while in the shell
> db.select("bk_account", {}, function(err, rows) { console.log(rows) });
> db.select("bk_account", {}, db.showResult);
> db.add("bk_account", { login: 'test2', secret: 'test2', name' Test 2 name', gender: 'f' }, db.showResult);
> db.select("bk_account", { gender: 'm' }, db.showResult);
When the backendjs server starts it spawns several processes the perform different tasks.
There are 2 major tasks of the backend that can be run at the same time or in any combination:
These features can be run standalone or under the guard of the monitor which tracks all running processes and restarted any failed one.
This is the typical output from the ps command on Linux server:
root 891 0.0 0.6 1071632 49504 ? Ssl 14:33 0:01 backend: monitor
backend 899 0.0 0.6 1073844 52892 ? Sl 14:33 0:01 backend: master
root 908 0.0 0.8 1081020 68780 ? Sl 14:33 0:02 backend: server
backend 917 0.0 0.7 1072820 59008 ? Sl 14:33 0:01 backend: web
backend 919 0.0 0.7 1072820 60792 ? Sl 14:33 0:02 backend: web
To enable any task a command line parameter must be provided, it cannot be specified in the config file. The bkjs utility supports several
commands that simplify running the backend in different modes.
bkjs run-backend - runs the Web server and the jobs scheduler in debug mode with watching source files for changes, this is the common command to be used
in development, it passes the command line switches: -debug -watch -web -masterbkjs run-server - this command is supposed to be run at the server startup, it runs in the backgroud and the monitors all tasks,
the command line parameters are: -daemon -monitor -master -syslogbkjs run - this command runs the Web server and the job scheduler without any other parameters, all aditional parameters can be added in the command line, this command
is a barebone elper to be used with any other custom settings.bkjs run-shell or bksh - start backendjs shell, no API or Web server is initialized, only the database poolsThe main puspose of the backendjs is to provide API to access the data, the data can be stored in the database or some other way but the access to that data will be over HTTP and returned back as JSON. This is default functionality but any custom application may return data in whatever format is required.
Basically the backendjs is a Web server with ability to perform data processing using local or remote jobs which can be scheduled similar to Unix cron.
The principle behind the system is that nowadays the API services just return data which Web apps or mobiles apps can render to the user without the backend involved. It does not mean this is simple gateway between the database, in many cases it is but if special processing of the data is needed before sending it to the user, it is possible to do and backendjs provides many convenient helpers and tools for it.
The typical structure of a backendjs application is the following (created by the bkjs init-app command:
var backend = require('backendjs');
var api = backend.api;
var db = backend.db;
// Describe the tables or data model
api.describeTables({
...
});
// Optionally customize the Express environment
api.initMiddleware = function()
{
...
}
// Register API endpoints, i.e. url callbacks
api.initApplication = function(callback)
{
this.app.get('/some/api/endpoint', function(req, res) { ... });
...
}
// Optionally register post processing of the returned data from the default calls
api.registerPostProcess('', /^\/account\/([a-z\/]+)$/, function(req, res, rows) { ... });
...
// Optionally register access permissions callbacks
api.registerAccessCheck('', /^\/test\/list$/, function(req, status, callback) { ... });
api.registerAuthCheck('', /^\/test\/list$/, function(req, status, callback) { ... });
...
backend.server.start();
Except the api.initApplication and server.start() all other functions are optional, they are here for the sake of completness of the example. Also
because running the backend involves more than just running web server many things can be setup using the configuration options like common access permissions,
configuration of the cron jobs so the amount of code to be written to have fully functionaning production API server is not that much, basically only
request endpoint callbacks must be provided in the application.
The backend support multiple databases and provides the same db layer for access. Common operations are supported and all other specific usage can be achieved by
using SQL directly or other query language supported by any particular database.
The database operations supported in the unified way provide simple actions like db.get, db.put, db.update, db.del, db.select. The db.query method provides generic
access to the databe driver and executes given query directly.
Before the tables can be queried the schema must be defined and created, the backend db layer provides simple functions to do it:
first the table needs to be described, this is achieved by creating a Javascript object with properties describing each column, multiple tables can be described at the same time, for example lets define album table and make sure it exists when we run our application:
api.describeTables({
album: {
id: { primary: 1 }, // Primary key for an album
name: { pub: 1 }, // Album name, public column
mtime: { type: "bigint" }, // Modification timestamp
},
photo: {
album_id: { primary: 1 }, // Combined primary key
id: { primary: 1 }, // consiting of album and photo id
name: { pub: 1, index: 1 }, // Photo name or description, public column with the index for faster search
mtime: { type: "bigint" }
}
});
the system will automatically create the album and photos tables, this definition must remain in the app source code and be called on every app startup. This allows 1) to see the db schema while working with the app and 2) easily maintain it by adding new columns if necessary, all new columns will be detected and the database tables updated accordingly. And it is all Javascript, no need to learn one more language or syntax to maintain database tables.
Each database may restrict how the schema is defined and used, the db layer does not provide an artificial layer hiding all specifics, it just provides the same API and syntax, for example, DynamoDB tables must have only hash primary key or combined hash and range key, so when creating table to be used with DynamoDB, only one or two columns can be marked with primary property while for SQL databases the composite primary key can conisit of more than 2 columns.
The backendjs always creates several tables in the configured database pools by default, these tables are required to support default API functionality and some
are required for backend opertions. Refer below for the Javascript modules documenttion that described which tables are created by default. In the custom applications
same api.describeTables method can modify columns in the default table and add more columns if needed.
For example, to make age and some other columns in the accounts table public and visible by other users with additional columns the following can be
done in the api.initApplication method. It will extend the bk_account table and the application can use new columns the same way as the already existing columns.
Making the birthday semipub will make 'age' property automatically calculated and visible in the result, this is done by the internal method api.processAccountRow which
is registered as post process callback for the bk_account table.
api.describeTables({
bk_account: {
gender: { pub: 1 },
birthday: { semipub: 1 },
ssn: {},
salary: { type: "int" },
occupation: {},
home_phone: {},
work_phone: {},
});
api.initApplication = function(callback)
{
db.setProcessRow("bk_account", self.processAccountRow);
...
}
api.processAccountRow = function(row, options, cols)
{
if (row.birthday) row.age = Math.floor((Date.now() - core.toDate(row.birthday))/(86400000*365));
return row;
}
The accounts API manages accounts and authentication, it provides basic user account features with common fields like email, name, address.
/account/get
Returns information about current account or other accounts, all account columns are returned for the current account and only public columns returned for other accounts. This ensures that no private fields ever be exposed to other API clients. This call also can used to login into the service or verifying if the given login and secret are valid, there is no special login API call because each call must be signed and all calls are stateless and independent.
Parameters:
Note: When retrieving current account, all properties will be present including the location, for other accounts only the properties marked as pub in the
bk_account table will be returned.
Response:
{ "id": "57d07a4e28fc4f33bdca9f6c8e04d6c3",
"alias": "Test User",
"name": "Real Name",
"mtime": 1391824028,
"latitude": 34,
"longitude": -118,
"geohash": "9qh1",
"login": "testuser",
}
/account/add
Add new account, all parameters are the columns from the bk_account table, required columns are: name, secret, login.
By default, this URL is in the list of allowed paths that do not need authentication, this means that anybody can add an account. For the real application this may not be a good choice so the simplest way to disable it to add api-disallow-path=^/account/add$ to the config file or specify in the command line. More complex ways to perform registration will require adding pre and.or post callbacks to handle account registration for example with invitation codes....
In the table bk_auth, the column type is used to distinguish between account roles, by default only account with type admin can
add other accounts with this type specified, this column can also be used in account permissions implementations. Because it is in the bk_auth table,
all columns of this table are available as req.account object after the successful authentication where req is Express request object used in the middleware
parameters.
Note: secret and login can be anything, the backend does not require any specific formats so one simple trick which is done by the backend Web client is to scramble login/secret using HMAC-SHA1 and keep them in the local storage, this way the real login and secret is never exposed but the login popup will still asking for real name, see backend.js in the web/js folder for more details.
Example:
/account/add?name=test&login=test@test.com&secret=test123&gender=f&phone=1234567
How to make an account as admin
# Run backend shell
bkjs run-shell
# Update record by login
> db.update("bk_auth", { login: 'login@name', type: 'admin' });
/account/select
Return list of accounts by the given condition, calls db.select for bk_account table. Parameters are the column values to be matched and
all parameters starting with underscore are control parameters that goes into options of the db.select call with underscore removed. This will work for SQL
databases only because DynamoDB or Cassandra will not search by non primary keys. In the DynamoDB case this will run ScanTable action which will be very expensive for
large tables. Supports special query parameters _select,_ops, see docs about db.select for more info.
Example:
/account/search?email=test&_ops=email,begins_with
/account/search?name=test
Response:
{ "data": [{
"id": "57d07a4e28fc4f33bdca9f6c8e04d6c3",
"alias": "Test User1",
"name": "User1",
"mtime": 1391824028,
"login": "test1",
},
{
"id": "57d07a4e2824fc43bd669f6c8e04d6c3",
"alias": "Test User2",
"name": "User2",
"mtime": 1391824028,
"login": "test2",
}],
"next_token": ""
}
/account/del
Delete current account, after this call no more requests will be authenticated with the current credentials
/account/update
Update current account with new values, the parameters are columns of the table bk_account, only columns with non empty values will be updated.
Example:
/account/update?name=New%2BName&alias=Hidden%2BName&gender=m
/account/put/secret
Change account secret for the current account, no columns except the secret will be updated and expected.
Parameters:
Example:
/account/put/secret?secret=blahblahblah
/account/subcribe
Subscribe to account events delivered via HTTP Long Poll, a client makes the connection and waits for events to come, whenever
somebody updates the account's counter or send a message or creates a connection to this account the event about it will be sent to this HTTP
connection and delivered as JSON object. This is not a persistent queue so if not listening, all events will just be ignored, only events published
since the connect will be delivered. To specify what kind of events needs to be delivered, match query parameter can be specified which is a
RegExp of the whole event body string.
Note: On the server side there is a config parameter api-subscribe-interval which defines how often to deliver notifications, by default it is 5 seconds which means
only every 5 seconds new events will be delivered to the Web client, if more than one event happened, they all accumulate and will be sent as a JSON list.
Example:
/account/subscribe
/account/subscribe?match=connection/add.*type:*like
Response:
[ { "path": "/message/add", "mtime:" 1234566566, "type": "1" },
{ "path": "/counter/incr", "mtime:" 1234566566, "type": "like,invite" } },
{ "path": "/connection/add", "mtime": 1223345545, "type": "like" } ]
/account/select/icon
Return a list of available account icons, icons that have been uploaded previously with /account/put/icon calls. The url property is an URL to retrieve this particular icon.
Parameters:
Example:
/account/select/icon?id=12345
Response:
[ { id: '12345', type: '1', url: '/account/get/icon?id=12345&type=1' },
{ id: '12345', type: '2', url: '/account/get/icon?id=12345&type=2' } ]
/account/get/icon
Return an account icon, the icon is returned in the body as binary BLOB, if no icon with specified type exists, i.e. never been uploaded then 404 is returned.
Parameters:
Example:
/account/get/icon?type=2
/account/put/icon
Upload an account icon, once uploaded, the next /account/get call will return propertis in the format iconN wheer N is any of the
type query parameters specified here, for example if we uploaded an icon with type 5, then /account/get will return property icon5 with the URL
to retrieve this icon.
By default all icons uploaded only accessible for the account which uploaded them.
Parameters:
application/json and data should be sent with POST requestExample:
/account/put/icon?type=1&icon=iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAcAAAAJCAYAAAD+WDajAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAlwSFlzAAAOwgAADs....
/account/del/icon
Delete account icon
Parameters:
Example:
/account/icon/del?type=1
This endpoint can server any icon uploaded to the server for any account, it is supposed to be a non-secure method, i.e. no authentication will be performed and no signagture
will be needed once it is confgiured which prefix can be public using api-allow or api-allow-path config parameters.
The format of the endpoint is:
/image/prefix/id/type
Example:
# Configure accounts icons to be public in the etc/config
api-allow-path=/image/account/
# Or pass in the command line
./app.sh -api-allow-path /image/account/
# Make requests
/image/account/12345/0
/image/account/12345/1
#Return icons for account 12345 for types 0 and 1
The icons API provides ability for an account to store icons of different types. Each account keeps its own icons separate form other
accounts, within the account icons can be separated by prefix which is just a namespace assigned to the icons set, for example to keep messages
icons separate from albums, or use prefix for each separate album. Within the prefix icons can be assigned with unique type which can be any string.
Prefix and type can consist from alphabetical characters and numbers, dots, underscores and dashes: [a-z0-9._-]. This means, they are identificators, not real titles or names, a special mapping between prefix/type and album titles for example needs to be created separately.
The supposed usage for type is to concatenate common identifiers first with more specific to form unique icon type which later can be queried by prefix or exactly by icon type. For example album id can be prefixed first, then sequential con number like album1:icon1, album1:icon2.... then retrieving all icons for an album would be only query with album1: prefix.
/icon/get/prefix
/icon/get/prefix/type
Return icon for the current account in the given prefix, icons are kept on the local disk in the directory
configured by -api-images-dir parameter(default is images/ in the backend directory). Current account id is used to keep icons
separate from other accounts. type is used to specify unique icon created with such type which can be any string.
/icon/put/prefix
/icon/put/prefix/type
Upload new icon for the given account in the folder prefix, if type is specified it creates an icons for this type to separate
multiple icons for the same prefix. type can be any string consisting from alpha and digits characters.
The following parameters can be used:
/account/put/icon for the format and usage/icon/del/prefix
/icon/del/prefix/type
Delete the default icon for the current account in the folder prefix or by type
/icon/select/prefix
/icon/select/prefix/type
Return list of available icons for the given prefix adn type, all icons starting with prefix/type will be returned,
the url property will provide full URL to retrieve the icon contents
Example:
/icon/select/album/me
/icon/select/album/12345
Responses:
[ { id: 'b3dcfd1e63394e769658973f0deaa81a', type: 'me-1', icon: '/icon/get/album/me1' },
{ id: 'b3dcfd1e63394e769658973f0deaa81a', type: 'me-2', icon: '/icon/get/album/me2' } ]
[ { id: 'b3dcfd1e63394e769658973f0deaa81a', type: '12345-f0deaa81a', icon: '/icon/get/album/12345-f0deaa81a' } ]
The connections API maintains two tables bk_connection and bk_reference for links between accounts of any type. bk_connection table maintains my
links, i.e. when i make explicit connection to other account, and bk_reference table is automatically updated with reference for that other account that i made
a connection with it. No direct operations on bk_reference is allowed.
/connection/add
/connection/put
Create or replace a connection between two accounts, required parameters are:
id - id of account to connect totype - type of connection, like,dislike,....connected set to 1 if the other side of our connection is connected to us as wellThis call automatically creates a record in the bk_reference table which is reversed connection for easy access to information like ''who is connected to me'' and auto-increment like0, like1 counters for both accounts in the bk_counter table.
Also, this call updates the counters in the bk_counter table for my account which match the connection type, for example if the type of
connection is 'invite' and the bk_counter table contain 2 columns invite0 and invite1, then both counters will be increased.
Example:
/connection/add?id=12345&type=invite&state=sent
/connection/update
Update other properties of the existing connection, for connections that may take more than i step or if a connection has other data associated with it beside
the type of the connection.
Example:
/connection/update?id=12345&type=invite&state=accepted
/connection/del
Delete existing connection(s), id and/or type may be be specified, if not all existing connections will be deleted.
Example:
/connection/del?type=invite&id=12345
/connection/get
Receive all my connections of the given type, i.e. connection(s) i made, if id is given only one record for the specified connection will be returned. Supports special
query parameters _select,_ops,_desc, see docs about db.select for more info. All db.select options can be passed in the query with prepended underscore.
Example:
# Return all accounts who i invited
/connection/get?type=invite
# Return connection for specific type and account id
/connection/get?type=invite&id=12345
# Return accounts who i invited me after specified mtime
/connection/get?type=invite&_ops=mtime,gt&mtime=12334312543
# Return accounts who i invited before specified mtime
/connection/get?type=invite&_ops=mtime,le&_desc=1&mtime=12334312543
Response:
{ "data": [ { "id": "12345",
"type": "invite",
"status": "",
"mtime": "12334312543"
}],
"next_token": ""
}
/reference/get
Receive all references that connected with my account, i.e. connections made by somebody else with me, works the same way as for connection query call
Example:
# Return all accounts who invited me
/reference/get?type=invite
# Return accounts who invited me after specified mtime
/reference/get?type=invite&_ops=mtime,gt&mtime=12334312543
Response:
{ "data": [ { "id": "57d07a4e28fc4f33bdca9f6c8e04d6c3",
"type": "invite",
"status": "",
"mtime": "12334312543"
}],
"next_token": ""
}
The location API maintains a table bk_location with geolocation coordinates for accounts and allows searching it by distance. The configuration parameter
min-distance defines the radius for the smallest bounding box in km containing single location, radius searches will combine neighboring boxes of
this size to cover the whole area with the given distance request, also this affects the length of geohash keys stored in the bk_location table. By default min-distance is 5 km
which means all geohashes in bk_location table will have geohash of size 4. Once min-distance is set it cannot be changed without rebuilding the bk_location table with new geohash size.
The location search is implemented by using geohash as a primary key in the bk_location table with the account id as the second part of the primary key, for DynamoDB this is the range key. When request comes for all matches for the location for example 37.7, -122.4, the search that is executed looks like this:
geohash for latitude 37.7 and longitude -122.4 and radius 10 km will be 9q8y
all neoghboring ares around this point within 10 km radius will be '9q8z', '9q8v', '9q8w', '9q8x', '9q8t', '9q9n', '9q9p', '9q9j'
we start the search on the bk_location table by the primary key geohash with the value 9q8y
filter out all records beyond our radius by calculating the difference between our point and the candidate record
if total number of results expcted is still less than required, continue to the next neighbor area
continue untill we visit all neighbors or received required number of macthed records
on return the next_token opaque value will be provided if we want to continue the search for more matched for the same location
/location/put
Store currenct location for current account, latitude and longitude parameters must be given, this call will update the bk_account table as well with
these coordinates
Example:
/location/put?latitude=-188.23232&longitude=23.4545454
/location/get
Return matched accounts within the distance(radius) specified by distance= parameter in kilometers and current position specified by latitude/longitude paraemeters. This
call returns results in chunks and requires navigation through all pages to receive all matched records. Records returned will start with the closest to the current
point. If there are more matched records than specified by the _count, the next_token property is set with the token to be used in the subsequent call,
it must be passed as is as _token= parameter with all original query parameters.
By default only locations with account ids will be returned, specifying _details=1 will return public account columns like name as well.
Note: The current account will not be present in the results even if it is within the range, to know my own location use /account/get call.
Example:
/location/get?distance=10&latitude=-118.23434&longitude=23.45665656&_count=25
/location/get?distance=10&latitude=-118.23434&longitude=23.45665656&_count=25&_token=FGTHTRHRTHRTHTTR.....
Response:
{ "data": [ { "id": "12345",
"distance": 5,
"latitude": -118.123,
"longitude": 23.45
"mtime": "12334312543"
},
{ "id": "45678",
"distance": 5,
"latitude": -118.133,
"longitude": 23.5
"mtime": "12334312543"
}],
"next_token": ""
}
The messaging API allows sending and recieving messages between accounts, it supports text and images. The typical usage of this API is to
poll the counter record using /counter/get from time to time and check for msg_count and msg_read counters, once msg_count is greater than msg_read this means
there is a new message arrived. Then call /message/get to retrieve all or only new messages arrived after some point in time and store the mtime
from the last messages received so the next time we will use this time to get only new messages.
/message/image
Return the image data for the given message, the required parameters are:
/message/get reply results for every message/message/get
Receive messages, the parameter mtime defines which messages to get, if omitted all messages will be returned. By mtime it is possible to
specify that only messages received since that time to return, it must be in milliseconds since midnight GMT on January 1, 1970, this is what
Date.now() return in Javascript. The images are not returned, only link to the image in icon property of reach record,
the actual image data must be retrieved separately.
When sender is specified then all messages from given sender will be returned.
When id is specified and it is not the current account id, then all messages that the current account has sent to the id will be returned, i.e.
this is how i can get all messages i have sent to the id.
NOTE: The mtime is when the backend server received the message, if client and the server clocks are off this may return wrong data or not return anything at all,
also because the arrival order of the messages cannot be guaranteed, sending fast multiple messages may be received in different order by the backend and this will
result in mtimes that do not correspond to actual times when the message has been sent.
Example:
# Get all messages
/message/get
# Get all messages received after given mtime
/message/get?mtime=123475658690
# Get all messages with custom filter: if msg text contains Hi
/message/get?_ops=msg,iregexp&msg=Hi
# Get all messages from the specific sender
/message/get?sender=12345
# Get all messages i have sent to the user 12345
/message/get?id=12345
Response:
{ "data": [ { "sender": "12345",
"msg": "Hi, how r u?",
"mtime": "12334312543"
},
{ "sender": "45678",
"msg": "check this out!",
"icon": "/message/image?sender=45678&mtime=12334312543",
"mtime": "12334312543"
}],
"next_token": ""
}
/message/get/unread
Read all unread messages, i.e. the messages that never been issued /message/read call.
Parameters:
_read - if set to 1, all returned messages will be marked as read automatically, so no individual /message/read call needed/message/add
Send a message to an account, the following parametrrs must be specified:
id - account id of the receivermsg - text of the message, can be empty if icon property existsicon - icon of the message, it can be base64 encoded image in the query or JSON string if the whole message is posted as JSON or
can be a multipart file upload if submitted via browser, can be omitted if msg/connection/get?type=invite&id=12345 property exists.After successful post the message counters of the destination account will be updated: msg_count will be increased automatically
Example:
/message/add?id=12345&msg=Hello
/message/add?id=12345&msg=this%2Bis%2Bthe%2Bpic&icon=KHFHTDDKH7676758JFGHFDRDEDET....TGJNK%2D
/message/read
Mark a message as read, this will update account counter msg_read automatically. The required query parameters are sender and mtime.
Example:
/message/read?sender=12345&mtime=12366676434
/message/del
Delete the message by sender and/or mtime which must be passed as query parameters. If no mtime is given, all messages from the given sender will be deleted.
Example:
/message/del?sender=12345&mtime=124345656567676
The counters API maintains realtime counters for every account records, the counters record may contain many different counter columns for different purposes and is always cached with whatever cache service is used, by default it is cached by the Web server process on every machine. Web worker processes ask the master Web server process for the cached records thus only one copy of the cache per machine even in the case of multiple CPU cores.
/counter/get
Return counter record for current account with all available columns of if id is given return public columns for given account, it works with bk_counter table
which by default defines some common columns:
NOTE: The columns with suffixes 0 and 1 are special columns that support the Connections API, every time a new connection is created, the type of new connection
is checked against any columns in the bk_counter table, if a property type0 exists and marked in the table descriptnio as autoincr then the corresponding
counter property is increased, this is how every time new connectio like/dislike/invite/follow is added, the counters in the bk_counter table are increased.
/counter/put
Replace my counters record, all values if not specified will be set to 0
/counter/incr
Increase one or more counter fields, each column can provide a numeric value and it will be added to the existing value, negative values will be substracted.
if id parameter is specified, only public columns will be increased for other account.
Example:
/counter/incr?msg_read=5&
/counter/incr?id=12345&ping=1
The history API maintains one table for all application specific logging records. All operations deal with current account only.
/history/add
Add a record to the bk_history table for current account, timestamp is added automatically, all other fields are optional but by default
this table contains only 2 columns: type and data for genetic logging, it can to be extended to support any other application logic if needed.
/history/get
Return history record for current account, if mtime is not specified all records from the beginning will be returned, use _count and _start parameters to paginate through
all available records or specify mtime= with the timestamp in milliseconds to start with particular time.
The data API is a generic way to access any table in the database with common operations, as oppose to the any specific APIs above this API only deals with one table and one record without maintaining any other features like auto counters, cache...
Because it exposes the whole database to anybody who has a login it is a good idea to disable this endpoint in the production or provide access callback that verifies who can access it.
To disable this endpoint completely in the config: api-disable=data
To allow admins to access it only:
api.registerAuthCheck('GET', '/data', function(req, status, cb) { if (req.account.type != "admin") return cb({ status: 401, message: 'access denied' }; cb(status)); });
/data/columns
/data/columns/TABLE
Return columns for all tables or the specific TABLE
/data/keys/TABLE
Return primary keys for the given TABLE
/data/(select|search|list|get|add|put|update|del|incr|replace)/TABLE
Perform database operation on the given TABLE, all options for the db functiobns are passed as query parametrrs prepended with underscore,
regular parameters are the table columns.
Example:
/data/get/bk_account?id=12345
/data/put/bk_counter?id=12345&like0=1
/data/select/bk_account?name=john&_ops=name,gt&_select=name,alias,email
The system API returns information about the backend statistics, allows provisioning and configuration commands and other internal maintenance functions. By default is is open for access to all users but same security considerations apply here as for the Data API.
/system/cache/(init|stats|keys|get|set|put|incr|del|clear)
Access to the caching functions
/system/msg/(msg)
Access to the messaging functions
/system/stats
Database pool statistics and other diagnostics
Individual sub-objects:
Response:
{
"toobusy": 0,
"pool": {
"query": {
"meter": {
"mean": 0.001194894762493158,
"count": 65,
"currentRate": 0.001194894762493158,
"1MinuteRate": 2.413646785930864e-158,
"5MinuteRate": 1.2021442332952544e-33,
"15MinuteRate": 7.127940837162242e-13
},
"histogram": {
"min": 1,
"max": 4,
"sum": 99,
"variance": 0.4096153846153847,
"mean": 1.523076923076923,
"stddev": 0.6400120191179106,
"count": 65,
"median": 1,
"p75": 2,
"p95": 2.6999999999999957,
"p99": 4,
"p999": 4
}
},
"queue": {
"min": 1,
"max": 1,
"sum": 65,
"variance": 0,
"mean": 1,
"stddev": 0,
"count": 65,
"median": 1,
"p75": 1,
"p95": 1,
"p99": 1,
"p999": 1
},
"count": 0,
"rate": {
"mean": 0.0011948946746301802,
"count": 65,
"currentRate": 0.0011948946746301802,
"1MinuteRate": 2.413646785930864e-158,
"5MinuteRate": 1.2021442332952544e-33,
"15MinuteRate": 7.127940837162242e-13
},
"response": {
"meter": {
"mean": 0.0011948947405274121,
"count": 65,
"currentRate": 0.0011948947405274121,
"1MinuteRate": 2.413646785930864e-158,
"5MinuteRate": 1.2021442332952544e-33,
"15MinuteRate": 7.127940837162242e-13
},
"histogram": {
"min": 0,
"max": 2,
"sum": 65,
"variance": 0.12500000000000003,
"mean": 1,
"stddev": 0.3535533905932738,
"count": 65,
"median": 1,
"p75": 1,
"p95": 2,
"p99": 2,
"p999": 2
}
},
"misses": 3,
"hits": 50
},
"api": {
"rss": {
"min": 77926400,
"max": 145408000,
"sum": 23414882304,
"variance": 234721528417225.16,
"mean": 128653199.47252747,
"stddev": 15320624.282881724,
"count": 182,
"median": 124903424,
"p75": 144999424,
"p95": 145408000,
"p99": 145408000,
"p999": 145408000
},
"heap": {
"min": 14755896,
"max": 31551408,
"sum": 4174830592,
"variance": 19213862445722.168,
"mean": 22938629.626373626,
"stddev": 4383362.002586846,
"count": 182,
"median": 22453472,
"p75": 26436622,
"p95": 30530277.599999998,
"p99": 31331225.599999998,
"p999": 31551408
},
"loadavg": {
"min": 0,
"max": 0.14208984375,
"sum": 8.33349609375,
"variance": 0.0013957310299007465,
"mean": 0.04578844007554945,
"stddev": 0.03735948380131538,
"count": 182,
"median": 0.043701171875,
"p75": 0.0806884765625,
"p95": 0.103857421875,
"p99": 0.13803710937499994,
"p999": 0.14208984375
},
"freemem": {
"min": 1731198976,
"max": 1815724032,
"sum": 319208222720,
"variance": 335910913486664.44,
"mean": 1753891333.6263735,
"stddev": 18327872.584854588,
"count": 182,
"median": 1757151232,
"p75": 1763340288,
"p95": 1785729638.4,
"p99": 1798348267.5199997,
"p999": 1815724032
},
"rate": {
"mean": 0.005091340673514894,
"count": 277,
"currentRate": 0.005091340673514894,
"1MinuteRate": 0.014712537947741827,
"5MinuteRate": 0.003251074139103506,
"15MinuteRate": 0.0011131541240945431
},
"response": {
"meter": {
"mean": 0.005072961780912493,
"count": 276,
"currentRate": 0.005072961780912493,
"1MinuteRate": 0.014712537947741827,
"5MinuteRate": 0.003251074139103506,
"15MinuteRate": 0.0011131541240946244
},
"histogram": {
"min": 1,
"max": 11847,
"sum": 13614,
"variance": 508182.2787351782,
"mean": 49.32608695652174,
"stddev": 712.8690473959282,
"count": 276,
"median": 2,
"p75": 5.75,
"p95": 27.149999999999977,
"p99": 122.99000000000024,
"p999": 11847
}
},
"queue": {
"min": 1,
"max": 2,
"sum": 286,
"variance": 0.03154920734578558,
"mean": 1.032490974729242,
"stddev": 0.17762096538918368,
"count": 277,
"median": 1,
"p75": 1,
"p95": 1,
"p99": 2,
"p999": 2
},
"count": 1
}
}
When the backend server starts and no -home argument passed in the command line the backend makes its home environment in the ~/.backend directory.
The backend directory structure is the following:
etc - configuration directory, all config files are there
etc/config - config parameters, same as specified in the command line but without leading -, each config parameter per line:
Example:
debug=1
db-pool=dynamodb
db-dynamodb-pool=http://localhost:9000
db-pgsql-pool=postgresql://postgres@127.0.0.1/backend
To specify other config file: bkjs run-backend -config-file file
some config parameters can be condigured in DNS as TXT records, the backend on startup will try to resolve such records and use the value if not empty.
All params that marked with DNS TXT can be configured in the DNS server for the domain where the backend is running, the config parameter name is
concatenated with the domain and queried for the TXT record, for example: cache-host parameter will be queried for cache-host.domain.name for TXT record type.
etc/crontab - jobs to be run with intervals, local or remote, JSON file with a list of cron jobs objects:
Example:
Create file in ~/.backend/etc/crontab with the following contents:
[ { "type": "local", "cron": "0 1 1 * * 1,3", "job": { "api.cleanSessions": { "interval": 3600000 } } } ]
Define the function that the cron will call with the options specified, callback must be called at the end, create this app.js file
var backend = require("backendjs");
backend.api.cleanSessions = function(options, callback) {
backend.db.delAll("session", { mtime: options.interval + Date.now() }, { ops: "le" }, callback);
}
backend.server.start()
Start the scheduler and the web server at once
bkjs run-backend -master -web
etc/proxy - HTTP proxy config file, from http-proxy (https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy)
Example:
Create file ~/.backend/etc/proxy with the following contents:
{ "target" : { "host": "localhost", "port": 8001 } }
Start the proxy
bkjs -proxy
Now all requests will be sent to localhost:8001
etc/profile - shell script loaded by the bkjs utility to customize env variables
images - all images to be served by the API server, every subfolder represent naming space with lots of subfolders for imagesvar - database files created by the servertmp - temporary filesweb - Web pages served by the static Express middlewareThe backend includes internal C++ module which provide some useful functions available in the Javascript. The module is exposed as "backend" submodule, to see all functions for example run the below:
var backend = require('backendjs');
console.log(backend.backend)
List of available functions:
rungc() - run V8 garbage collector on demand
setsegv() - install SEGV signal handler to show crash backtrace
setbacktrace() - install special V8-aware backtrace handler
backtrace() - show V8 backtrace from current position
heapSnapshot(file) - dump current memory heap snapshot into a file
splitArray(str) - split a string into an array separated by commas, supports double quotes
logging([level]) - set or return logging level, this is internal C++ logging facility
loggingChannel(channelname) - redirect logging into stdout or stderr, this is internal C++ logging
countWords(word, text) - return how many time word appers in the text, uses Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm
countAllWords(list, text) - return an object with counters for each word from the list, i.e. how many times each word appears in the text, uses Aho-Corasick algorithm
countWordsInit() - clears word counting cache
resizeImage(source, options, callback) - resize image using ImageMagick,
resizeImageSync(name,width,height,format,filter,quality,outfile) - resize an image synchronically
snappyCompress(str) - compress a string
snappyUncompress(str) - decompress a string
Geohash support
Generic cache outside of V8 memory pool
LRU internal cache
Syslog support
NNSocket() - nanomsg socket object with the methods:
Database layer support caching of the responses using db.getCached call, it retrieves exactly one record from the configured cache, if no record exists it
will pull it from the database and on success will store it in the cache before returning to the client. When dealing with cached records, there is a special option
that must be passed to all put/update/del database methods in order to clear local cache, so next time the record will be retrieved with new changes from the database
and refresh the cache, that is { cached: true } can be passed in the options parameter for the db methods that may modify records with cached contents. In any case
it is required to clear cache manually there is db.clearCached method for that.
For cache management signaling, all servers maintain local cache per machine, it is called LRU cache. This cache is maintained in the master Web process and
serves all local Web worker processes via IPC channel. Every Web master process if compiled with nanomsg library can accept cache messages on a TCP port (cache-port=20194)
from other backend nodes. Every time any Web worker updates the local cache, its master process re-broadcasts the same request to other connected Web master
processes on other nodes thus keeping in sync caches on all nodes.
The basic flow is the following using a hypothetical example:
there are 4 nodes running in the network: node1, node2, node3 and node4, instead of the names nodeX we can use IP addresses as well.
all nodes configured with the parameter cache-host=node1,node2
nanomsg sockets may be connected to multiple endpoints, so we can have 2 cache servers for redundency.
This config parameter can be specified in the local config file on all nodes
or can be defined in the DNS server as TXT record cache-host. If running in the AWS the config parameters also can be specified in
the user-data the same was as command line arguments.
any node which is requested for a cached record asks its local cache first for such key and if it is not found, retrieves it from the database and puts into local cache, if running for a while, potentially every node now may contain same items in the cache and all requests for such items will be served without touching the db
an update request comes to the node3 which deletes a key from the local cache:
cache-host config parameterFor very frequent items there is no point using local cache but for items reasonable static with not so often changes this cache model will work reliably and similar to
what memcached or Redis server would do as well.
The benefits of this approach is not to run any separate servers and dealing with its own configuration and support, using nanomsg internal backend cache system is self contained and does not need additional external resources, any node can be LRU server whose only role is to make sure all other nodes flush their caches if needed. Using redundant broadcast servers makes sure such flush requests reach all nodes in the cluster and there is no single point of failure.
Essentually, setting cache-host to the list of any nodes in the network is what needs to be done to support distributed cache with nanomsg sockets.
Setting cache-type=memcache and pointing memcache-host to one or more hosts running memcached servers is what needs to be done only, the rest of the
system works similar to the internal nanomsg caching but using memcache client instead. The great benefit using memcache is to configure more than one
server in memcache-host separated by comma which makes it more reliable and eliminates single point of failure if one of the memcache servers goes down.
Set cache-type=redis and point redis-host to the server running Redis server. Only single Redis server can be specified.
Publish/subscribe functionality allows clients to receive notifications without constantly polling for new events. A client can be anything but
the backend provides some partially implemented subscription notifications for Web clients using the Long Poll.
The Account API call /account/subscribe can use any pub/sub mode.
The flow of the pub/sub operations is the following:
/account/subscribe API request, the connection is made and is kept open indefenitely or as long as configured using api-subscribe-timeout.api.subscribe method with the key being the account id, this will subscribe to the events for the current
account and registers a callback to be called if any events occured. The HTTP connection is kept open.ipc.publish after the DB operation succedes. If the messaging is configured, it publishes the message for the account, the
message being a JSON object with the request API path and mtime, other properties depend on the call made./account/subscribe receives an eventTo use publish/subcribe with nanomsg, first nanomsg must be compiled in the backend module. Usually this is done when explicitely installed with --backend_nanomsg
options to the npm install, see above how to install the package.
All nodes must have the same configuration, similar to the LRU cache otherwise some unexpected behaviour may happen.
The config parameter msg-host defines where to publish messages and from where messages can be retrieved. Having more than one hosts listed will ensure
better reliability of delivering messages, publishing will be load-balanced between all configured hosts.
To configure the backend to use Redis for messaging set msg-type=redis and redis-host=HOST where HOST is IP address or hostname of the single Redis server.
To configure the backend to use RabbitMQ for messaging set msg-type=amqp and amqp-host=HOST and optionally amqp-options=JSON with options to the amqp module.
This is default setup of the backend when all API requests except /account/add must provide valid signature and all HTML, Javascript, CSS and image files
are available to everyone. This mode assumes that Web developmnt will be based on 'single-page' design when only data is requested from the Web server and all
rendering is done using Javascript. This is how the api.html develpers console is implemented, using JQuery-UI and Knockout.js.
To see current default config parameters run any of the following commands:
bkjs run-backend -help | grep api-allow
node -e 'require("backendjs").core.showHelp()'
To disable open registration in this mode just add config parameter api-disallow-path=^/account/add$ or if developing an application add this in the initMiddleware
api.initMiddleware = function(callback) {
this.allow.splice(this.allow.indexOf('^/account/add$'), 1);
}
This is a mode when the whole Web site is secure by default, even access to the HTML files must be authenticated. In this mode the pages must defined 'Backend.session = true' during the initialization on every html page, it will enable Web sessions for the site and then no need to sign every API reauest.
The typical client Javascript verification for the html page may look like this, it will redirect to login page if needed, this assumes the default path '/public' still allowed without the signature:
<link href="/styles/jquery-ui.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script src="/js/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/js/jquery-ui.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/js/knockout.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/js/crypto.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="js/backend.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="js/backend-jquery-ui.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script>
$(function () {
Backend.session = true;
Backend.scramble = true;
ko.applyBindings(Backend);
Backend.login(function(err, data) {
if (err) window.location='/public/index.html';
});
});
</script>
On the backend side in your application app.js it needs more secure settings defined i.e. no html except /public will be accessible and
in case of error will be redirected to the login page by the server. Note, in the login page Backend.session must be set to true for all
html pages to work after login without singing every API request.
First we disable all allowed paths to the html and registration:
api.initMiddleware = function(callback) {
self.allow.splice(self.allow.indexOf('^/$'), 1);
self.allow.splice(self.allow.indexOf('\\.html$'), 1);
self.allow.splice(self.allow.indexOf('^/account/add$'), 1);
}
Second we define auth callback in the app and redirect to login if the reauest has no valid signature, we check all html pages, all allowed html pages from the /public will never end up in this callback because it is called after the signature check but allowed pages are served before that:
api.registerAuthCheck('', /^\/$|\.html$/, function(req, status, callback) {
if (status.status != 200) {
status.status = 302;
status.url = '/public/index.html';
}
callback(status);
});
The purpose of the bkjs shell script is to act as a helper tool in configuring and managing the backend environment
and as well to be used in operations on production systems. It is not required for the backend operations and provided as a convenience tool
which is used in the backend development and can be useful for others running or testing the backend.
Running without arguments will bring help screen with description of all available commands.
The tool is multi-command utility where the first argument is the command to be executed with optional additional arguments if needed. On startup the bkjs tries to load and source the following config files:
/etc/backendrc
/usr/local/etc/backendrc
~/.backend/etc/profile
Any of the following config files can redefine any environmnt variable thus pointing to the correct backend environment directory or customize the running environment, these should be regular shell scripts using bash syntax.
Most common used commands are:
Here is the example how to setup new custom AWS server, it is not required and completely optional but bkjs provies some helpful commands that may simplify new image configuration.
start new AWS instance via AWS console, use Amazon Linux or CentOS 6
login as ec2-user
get bkjs: `curl -OL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vseryakov/backendjs/master/bkjs'
run sudo ./bkjs setup-server -root /home/backend -web
global system-wide options will be defined in the /etc/backendrc like BACKEND_ARGS, BACKEND_NAME, BACKEND_ROOT env variables
reboot
login as backend user using the AWS keypair private key
install the backendjs and node:
./bkjs build-node
npm install backendjs --backend_nanomsg --backend_imagemagick
reboot and login into the server
run ps agx, it should show several backend processes running
try to access the instance via HTTP port for the API console or documentation
In case of existing properly setup AWS instance running Linux with Amazon AMI or CentOS, and only needed to start the backendjs as a service, assuming
node.js is already installed, if not just run ./bkjs build-node before the command below:
npm install backendjs
sudo bkjs init-service
After that the backend will be started by the systen on the next reboot or force the start by sudo service backendjs start
As with any node.js module, the backendjs app can be packaged into zip file according to AWS docs and deployed the same way as any other node.js app. Inside the app package etc/config file can be setup for any external connections.
The first thing when deploying the backend into production is to change API HTTP port, by default is is 8000, but we would want port 80 so regardless how the environment is setup it is ultimatley 2 ways to specify the port for HTTP server to use:
config file
The config file is always located in the etc/ folder in the backend home directory, how the home is specified depends on the system but basically it can be
defined via command line arguments as -home or via environment variables when using bkjs. See bkjs documentation but on AWS instances created with bkjs
setup-server command, for non-standard home use /etc/backendrc profile, specify BACKEND_HOME=/home/backend there and the rest will be taken care of
command line arguments
When running node scripts which use the backend, just specify -home command line argument with the directory where yor backend should be and the backend will use it
Example:
node app.js -home $HOME -port 80
config database
If -db-config is specified in the command line or db-config= in the local config file, this will trigger loading additional
config parameters from the specified databae pool, it will load all records from tbe bk_config table on that db pool. db-config defines the
configuration group or type to load, by default the config group is 'core', so even if ther is only one config group it must be specified in the db-config
parameter. Using the database to store configuration make it easier to maintain dynamic environment for example in case of auto scaling or lanching on demand, this way
a new instance will query current config from the database and this eliminates supporting text files and distributing them to all instances.
DNS records
Some config options may be kept in the DNS TXT records and every time a instance is started it will query the local DNS for such parameters. Only a small subset of
all config parameters support DNS store. To see which parmeteres can be stored in the DNS run bkjs show-help and look for 'DNS TXT configurable'.
All requests to the API server must be signed with account login/secret pair.
The resulting signature is sent as HTTP header bk-signature: string
For JSON content type, the method must be POST and no query parameters specified, instead everything should be inside the JSON object which is placed in the body of the request. For additional safety, SHA1 checksum of the JSON paylod can be calculated and passed in the signature, this is the only way to ensure the body is not modified when not using query parameters.
See web/js/backend.js for function Backend.sign or function core.signRequest in the core.js for the Javascript implementation.
for DB drivers and ImageMagick to work propely it needs some dependencies to be installed:
port install libpng jpeg tiff lcms2 mysql56 postgresql93
make sure there is no openjpeg15 installed, it will conflict with ImageMagick jp2 codec
git clone https://github.com/vseryakov/backendjs.git or git clone git@github.com:vseryakov/backendjs.git
cd backendjs
if node.js is already installed skip to the next section
node.js can be compiled by the bkjs and installed into default location, on Darwin it is /opt/local
to install node into other location, BACKEND_PREFIX needs to be set
to change $BACKEND_PREFIX, create ~/.backend/etc/profile file, for example:
mkdir -p ~/.backend/etc echo "BACKEND_PREFIX=$HOME/local" > ~/.backend/etc/profile
Important: Add NODE_PATH=$BACKEND_PREFIX/lib/node_modules to your environment in .profile or .bash_profile so node can find global modules, replace $BACKEND_PREFIX with the actual path unless this variable is also set in the .profile
to install node.js in $BACKEND_PREFIX/bin run command:
./bkjs build-node
to compile the binary module and all required dependencies just type make or npm build .
to see the actual compiler settings during compilation the following helps:
make V=1
to compile with internal nanomsg and ImageMagick use:
make force V=1
to install all dependencies and make backendjs module and bkjs globally available:
npm link backendjs
to run local server on port 8000 run command:
./bkjs run-backend
to start the backend in command line mode, the backend environment is prepared and initialized including all database pools. This command line access allows you to test and run all functions from all modules of the backend without running full server similar to node.js REPL functionality. All modules are accessible from the command line.
$ ./bkjs run-shell
> core.version
'2013.10.20.0'
> logger.setDebug(2)
Vlad Seryakov
Check out the Documentation for more documentation.
FAQs
A platform for building backends
The npm package backendjs receives a total of 23 weekly downloads. As such, backendjs popularity was classified as not popular.
We found that backendjs demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 0 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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