Diffusion Apple API  6.2.7
Unified Client Library for iOS, tvOS and OS X / macOS
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PTDiffusionTopicSpecification Class Reference

Introduction

The specification of a topic.

A topic is specified in terms of its topic type and a map of property settings which define the behavior of the topic.

Since
5.9
Inheritance diagram for PTDiffusionTopicSpecification:

Class Methods

(instancetype) + NS_UNAVAILABLE
 
(NSString *) + publishValuesOnlyPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + validateValuesPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + slaveMasterTopicPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + tidyOnSubscribePropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + timeSeriesEventValueTypePropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + timeSeriesRetainedRangePropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + timeSeriesSubscriptionRangePropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + schemaPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + dontRetainValuePropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + persistentPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + removalPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + conflationPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + ownerPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + compressionPropertyKey
 
(NSString *) + truePropertyValue
 
(NSString *) + falsePropertyValue
 

Properties

PTDiffusionTopicType type
 
NSDictionary< NSString
*, NSString * > * 
properties
 

Instance Methods

(instancetype) - NS_UNAVAILABLE
 
(instancetype) - initWithType:
 
(instancetype) - initWithType:properties:
 
(BOOL) - isEqualToTopicSpecification:
 

Method Documentation

+ (NSString *) compressionPropertyKey

Key of the topic property that allows compression to be disabled on a per-topic basis.

Compression reduces the bandwidth required to broadcast topic updates to subscribed sessions.

Changes to a topic's value are published to each subscribed session as a sequence of topic messages. A topic message can carry the latest value or the difference between the latest value and the previous value (a delta). The compression property determines if and how the published messages are compressed. Topic messages are not exposed through the client API. The client library handles decompression and decodes deltas automatically, passing reconstructed values to the application.

Generally compression is beneficial, so the default value for this property is true, meaning compression is enabled. Setting this property to false disables compression for the topic.

Whether compression is enabled or disabled by this property is only one factor that determines whether a topic message will be compressed. Other factors include:

  • Compression must be enabled in the server configuration.
  • The client library must support the server's compression scheme. In this release, the server supports zlib compression, and also allows compression to be disabled on a per-connector basis. The Java, Android, .NET and JavaScript client libraries are capable of zlib compression. A JavaScript client must explicitly download the zlib library; it is packaged separately to reduce the download size of the core library.
  • The message must be sufficiently large. Messages smaller than a few tens of bytes are not compressed because the potential savings are negligible.
  • Future releases may use further heuristics to trade off the cost of compression against the potential savings.
Since
6.2
+ (NSString *) conflationPropertyKey

Key of the topic property that describes the conflation policy of the topic. The policy specifies how the server manages queued topic updates. Conflation is applied individually to each session queue.

Conflation is the process of merging or discarding topic updates queued for a session to reduce the server memory footprint and network data. The server will conflate sessions that have a large number of queued messages to meet configured queue size targets. The sessions with the largest queues are typically slow consumers or have been disconnected – both will benefit from conflation. This property allows conflation behaviour to be tuned on a topic-by-topic basis.

Supported policies are:

  • off: disables conflation for the topic. This policy disables all conflation for the topic, so topic updates will never be merged or discarded.
  • conflate: automatically conflates topic updates when back pressure is detected by the server. This policy is ignored for stateless topics, and for slave and routing topics that reference stateless topics.
  • unsubscribe: automatically unsubscribes the topic when back pressure is detected by the server. Topic updates will only be discarded if the tidyOnSubscribePropertyKey property is set to "true".
  • always: automatically conflates topic updates as they are queued for the session. This is an eager policy that ensures only the latest update is queued for the topic, minimising the server memory and network bandwidth used by the session. This policy is ignored for stateless topics, and for slave and routing topics that reference stateless topics.

The default policy used when the property is not specified is "conflate".

The "conflate" and "unsubscribe" policies are applied when the server detects back pressure for a session. The server configuration places limits on the data queued for each session. If these limits are breached, the server will conflate the session queue to attempt to reduce its size. If the session queue still exceeds the limits after conflation, the session will be terminated.

Conflation of stateless topics is configured using server-side configuration. This configuration describes how topic updates should be merged. Like the "always" policy conflation specified this way is applied when queuing a topic update. The policy "off" prevents this conflation being applied. All other policies allow conflation specified this way to happen. The "unsubscribe" policy will still unsubscribe topics that use conflation specified this way.

Conflation can be disabled on a session-by-session basis using the client control feature (currently unavailable for this client library). If conflation is disabled for a session the policy will not be applied to topic updates queued for the session but will be for other sessions that have conflation enabled.

Since
6.1
+ (NSString *) dontRetainValuePropertyKey

Key of boolean topic property that specifies a topic should not retain its last value. Setting this property to "true" allows the topic to behave like a stateless topic, while retaining other properties such as its data type.

By default, a topic (other than a stateless, slave, or routing topic) will retain its latest value. The latest value will be sent to new subscribers. Setting this property to "true" disables this behavior. New subscribers will not be sent an initial value. No value will be returned for fetch operations that select the topic. This is useful for data streams where the values are only transiently valid.

Setting this property to "true" disables delta streams, regardless of the publishValuesOnlyPropertyKey property value. If subsequent values are likely to be related, delta streams can provide a performance benefit. Consider not setting this property to benefit from delta streams, even if there is no other requirement to retain the last value.

Setting this property affects the default subscription range of a time series topic. If set to "true", the default subscription range will not provide an initial event to new subscribers. The default subscription range can be overridden with the timeSeriesSubscriptionRangePropertyKey property. Regardless of whether this property is set, a time series topic will continue to record events according to the timeSeriesRetainedRangePropertyKey property.

Since
6.0
+ (NSString *) falsePropertyValue

Constant string representing the value to be used for boolean properties to specify "false".

Since
6.1
- (instancetype) initWithType: (PTDiffusionTopicType)  type

Returns a topic specification object initialized with the given topic type and an empty properties dictionary.

Since
6.0
- (instancetype) initWithType: (PTDiffusionTopicType)  type
properties: (NSDictionary< NSString *, NSString * > *)  properties 

Returns a topic specification object initialized with the given topic type and properties dictionary.

Exceptions
NSInvalidArgumentExceptionIf properties is nil.
Since
6.0
- (BOOL) isEqualToTopicSpecification: (nullable PTDiffusionTopicSpecification *)  topicSpecification

Compares the receiver to the given topic specification.

Parameters
topicSpecificationThe topic specification object with which to compare the receiver.
Returns
YES if the topic specification is equal to the receiver, otherwise NO.
Since
5.9
+ (NSString *) ownerPropertyKey

Key of the topic property that allows the creator of a topic to extend READ_TOPIC, MODIFY_TOPIC and UPDATE_TOPIC permissions to a specific principal, in addition to the permissions granted by the authorisation rules in the security store.

A session that has authenticated using the principal can update and remove the topic, so the principal can be considered the topic owner. To fetch or subscribe to the topic, the principal must also be granted SELECT_TOPIC by the security store rules.

This may be used in the following cases:

  1. A session creates a topic and makes its own principal the owner.
  2. A session creates a topic and makes another principal the owner.

The format of the property value is:

$Principal is "<name>"

where name is the name of the principal. Single quotes may be used instead of double quotes and special characters must be escaped. The convenience method PTDiffusionEscape is provided to escape such characters in a value.

The purpose of this property is to allow a client to create topics on behalf of other users. This can be used in conjunction with removalPropertyKey so that such topics are removed when there are no longer any sessions for the named principal.

For example:

PTDiffusionTopicSpecification *const specification =
    [[PTDiffusionTopicSpecification alloc] initWithType:topicType
                                             properties:@ {
        [PTDiffusionTopicSpecification ownerPropertyKey] :
            @"$Principal is 'myPrincipal'",
        [PTDiffusionTopicSpecification removalPropertyKey] :
            @"when no session has '$Principal is \"myPrincipal\"' for 5s"
    }];
Since
6.1
+ (NSString *) persistentPropertyKey

Key of the topic property that can be used to prevent a topic from being persisted when the server is configured to enable persistence.

By default, a topic will be persisted if persistence is enabled at the server and the topic type supports persistence.

Setting to "false" will prevent the topic from being persisted.

Since
6.1
+ (NSString *) publishValuesOnlyPropertyKey

Key of boolean topic property indicating whether a topic should publish only values.

By default, topics with a topic data type that supports deltas will publish a delta when doing so is more efficient than publishing the value. Setting this property to "true" disables this behavior so that deltas are never published. This results in more data being transmitted, but allows the client to only have to process values and not deltas.

If this property is not set (or set to something other than "true") and a topic publishes deltas, clients need to use value streams to process the topics. If a client uses topic streams, it needs to process the deltas manually.

If the client is using value streams to process the topics, it is not recommended to set this property as it will only lead to higher bandwidth usage.

For topic data types that do not have delta support this value is irrelevant as only values would ever be published anyway.

Since
5.9
+ (NSString *) removalPropertyKey

Key of the topic property that specifies a removal policy for automatic removal of the topic (and/or other topics).

This property is specified as an expression which defines one or more conditions that are to be satisfied before automatic removal occurs.

The expression takes the form:

when <conditions> [remove "<selector>"]

At least one condition must be supplied. If more than one is supplied, they must be separated by logical operators (and or or). The natural evaluation order of the operators may be changed by surrounding with parentheses (e.g. (condition and condition)).

The remove clause is optional. It provides a topic selector expression to be evaluated by the server, representing the topics to be removed. If a remove clause is specified, the topic with the removal policy will only be removed if its path matches the selector expression. The selector must be surrounded by either double or single quotes.

The permissions that are applied at the time of removal are those defined by the roles of the principal that created the topic at the time of creation. The roles of that principal may therefore change before the removal with no effect, but if the permissions given to the roles change it may have an effect upon the final removal.

Only one occurrence of each of the following condition types may be included within the expression:

Condition Type Format Usage
time after time after absoluteTime Removal should occur after a specified absolute time. Absolute time may be specified as a number of milliseconds since the epoch (00:00:00 on 1 January 1970) or as a quoted date and time formatted in RFC_1123 date time format. Either single or double quotes may be used.
subscriptions less than subscriptions < n for forPeriod [after afterPeriod] Removal should occur when the topic has had less than the specified number (n) of subscriptions for a given period (forPeriod) of time. Optionally, an initial period (afterPeriod) may be specified by which to delay the initial checking of this condition. See below for period formats.
no updates for no updates for forPeriod [after afterPeriod] Removal should occur when the topic has had no updates for a given period (forPeriod) of time. Optionally, an initial period (afterPeriod) may be specified by which to delay the initial checking of this condition. See below for period formats.
no session has no session has "criteria" [for forPeriod] [after afterPeriod] Removal should occur when no sessions satisfy certain criteria. Optionally, the criteria can be required to be satisfied for a period of time (forPeriod). Optionally, an initial period (afterPeriod) can be specified to delay the initial check of the criteria. Session selection criteria are specified as defined in session filters and must be surrounded by single or double quotes. See below for period formats.
this session closes This is a shorthand form of 'no session has' that may be used to indicate that the topic is to be removed when the session that created it closes.

Time periods are specified as a number followed (with no intermediate space) by a single letter representing the time unit. The time unit may be 's' (seconds), 'm' (minutes), 'h' (hours) or 'd' (days). For example, 10 minutes would be specified as 10m.

If quotes or backslashes (\) are required within quoted values such as selectors or session criteria then they may be escaped by preceding with \. The convenience method PTDiffusionEscape is provided to escape such characters in a value.

The expression is validated only by the server and therefore if an invalid expression is specified it will be reported asynchronously as an error.

Examples

when time after 1518780068112

The topic will be removed when the date and time indicated by the specified number of milliseconds since the epoch has passed.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT"

The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" remove "*alpha/beta//"

The topic alpha/beta and all topics subordinate to it will be removed when the specified date and time has passed.

when subscriptions < 1 for 20m

The topic will be removed when it has had no subscriptions for a continuous period of 20 minutes.

when subscriptions < 2 for 20m after 1h

The topic will be removed when it has had less than 2 subscriptions for a continuous period of 20 minutes after one hour has passed since its creation.

when no updates for 3h

The topic will be removed when it has had no updates for a continuous period of 3 hours.

when no updates for 15m after 1d

The topic will be removed when it has had no updates for a continuous period of 15 minutes after one day has passed since its creation.

when this session closes

The topic will be removed when the session that created it is closed.

when no session has '$Principal is "Alice"'

The topic will be removed when there is no session with the principal 'Alice'.

when no session has '$Principal is "Alice"' for 10m

The topic will be removed when there have been no sessions with the principal 'Alice' for a continuous period of 10 minutes.

when no session has 'Department is "Accounts"' for 30m after 2h

The topic will be removed when there have been no sessions from the Accounts department for a continuous period of 30 minutes after 2 hours have passed since its creation.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" and subscriptions < 1 for 30m

The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed and the topic has had no subscriptions for a continuous period of 30 minutes after that time.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" and subscriptions < 2 for 10m after 1h

The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed and the topic has had less than 2 subscriptions for a continuous period of 10 minutes after that time plus one hour.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" or subscriptions < 2 for 10m after 1h

The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed or the topic has had less than 2 subscriptions for a continuous period of 10 minutes after one hour from its creation.

when time after "Tue, 3 Jun 2018 11:05:30 GMT" and (subscriptions < 2 for 10m after 1h or no updates for 20m)

The topic will be removed when the specified date and time has passed and either the topic has had less than 2 subscriptions for a continuous period of 10 minutes after that time plus one hour or it has had no updates for a continuous period of 20 minutes. Note that the parentheses are significant here as without them the topic would be removed if it had had no updates for 20 minutes regardless of the time and subscriptions clause.

Notes and restrictions on use

The 'after' time periods refer to the period since the topic was created or restored from persistence store after a server is restarted. They are designed as a 'grace' period after the topic comes into existence before the related condition starts to be evaluated. When not specified the conditions start to be evaluated as soon as the topic is created or restored.

The server will evaluate conditions on a periodic basis (every few seconds) so the exact removal time will not be precise for low periodic granularity.

The meaning of the 'for' period on 'no session has' conditions is subtly different from on other conditions. It does not guarantee that there has been no session satisfying the condition at some point between evaluations, only that when evaluated the given period of time has passed since it was last evaluated and found to have no matching sessions.

Subscriptions is the number of subscriptions to a topic, including those that occur through routing or slave topics. When monitoring across a cluster the 'subscriptions less than' condition is first checked on the server that owns the topic and if satisfied there then each cluster member is queried to check if the condition has also been satisfied there. The topic will only be removed if the total number of subscriptions across the cluster is less than that specified in the condition.

Automatic topic removal is supported for replicated topics. A 'subscriptions less than' condition for a replicated topic will be evaluated against the total number of subscriptions to the topic across the cluster. A 'no session has' condition will consider all sessions hosted across the cluster.

The 'subscriptions less than' condition does not count indirect subscriptions to a topic from sessions hosted on a secondary server connected using fan-out. Similarly the 'no session has' condition does not count sessions on secondary servers connected using fan-out.

Since
6.1
+ (NSString *) schemaPropertyKey

Key of the string topic property that specifies a schema which constrains topic values.

This property is only used by Diffusion recordV2 topics. The property value can be generated using the JSONData (PTDiffusionRecordV2Schema) property of a schema created using a PTDiffusionRecordV2SchemaBuilder.

Since
6.0
+ (NSString *) slaveMasterTopicPropertyKey

Key of string topic property that specifies the master topic path for a slave topic.

When creating a slave topic using a topic specification then this must be specified. For all other topic types it is ignored.

Since
6.0
+ (NSString *) tidyOnSubscribePropertyKey

Key of boolean topic property that sets the 'tidy on unsubscribe' option for a topic.

By default, if a session unsubscribes from a topic, it will receive any updates for that topic that were previously queued but not sent.

If this property is set to "true", when a client session unsubscribes from the topic, any updates for the topic that are still queued for the session are removed. There is a performance overhead to using this option as the client queue must be scanned to find topic updates to remove, however it may prove useful for preventing unwanted data being sent to client sessions.

Since
6.0
+ (NSString *) timeSeriesEventValueTypePropertyKey

Key of the string topic property that specifies the event data type for a time series topic.

The value is the type name of a data type.

See Also
PTDiffusionDataType
Since
6.0
+ (NSString *) timeSeriesRetainedRangePropertyKey

Key of the string topic property that specifies the range of events retained by a time series topic, as a time series range expression.

When a new event is added to the time series, older events that fall outside of the range are discarded.

If this property is not specified, a time series topic will retain the ten most recent events.

The value of this property is a time series range expression string composed of one or more constraint clauses. Constraints are combined to provide a range of events from the end of the time series.

limit constraint
A limit constraint specifies the maximum number of events from the end of the time series.
last clause
A last constraint specifies the maximum duration of events from the end of the time series. The duration is expressed as an integer followed by one of the following time units:
  • MS – milliseconds
  • S – seconds;
  • H – hours.

If a range expression contains multiple constraints, the constraint that selects the smallest range is used.

Property value Meaning
limit 5 The five most recent events
last 10s All events that are no more than ten seconds older than the latest event
last 10s limit 5 The five most recent events that are no more than ten seconds older than the latest event

Range expressions are not case sensitive: limit 5 last 10s is equivalent to LIMIT 5 LAST 10S.

Since
6.0
+ (NSString *) timeSeriesSubscriptionRangePropertyKey

Key of the string topic property that specifies the range of time series topic events to send to new subscribers, as a time series range expression.

This property value is a time series range expression, following the format used for timeSeriesEventValueTypePropertyKey.

If this property is not specified, new subscribers will be sent the latest event if delta streams are enabled and no events if delta streams are disabled.

Since
6.0
+ (NSString *) truePropertyValue

Constant string representing the value to be used for boolean properties to specify "true".

Since
5.9
+ (NSString *) validateValuesPropertyKey

Key of boolean topic property indicating whether a topic should validate inbound values.

By default, the server does not validate received values before sending them on to clients. Invalid or corrupt values will be stored in the topic and passed on to clients. If this property is set to "true", the server will perform additional validation on values to check that it is a valid instance of the data type, and if it is not then it will return an error to the updater and not update the topic.

If this value is not set (or set to something other than "true"), no server validation of inbound values is performed. This is the recommended setting as there is a performance overhead to validation and a client using a value updater could not send invalid values anyway.

Since
5.9

Property Documentation

- (NSDictionary<NSString *, NSString *>*) properties
readnonatomicassign

The topic properties. May be empty.

Since
5.9
- (PTDiffusionTopicType) type
readnonatomicassign

The type of topic.

Since
5.9