Burlesque

Burlesque is a message processing queue writen in Go. It exposes queues using the pub/sub HTTP API.

The general purpose of this queue is to provide tool for inter-process comutication with a memory efficient persisted storage for messages (usually a delayed job description serialized in JSON) published by the application server and later retrieved by other application workers.

Subscription is done using long polling technique. When application worker subscribes to a queue which is empty at the moment, connection is kept open until another client publishes a message to this queue, or the first client disconnects. If there is a message in the queue it will be removed from the queue and returned to the client.

Burlesque uses Kyoto Cabinet to store messages, which is a powerfull DIY database. Usage of Kyoto Cabinet is thoroughly described in the storage section of this document.

Contents

• Installation
  • Building on OSX
• Starting
• Storage
  • In-memory databases
  • Persistent databases
  • Tuning parameters
  • Support of tuning parameters by databases
• What storage to choose
  • Production
  • Development
• API
  • Publish
  • Subscribe
  • Status
  • Debug

Installation

Download and extract the latest release. That's it.

Building on OSX

First install Homebrew. Using Homebrew install Go language compiler and tools. Then install Kyoto Cabinet library.

brew install go
brew install kyoto-cabinet
go get github.com/KosyanMedia/burlesque

Starting

Use the following arguments to the burlesque executable:

Argument	Description	Defaults
-storage	Kyoto Cabinet storage path (e.g. storage.kch#msiz=524288000)	-
-environment	Process environment: development or production	development
-port	Server HTTP port	4401
-rollbar	Rollbar token

Example

wget -O burlesque.zip https://github.com/KosyanMedia/burlesque/archive/1.0.0.zip
unzip burlesque.zip
./burlesque

By default Burlesque starts on port 4401 in development mode and uses in-memory database ProtoHashDB.

Storage

-storage argument defines a way the data will be stored into a database. You can read more on Kyoto Cabinet database types here.

In-memory databases

If you need a temporary in-memory storage use the following symbols as the -storage value:

Value	Database Type
-	ProtoHashDB Prototype hash database. On-memory database implemented with std::unorderd_map
+	ProtoTreeDB Prototype tree database. On-memory database implemented with std::map
:	StashDB Stash database. On-memory database saving memory
*	CacheDB Cache hash database. On-memory database featuring LRU deletion
%	GrassDB Cache tree database. On-memory database of B+ tree: cache with order

Example: -

Persistent databases

In order to use a persistent database use the path to the database file (or directory) as the -storage argument value. File extension in the database path defines the type of the database created.

File Extension	Database Type
kch	HashDB File hash database. File database of hash table: typical DBM
kct	TreeDB File tree database. File database of B+ tree: DBM with order
kcd	DirDB Directory hash database. Respective files in a directory of the file system
kcf	ForestDB Directory tree database. Directory database of B+ tree: huge DBM with order
kcx	TextDB Plain text database. Emulation to handle a plain text file as a database

Example: /path/to/my/storage.kch

Tuning parameters

In addition to defining database type you can also add tuning parameters to the -storage argument. Tuning parameters are separated by the # symbol, parameters' name and value are separated by the = symbol.

The table below describes tuning parameters.

Parameter	Description
apow	Power of the alignment of record size
bnum	Base hash table size (number of buckets of the hash table)
capcnt	Capacity limit by the number of records (#capcnt=10000 means "keep in memory 10,000 records maximum)
capsiz	Capacity limit by the size of records (#capsiz=536870912 means "keep in memory all the records that fit into 512 megabytes)
dfunit	Unit step number of auto defragmentation
fpow	Power of the capacity of the free block pool
log	Path to the log file. Use - for the STDOUT, or + for the STDERR
logkinds	Kinds of logged messages. The value can be debug, info, warn or error
logpx	Prefix of each log message
msiz	Expected database memory usage
opts	Additional options: s, l and c (can be specified together, e.g lc). s is for "small" and reduces the width of record addressing from 6 bytes to 4 bytes. As the result, the footprint for each record is reduced from 16 bytes to 12 bytes. However, it limits the maximum size of the database file up to 16GB. l is for "linear" and changes the data structure of the collision chain of hash table from binary tree to linear linked list. c enables compression of the record values. If the value is bigger than 1KB compression is effective.
pccap	Capacity size of the page cache
psiz	Page size
rcomp	Comparator used to compare key names. lex for the lexical comparator, dec for the decimal comparator, lexdesc for the lexical descending comparator, or decdesc for the decimal descending comparator
zcomp	Compression library: zlib for the ZLIB raw compressor, def for the ZLIB deflate compressor, gz for the ZLIB gzip compressor, lzo for the LZO compressor, lzma for the LZMA compressor, or arc for the Arcfour cipher
zkey	Cipher keyword used with compression

Example: storage.kch#opts=c#zcomp=gz#msiz=524288000

Support of tuning parameters by databases

The table below describes support of these parameters by the in-memory database types.

Parameter	ProtoHashDB	ProtoTreeDB	StashDB	CacheDB	GrassDB
bnum	—	—	Yes	Yes	Yes
capcnt	—	—	—	Yes	—
capsiz	—	—	—	Yes	—
log	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
logkinds	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
logpx	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
opts	—	—	—	Yes	Yes
pccap	—	—	—	—	Yes
psiz	—	—	—	—	Yes
rcomp	—	—	—	—	Yes
zcomp	—	—	—	Yes	Yes
zkey	—	—	—	Yes	Yes

The table below describes support of these parameters by the persistent database types.

Parameter	HashDB	TreeDB	DirDB	ForestDB	TextDB
apow	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
bnum	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
dfunit	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
fpow	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
log	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
logkinds	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
logpx	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
msiz	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
opts	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	—
pccap	—	Yes	—	Yes	—
psiz	—	Yes	—	Yes	—
rcomp	—	Yes	—	Yes	—
zcomp	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	—
zkey	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	—

What storage to choose

Production

For production usage it is strongly recommended to choose a persistent database. Internally Burlesque uses Kyoto Cabinet as a persisted hash-table, so using HashDB would be a smart choise.

If the average message size expected to be more than 1KB then compression should be considered as an option. To enable compression you need to pass opts tuning parameter to the database path with value c (#opts=c), you also need to define compression algorithm using the zcomp parameter (e.g #zcomp=gz).

You can define maximum memory limit; when the limit is reached new records are swapped to disk. Memory limit is defined by passing msiz parameter with value in bytes (e.g #msiz=524288000)

So, to use a persisted hash database with enabled compression and 512MB memory limit the -storage argument value is storage.kch#opts=c#zcomp=gz#msiz=524288000.

Further tuning

If queues are kept empty all at relatively small size, bnum option might be considered (e.g #bnum=1000)

Development

If development database don't need to be persisted consider using ProtoHashDB (which locks the whole table), StashDB (locks record) or CacheDB (locks record using a mutex). By default ProtoHashDB is used.

API

All endpoints exposed by the API are described below.

Publish

Publishes a message to the given queue. If there is a connection waiting to recieve a message from this queue, the message would be transfered directly to the awaiting connection.

Publication can be done via both GET and POST methods. To publish a message via GET method use the queue argument to pass queue name and the msg argument to pass message body. To publish a message via POST method pass message body via request body instead of the msg argument.

Server will respond with OK message.

Example

curl '127.0.0.1:4401/publish?queue=urgent' -d 'Process this message as soon as possible!'

Response

OK

Subscribe

Tries to fetch a message from one of the queues given. If there is a message at least in one of these queues, the message will be removed from the queue and returned as response body. The name of the queue from which the message was taken from will be provided inside a Queue response header.

Subscription is always done via GET method. To fetch a message from a queue use the name of the queue as the queues argument value. Multiple queue names could be passed separated with the , (quote) character.

Example

curl '127.0.0.1:4401/subscribe?queues=urgent,someday'

Response

Process this message as soon as possible!

Status

Displays information about the queues, their messages and current subscriptions encoded in JSON format.

Example

curl 127.0.0.1:4401/status

Response

{
    "urgent": {
        "messages": 0,
        "subscriptions": 0
    },
    "someday": {
        "messages": 0,
        "subscriptions": 0
    }
}

Debug

Displays debug information about the queue process. Currenty displays the number of goroutines only.

Example

curl 127.0.0.1:4401/debug

Response

{
    "goroutines": 13
}