Lifecycle

A pattern for safe usage of resources. Supports monadic operations so usage can be composed.

It's similar to:

• the using statement in C#
• the try-with-resources statement introduced in Java JDK 7

But also acts as a Factory for instantiating initialized instances of a type.

Lifecycle was born of frustration, aiming to help your codebase tidy up all used resources. It's a nice try / finally wrapper!

A resource is anything that requires:

• Some intialization operations
• And/or some tear-down operations

to be performed between use. For example, a file:

• Must be opened before any read/write operations are performed
• Any pending writes should be flushed, and the file handle returned to the OS after use

SBT settings

Stable:

"com.itv" %% "lifecycle" % "0.3"

(Contrived) Example

Meet bob, fred, and barry.

They each have a secret, but they'll only reveal it to you if you say hello first. After you're done using them, you should say goodbye - it'd be pretty rude not to.

 case class Person(name: String, private val secret: String) {
     private var readyToTellSecret = false

     def hello(): Unit = {
         readyToTellSecret = true
         println("Said hello to " + name)
     }

     def revealSecret(): String = {
         require(readyToTellSecret, s"it's rude to ask $name a secret before you've said hello")
         secret
     }

     def goodbye(): Unit = {
         readyToTellSecret = false
         println("Said goodbye to " + name)
     }
 }

scala> val bob = Person("Bob", secret = "I hate Barry")
bob: Person = Person(Bob,I hate Barry)

scala> val fred = Person("Fred", secret = "I hate Barry")
fred: Person = Person(Fred,I hate Barry)

scala> val barry = Person("Barry", secret = "I'm lonely")
barry: Person = Person(Barry,I'm lonely)

bob, fred and barry aren't going to win any prizes for lack of side-effects, but you've got to expect the unexpected when dealing with people.

You're gonna have a bad time if you ask bob his secret before saying hello:

scala> bob.revealSecret()
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: requirement failed: it's rude to ask Bob a secret before you've said hello
  at scala.Predef$.require(Predef.scala:224)
  at Person.revealSecret(<console>:21)
  ... 382 elided

We always need to guarantee we interact with a Person in this manner:

scala> bob.hello()
Said hello to Bob

scala> bob.revealSecret()
res2: String = I hate Barry

scala> bob.goodbye()
Said goodbye to Bob

Defining a Lifecycle

Here's a Lifecycle that performs all the pleaseantries before/after using a Person.

scala> import com.itv.lifecycle._
import com.itv.lifecycle._

scala> def personInteraction(person: Person): Lifecycle[Person] =
     |     new VanillaLifecycle[Person] {
     |         override def start(): Person = {
     |             person.hello()
     |             person
     |         }
     |
     |         override def shutdown(instance: Person): Unit =
     |             person.goodbye()
     |     }
personInteraction: (person: Person)com.itv.lifecycle.Lifecycle[Person]

start produces an initialized instance of a Person. shutdown should always be performed after using a Person: even if the interaction caused an exception to be thrown.

Note: in this example we perform the start operations on a pre-instantiated Person: but it's perfectly valid to instantiate the resource within the start method of a Lifecycle.

Interacting with a single person

We want to grab the secret of an individual Person, and print it to stdout.

scala> def announceSecret(person: Person) = {
     |     val secret: String = Lifecycle.using(personInteraction(person)) { greetedPerson =>
     |         println("Asking secret")
     |         greetedPerson.revealSecret()
     |     }
     |
     |     println(s"${person.name}'s secret is '$secret'")
     | }
announceSecret: (person: Person)Unit

scala> announceSecret(bob)
Said hello to Bob
Asking secret
Said goodbye to Bob
Bob's secret is 'I hate Barry'

scala> announceSecret(fred)
Said hello to Fred
Asking secret
Said goodbye to Fred
Fred's secret is 'I hate Barry'

scala> announceSecret(barry)
Said hello to Barry
Asking secret
Said goodbye to Barry
Barry's secret is 'I'm lonely'

We have used Lifecycle.using to interact safely with a given Lifecycle[Person]:

def using[T, S](lifecycle: Lifecycle[T])(block: T => S): S

The using method:

• Gets an instance of T by using the start method of the given Lifecycle
• Uses a block of code you provide to produce an S
• Guarantees the shutdown method of the given Lifecycle is called with the T instance: even if the block of code you provided threw an exception
• Returns the S your block of code produced

The code block we called Lifecycle.using with is pretty tame: it's unlikely to throw an exception.

What if there was a strong chance our code block will fail in an unexpected manner? We should still be courteous and ensure we say goodbye to the Person we're interacting with.

Let's write a method called judgeThenAnnounce. This method will also interact with an individual Person. It will judge their secret: and throw an exception if they're being unkind. Otherwise it will return the secret without exception.

scala> def judgeThenAnnounce(person: Person) = {
     |     val secret: String = Lifecycle.using(personInteraction(person)) { greetedPerson =>
     |         println("Asking secret")
     |         val revealedSecret: String = greetedPerson.revealSecret()
     |
     |         if (revealedSecret contains "hate")
     |             throw new IllegalStateException(s"I'm not going to repeat what ${greetedPerson.name} just said to me.")
     |         else
     |             revealedSecret
     |     }
     |
     |     println(s"${person.name}'s secret is '$secret'")
     | }
judgeThenAnnounce: (person: Person)Unit

scala> judgeThenAnnounce(bob)
Said hello to Bob
Asking secret
Said goodbye to Bob
java.lang.IllegalStateException: I'm not going to repeat what Bob just said to me.
  at $anonfun$1.apply(<console>:24)
  at $anonfun$1.apply(<console>:19)
  at com.itv.lifecycle.Lifecycle$.using(Lifecycle.scala:51)
  at .judgeThenAnnounce(<console>:19)
  ... 746 elided

scala> judgeThenAnnounce(fred)
Said hello to Fred
Asking secret
Said goodbye to Fred
java.lang.IllegalStateException: I'm not going to repeat what Fred just said to me.
  at $anonfun$1.apply(<console>:24)
  at $anonfun$1.apply(<console>:19)
  at com.itv.lifecycle.Lifecycle$.using(Lifecycle.scala:51)
  at .judgeThenAnnounce(<console>:19)
  ... 758 elided

scala> judgeThenAnnounce(barry)
Said hello to Barry
Asking secret
Said goodbye to Barry
Barry's secret is 'I'm lonely'

Looks good eh? Even though our code block blew up a couple of times due to the extreme views of bob and fred, we were courteous to each Person: always saying hello and goodbye.

Interacting with multiple people

Let's extend this example further, and interact with multiple greeted People at the same time.

We will say a Person is friends with another Person if they both share the same secret.

scala> def areFriends(personA: Person, personB: Person): Boolean = {
     |     val interrogation = for {
     |         a <- personInteraction(personA)
     |         b <- personInteraction(personB)
     |     }
     |         yield (a.revealSecret(), b.revealSecret())
     |
     |     Lifecycle.using(interrogation) {
     |         case (secretA, secretB) =>
     |             secretA == secretB
     |     }
     | }
areFriends: (personA: Person, personB: Person)Boolean

scala> areFriends(bob, fred)
Said hello to Bob
Said hello to Fred
Said goodbye to Fred
Said goodbye to Bob
res10: Boolean = true

scala> areFriends(bob, barry)
Said hello to Bob
Said hello to Barry
Said goodbye to Barry
Said goodbye to Bob
res11: Boolean = false

scala> areFriends(fred, barry)
Said hello to Fred
Said hello to Barry
Said goodbye to Barry
Said goodbye to Fred
res12: Boolean = false

scala> areFriends(barry, barry)
Said hello to Barry
Said hello to Barry
Said goodbye to Barry
Said goodbye to Barry
res13: Boolean = true

We can map and flatMap a Lifeycle just like any other container. We get the same resource safety guarantees:

scala> personInteraction(bob).map(_.revealSecret().toUpperCase).foreach(println)
Said hello to Bob
I HATE BARRY
Said goodbye to Bob

Note: in this example we're only interacting with Person instances, this is not a limitation, you can combine Lifecycle's of different intance types in the exact same manner.

Long running Lifecycles

Our typical usage is for our entire program to be defined within a single Lifeycle.

scala> trait HttpServer {
     |     def stop(): Unit = println("stopped")
     | }
defined trait HttpServer

scala> val httpServerLifecycle: Lifecycle[HttpServer] =
     |     new VanillaLifecycle[HttpServer] {
     |         override def start: HttpServer = {
     |             val server: HttpServer = new HttpServer {}
     |             /**
     |             Construct some HTTP server, bind it to a port and establish request routes
     |             **/
     |             println("started")
     |             server
     |         }
     |         
     |         override def shutdown(instance: HttpServer) =
     |             instance.stop()
     |     }
httpServerLifecycle: com.itv.lifecycle.Lifecycle[HttpServer] = $anon$1@6cd81f3f

Lifecycle has a method that will help with this: runUntilJvmShutdown.

httpServerLifecycle.runUntilJvmShutdown

This will start an instance using the Lifecycle, and register the shutdown method to be run on the instance when the JVM exits.