Evaluate benefits of using generics for realtime

[bitionaire]

[mateo-ivc]

Using generics instead of interfaces as message data

What will change: realtime/boards.go:

• For every event create a struct that reflects the data structure of the event Example:

{
 "type": "NOTES_UPDATED",
  "data": [
    {
      "author": "77a83f9e-24ac-423e-b640-ec66be080baa",
      "id": "90cb33cf-16e5-42f5-b6da-8c7b7b338914",
      "position": {
        "column": "404ac4c5-c972-446f-b562-adf3dfc2bc11",
        "rank": 0,
        "stack": null
      },
      "text": "test"
    }
  ]
}

Translates to this struct:

type BoardEventNotesUpdated struct {
	author   uuid.UUID
	id       uuid.UUID
	position struct {
		column uuid.UUID
		rank   int
		stack  bool
	}
	text string
}

type BoardEvent[T BoardEventNotesUpdated | EventTypeB | ...] struct {
	eventType BoardEventType
	data      T
}

Or use the already existing dto's

realtime/boards.go BroadcastToBoard needs to be a generic method. This leads to making the broker also generic since parameterized methods are not allowed.

type DataType interface {
  dto.NoteCreateRequest | dto.NoteUpdateRequest | ...
}

func (b *Broker[T]) BroadcastToBoard(boardID uuid.UUID, msg BoardEventTest[T]) error {
  logger.Get().Debugw("broadcasting to board", "board", boardID, "msg", msg.Type)
  return b.con.Publish(boardsSubject(boardID), msg)
}

services/...:

• If BroadcastToBoard should be a generic method -> structs that have a realtime.broker field must be generic too

type Broker[T DataType] struct {
	con Client
}

A different solution: We could also change the broadcast methods to functions. This way we can easily add generics. Since our service layers have a broker connection it's also easy to pass on the connection as parameter instead of using an implicit call.

// realtime/bords.go
func BroadcastToBoard(boardID uuid.UUID, b *Broker, msg BoardEvent) error {
	logger.Get().Debugw("broadcasting to board", "board", boardID, "msg", msg.Type)
	return b.con.Publish(boardsSubject(boardID), msg)
}

// services/notes.go
func (s *NoteService) UpdatedNotes(board uuid.UUID, notes []database.Note) {
	eventNotes := make([]dto.Note, len(notes))
	for index, note := range notes {
		eventNotes[index] = *new(dto.Note).From(note)
	}

	err := realtime.BroadcastToBoard(board, s.realtime, realtime.BoardEvent{
		Type: realtime.BoardEventNotesUpdated,
		Data: eventNotes,
	})
	if err != nil {
		logger.Get().Errorw("unable to broadcast updated notes", "err", err)
	}
}

How would we benifit:

• Better error handling and parsing
• type safety

What problems would we encounter:

• Methods are not allowed have type parameters
• More boilerplate code (not all events have a dto format / functions to parse data to struct)

Conclusion:

Using generics for the realtime messages would be a nice addition, since it simplifies the error handling and parsing. The problem here is that go doesn’t allow parameterized methods. To fix this issue we would have to make the Broker generic

But this also forces all other structures that have a realtime.broker field to be generic (all services)

Another solution would be to make the BroadcastToBoard method a function.

But do we really need generic realtime messages? The broker only sends messages, but never receives any, which means that if implemented correctly there is no way to mess up a message and type safety isn't necessary

The only thing that would change is that the data is not passed as type interface{} when sending, but it forces to parse the data into a structure and then pass it on. For most messages we already do that and in some cases like delete it would lead to more boilerplate code because instead of just passing the ID we would have to parse the ID into a structure first and then send it, which seems like an unnecessary step.

This leads me to the conclusion that we don’t need generics for our realtime messages. This only makes our code more complex leading to the same result.