Using Rails Event Store with Protobuf

Using RES with Protobuf or another binary serialization protocol might be a good idea if you want to share your events' data with another applications and micro-services.

Installation

Add RES and protobuf to your app's Gemfile

gem "google-protobuf"
gem "protobuf_nested_struct"
gem "rails_event_store"

Configure protobuf mapper

Rails.application.configure do
  config.to_prepare do
    Rails.configuration.event_store = RailsEventStore::Client.new(mapper: RubyEventStore::Mappers::Protobuf.new)
  end
end

Defining events

Define your events in protobuf file format i.e.: events.proto3

syntax = "proto3";
package my_app;

message OrderPlaced {
  string order_id = 1;
  int32 customer_id = 2;
}

and generate the Ruby classes:

# Generated by the protocol buffer compiler.  DO NOT EDIT!
# source: events.proto3

require "google/protobuf"

Google::Protobuf::DescriptorPool.generated_pool.build do
  add_message "my_app.OrderPlaced" do
    optional :order_id, :string, 1
    optional :customer_id, :int32, 2
  end
end

module MyApp
  OrderPlaced = Google::Protobuf::DescriptorPool.generated_pool.lookup("my_app.OrderPlaced").msgclass
end

Publishing

event_store = Rails.configuration.event_store

event = RubyEventStore::Proto.new(data: MyApp::OrderPlaced.new(order_id: "K3THNX9", customer_id: 123))
event_store.publish(event, stream_name: "Order-K3THNX9")

Retrieving

event = client.read.stream("test").last

Subscribing

Sync handlers

event_store.subscribe(->(ev) {  }, to: [MyApp::OrderPlaced.descriptor.name])

Async handlers

class SendOrderEmailHandler < ActiveJob::Base
  self.queue_adapter = :inline

  def perform(payload)
    event = event_store.deserialize(payload)
    # do something
  end

  private

  def event_store
    Rails.configuration.event_store
  end
end

event_store.subscribe(SendOrderEmailHandler, to: [MyApp::OrderPlaced.descriptor.name])