Rails Event Store

Subscribing to events

To subscribe a handler to events in Rails Event Store you need to use #subscribe method on RailsEventStore::Client

Depending on where you decided to keep the configuration that would usually be in config/application.rb or config/initializers/rails_event_store.rb or one of environment files (config/environments/*.rb).

# config/application.rb
module YourAppName
  class Application < Rails::Application
    config.to_prepare do
      Rails.configuration.event_store = event_store = RailsEventStore::Client.new
      event_store.subscribe(OrderNotifier.new, to: [OrderCancelled])
    end
  end
end

Synchronous handlers

To subscribe to events publication, you can use #subscribe method. It accepts two arguments:

  • subscriber (an event handler) - which can be a function-like object. That means it needs to respond to the #call method. This way both normal objects and lambda expressions are supported. A block of code can also be passed as a subscriber (&subscriber)
  • to: - which is an array of event types. Your subscriber gets notified only when events of types listed here are be published.

An example usage with the object event handler:

class InvoiceReadModel
  def call(event)
    # Process an event here.
  end
end

subscriber = InvoiceReadModel.new
event_store.subscribe(subscriber, to: [InvoiceCreated, InvoiceUpdated])

You can use Proc objects or lambdas in 3 ways:

event_store.subscribe(to: [InvoicePrinted]) do |event|
  # Process an event here...
end

invoice_read_model = ->(event) do
  # Process an event here...
end

event_store.subscribe(invoice_read_model, to: [InvoiceCreated, InvoiceUpdated])

send_invoice_email =
  Proc.new do |event|
    # Process an event here...
  end

event_store.subscribe(send_invoice_email, to: [InvoiceAccepted])

Handling exceptions

If your synchronous handlers raise an exception, it might bubble up and cause problems such as reverting a transaction.

class SyncHandler
  def call(event)
    # ...
    raise StandardError, "ups, something went wrong"
  end
end

event_store.subscribe(SyncHandler.new, to: [OrderPlaced])

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
  event_store.publish(OrderPlaced.new)
  # sync handlers executed here
  # exception will bubble up
  # and rollback the transaction
end

If you don't want your event handlers to cause such potential problems, just swallow the exceptions and send them to your exception tracker.

class SyncHandler
  def call(event)
    # ...
  rescue => e
    ExceptionTracker.notify(e)
  end
end

Fresh handler state

If you subscribe an instance of a class (SyncHandler.new), the same object is going to be called with new events.

class SyncHandler
  def call(event); end
end

handler = SyncHandler.new
event_store.subscribe(handler, to: [OrderPlaced])

event_store.publish(OrderPlaced.new)
# handler is called

event_store.publish(OrderPlaced.new)
# handler is called again

This can be problematic, especially if you use memoization (the @ivar ||= ... pattern).

class SyncHandler
  def call(event)
    Rails.logger.warn("Order placed by #{customer_id(event)}")
    Stats.increase("orders-#{customer_id(event)}", 1)
  end

  private

  def customer_id(event)
    @customer_id ||= event.data.fetch(:customer_id)
  end
end

because subsequent events would read the same @customer_id which was memoized when the handler was processing a previous event. To avoid that problem, you can subscribe a class (SyncHandler), and a new instance of that class will be created for every published event.

event_store.subscribe(SyncHandler, to: [OrderPlaced])

event_store.publish(OrderPlaced.new(data: { customer_id: 2 }))
# SyncHandler.new.call is invoked (instance A)

event_store.publish(OrderPlaced.new(data: { customer_id: 3 }))
# SyncHandler.new.call is invoked (instance B)

When are sync handlers executed?

Those handlers are executed immediately after events are stored in the DB.

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
  order = Order.new(...).save!
  event_store.publish(
    OrderPlaced.new(data:{order_id: order.id}),
    stream_name: "Order-#{order.id}"
  )
  # Sync handlers executed here
end

Subscribe for all event types

You can also subscribe for all event types at once. It is especially useful for logging or debugging events. Use subscribe_to_all_events(subsriber1, &subscriber2) method for that.

class EventsLogger
  def initialize(logger)
    @logger = logger
  end

  def call(event)
    logger.info("#{event.event_type} published. Data: #{event.data.inspect}")
  end

  private

  attr_reader :logger
end

event_store.subscribe_to_all_events(EventsLogger.new(Rails.logger))
event_store.subscribe_to_all_events { |event| puts event.inspect }

Temporary subscriptions

Rails Event Store supports temporary (dynamic, one-shot) subscriptions for events. The subscriber gets unsubscribed automatically at the end of the provided block.

class CountImportResults
  def initialize()
    @ok = 0
    @error = 0
  end

  def call(event)
    case event
    when ProductImported
      @ok += 1
    when ProductImportFailed
      @error += 1
    else
      raise ArgumentError
    end
  end
end

class Import
  def run(file)
    CSV.parse(file) do |row|
      if row_imported(row)
        event_store.publish(ProductImported.new(...))
      else
        event_store.publish(ProductImportFailed.new(...))
      end
    end
  end
end

results = CountImportResults.new
event_types = [ProductImported, ProductImportFailed]
event_store.within do
  Import.new.run(file)
end.subscribe(results, to: event_types).call

This can be useful also in controllers:

class OperationsController < ApplicationController
  def create
    event_store
      .within { Operation.new.run(file) }
      .subscribe(to: [OperationSucceeded]) { redirect_to results_index_path }
      .subscribe(to: [OperationFailed]) { render :new }
      .call
  end
end

Temporarily subscribing to all events is also supported.

event_store
  .within { Import.new.run(file) }
  .subscribe_to_all_events(EventsLogger)
  .subscribe_to_all_events { |event| puts event.inspect }
  .call

You start the temporary subscription by providing a block within which the subscriptions will be active. Then you can chain subscribe and subscribe_to_all_events as many times as you want to register temporary subscribers. When you are ready call call to evaluate the provided block with the temporary subscriptions.

Async handlers

It's possible to also subscribe asynchronous handlers to events. To enqueue asynchronous handlers as background jobs scheduler class is needed. RailsEventStore provides implementation of a scheduler for ActiveJob library. In that case async handlers are just background jobs implemented as:

class SendOrderEmail < ActiveJob::Base
  def perform(payload)
    event = event_store.deserialize(payload.symbolize_keys)
    email = event.data.fetch(:customer_email)
    OrderMailer.notify_customer(email).deliver_now!
  end

  private

  def event_store
    Rails.configuration.event_store
  end
end

event_store = RailsEventStore::Client.new
event_store.subscribe(SendOrderEmail, to: [OrderPlaced])

You can also use RailsEventStore::AsyncHandler module that will deserialize the event for you:

class SendOrderEmail < ActiveJob::Base
  prepend RailsEventStore::AsyncHandler

  def perform(event)
    email = event.data.fetch(:customer_email)
    OrderMailer.notify_customer(email).deliver_now!
  end
end

event_store = RailsEventStore::Client.new
event_store.subscribe(SendOrderEmail, to: [OrderPlaced])

If you'd like to rely solely on Sidekiq, you can use the ruby_event_store-sidekiq_scheduler gem instead.

Custom Scheduler

Alternatively you could implement your own, custom scheduler. It has to respond to the call and verify methods. The sample CustomScheduler could be implemented as:

class CustomScheduler
  # method doing actual schedule
  def call(klass, serialized_record)
    klass.perform_async(serialized_record.to_h)
  end

  # method which is checking whether given subscriber is correct for this scheduler
  def verify(subscriber)
    Class === subscriber && subscriber.respond_to?(:perform_async)
  end
end

You can also use our scheduler_lint for more confidence that your scheduler is written correctly.

Then you have to initialize RailsEventStore::Client using asynchronous dispatcher with your custom scheduler:

event_store =
  RailsEventStore::Client.new(
    dispatcher: RailsEventStore::AfterCommitAsyncDispatcher.new(scheduler: CustomScheduler.new),
  )

Often you will want to be able to specify both asynchronous and synchronous dispatchers. In that case, you can use ComposedDispatcher, which accepts arbitrary number of dispatchers and dispatch the event to the first subscriber which is accepted (by verify method) by the dispatcher. This is also our default configuration in RailsEventStore.

event_store =
  RailsEventStore::Client.new(
    dispatcher:
      RubyEventStore::ComposedDispatcher.new(
        RailsEventStore::AfterCommitAsyncDispatcher.new(scheduler: CustomScheduler.new), # our asynchronous dispatcher, which expects that subscriber respond to `perform_async` method
        RubyEventStore::Dispatcher.new, # regular synchronous dispatcher
      ),
  )

When are async handlers scheduled?

The default behaviour and examples above use RubyEventStore::AfterCommitAsyncDispatcher, which schedule handlers after the transaction is committed.

class SendOrderEmail < ActiveJob::Base
  prepend RailsEventStore::AsyncHandler

  def perform(event)
    email = event.data.fetch(:customer_email)
    OrderMailer.notify_customer(email).deliver_now!
  end
end

event_store = RailsEventStore::Client.new
event_store.subscribe(SendOrderEmail, to: [OrderPlaced])

# ...

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
  order = Order.new(...).save!
  event_store.publish(
    OrderPlaced.new(data:{order_id: order.id}),
    stream_name: "Order-#{order.id}"
  )
end
# Async handlers such as SendOrderEmail scheduled here, after transaction is committed

Scheduling async handlers immediately

You can configure your dispatcher slightly different, to schedule async handlers immediately after events are stored in the database. Note the usage of RubyEventStore::ImmediateAsyncDispatcher instead of RailsEventStore::AfterCommitAsyncDispatcher.

class SendOrderEmail < ActiveJob::Base
  def perform(event)
    email = event.data.fetch(:customer_email)
    OrderMailer.notify_customer(email).deliver_now!
  end
end

event_store = RailsEventStore::Client.new(
  dispatcher: RubyEventStore::ComposedDispatcher.new(
    RailsEventStore::ImmediateAsyncDispatcher.new(scheduler: RailsEventStore::ActiveJobScheduler.new),
    RubyEventStore::Dispatcher.new
  )
)

event_store.subscribe(SendOrderEmail, to: [OrderPlaced])

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
  order = Order.new(...).save!
  event_store.publish(
    OrderPlaced.new(data:{order_id: order.id}),
    stream_name: "Order-#{order.id}"
  )
  # Async handlers such as SendOrderEmail scheduled here
end

It means that when your ActiveJob adapter (such as sidekiq or resque) is using non-SQL store your handler might get called before the whole transaction is committed or when the transaction was rolled-back.

Removing subscriptions

When you define a new subscription by subscribe method execution it will return a lambda that allows to remove defined subscription.

Rails.configuration.event_store = event_store = RailsEventStore::Client.new
unsubscribe = event_store.subscribe(OrderNotifier.new, to: [OrderCancelled])
# ...and then when subscription is no longer needed
unsubscribe.call

Unsubscribe lambda will remove all subscriptions defined by subscribe method, when you defined subscription as:

unsubscribe = event_store.subscribe(InvoiceReadModel.new, to: [InvoiceCreated, InvoiceUpdated])

and then execute returned lambda both subscriptions will be removed.

It you need temporary subscription to be defined read more here.