Terminology

The Eventing Service calls the following entry points or JavaScript functions on events (mutations or fired timers).

The persistent state of an Eventing Function is captured in the below external elements, and all states that appears on the execution stack are ephemeral

Couchbase does not store every version of a document permanently. Hence, when a handler receives the mutation history of documents from the Eventing source, it sees a truncated history of each document. However, the final state of a document is always present in all such histories (as the current state is always available in the database).

Similarly, the KV data engine deduplicates multiple mutations made to any individual document rapidly in succession, to ensure highest possible performance. So, when a document mutates rapidly, handlers may not see all intermediate states, but in all cases, will see the final state of the document.

An abbreviation of convenience of the term Potentially Recursive Mutation. When a handler manipulates documents in a keyspace that also serves as the source of mutations to this or any other handler, a write originated by a handler will cause a mutation to be seen by itself or another handler. These are called potentially recursive mutations.

JSON does not have specialized types for integral and floating-point numbers. So many JavaScript runtimes utilize floating-point numbers to hold JSON numbers. This means that JavaScript numbers have a very large range but lesser precision when compared to traditional integers of the same size.

v8 utilizes 64-bit floating-point numbers which yields a 53-bit precision. So, only integers up to +/- 253 can safely be handled in Eventing JavaScript. When handling very large integers, that is, numbers having 15 or more digits, one should utilize JavaScript BigInt types to safely handle them. The exact numbers where integral precision is lost is defined by JavaScript in the constants Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER and Number.MIN_SAFE_INTEGER.

Often, such large integers are really only tokens, and it is not necessary to perform arithmetic on them, and only comparison for equality is necessary. Examples of this in Eventing are CAS values generated by Advanced Bucket Operations, or the result of the crc64() function. In these cases, it is appropriate to hold these large integers as strings, as it ensures full fidelity while retaining the ability to do equality comparisons.

Feed Boundary is a time or progress milestone used during an Eventing Function configuration. The Feed Boundary is a persistent setting in the Function’s definition and can only be set or altered when a Function is created, undeployed or paused.

Based on the Feed Boundary setting, when an Eventing Function is deployed it can either process all data mutations available in the cluster (Everything) or process only future data mutations (From now) that occur post deployment. However, once deployed you may Pause/Resume an Eventing Function in this case; the Feed Boundary is a checkpoint of the Function’s actual progress such that no mutations or timers are reprocessed or lost.

A bucket.scope combination is used for identifying functions belonging to the same group.

Only the "Eventing Full Admin" role and also the "Full Admin" role can set the bucket.scope to *.*; all other Eventing non-privileged users need to define a Function Scope for their Eventing functions that references an existing resource of bucket.scope. This provides role based isolation of Eventing functions between non-privileged users

Typically you should set Function Scope to the bucket.scope that holds the collection that is the source of your mutations to your Eventing Function. This best practice ensures that you *do not* inadvertently cause an Eventing Function to undeploy by removing a Function Scope pointing to a resource that is not required for the function to run.

A keyspace is a fully qualified path to a collection of the form "bucket-name.scope-name.collection-name". For backward compatibility a keyspace can also be of the form "bucket-name._default._default" which is the form of a 6.6 bucket upgraded to 7.0. The two terms keyspace and collection can be considered equivalent.

There are two keyspaces used by every Eventing Function: the Listen To Location (the Eventing source) collection and the Eventing Storage (the Eventing metadata) collection.

Listen To Location (the Eventing source)

Couchbase Eventing Functions use a collection as the source of data mutations. This collection is referred to as the Eventing source. This source collection can be either Couchbase or Ephemeral keyspace type. However, memcached keyspace types are not supported.

When you are creating an Eventing Function, you need to specify a source collection. The handler(s) of OnUpdate and/or OnDelete are the entry points that receive events from this collection via DCP to both receive and track data mutations.

When a source collection is deleted, all deployed (or paused) Eventing Functions associated with this source collection are undeployed.

The Listen To can listen to multiple collections via a wildcard of * for the scope and/or the collection. For these functions, if the bucket binding used by the JavaScript code also contains a wildcard of * for the scope and/or the collection only the Advanced Keyspace Accessors will be able to read or write the Data Service (or KV).

In the course of processing the JavaScript code of an Eventing Function, documents can be mutated in different collections. For understanding purposes, these keyspaces can be termed as destination collections which are bound to the Function via Bucket aliases.

At times, the Eventing Function’s JavaScript code can trigger data mutations on documents via the Data Service (KV) via either Basic Keyspace Accessors or Advanced Keyspace Accessors. If the Eventing Function code directly modifies documents in the source collection, the Eventing Service will suppress the mutation back to the Eventing Function making the mutation. When implementing multiple Functions it is possible to create infinite recursions, however the Eventing Service by default will prevent deploying Functions that would result in recursion loops. It should be noted that not all recursion loops can be detected nor are all recursion loops wrong — the default recursion checks can be disabled. For more detail on cyclic generation of data changes, refer to Bucket Allocation Considerations.

At times, the Eventing Function’s JavaScript code can trigger data mutations on documents via the Query Service (SQL++) via inline SQL++ statements or N1QL() function calls. In this case the Eventing Function will see the mutation it just generated and additional business logic may be needed to terminate or protect against possible recursion.

Eventing Storage (the Eventing metadata)

The Eventing Storage (or Metadata) collection, stores artifacts (or configuration documents) that contain information about DCP streams, worker allocations, timer information/state, and internal checkpoints.

When you are creating an Eventing Function, ensure that a separate collection is designated as an Eventing metadata and reserved solely for the internal use of the Eventing Service. You can use a common Eventing metadata collection across multiple Eventing Functions for the same tenant.

If an Eventing metadata collection gets accidentally deleted, then all deployed Eventing Function are undeployed and associated indexes and constructs get dropped.

Function Name

All Eventing Functions must have a unique name in a Couchbase cluster. A Function name can only start with characters in range A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and can only contain characters in range A-Z, a-z, 0-9, underscore, and hyphen.

Deployment Feed Boundary

Using the Feed Boundary drop down, you can either set an Eventing Function to deploy for all data mutations available in the cluster (Everything) or choose to deploy the Eventing Function to process only future data mutations, post deployment (From now). However, once deployed you may Pause/Resume an Eventing Function in the Resume case; the Feed Boundary is a checkpoint of the Function’s actual progress when the Function was paused such that no mutations are reprocessed or lost upon a subsequent Resume.

Description

The Description is an optional text that can be added to the Function, typically to describe the purpose of the particular business logic.

There are several advanced settings (by default hidden within a collapsible panel) that can be adjusted. The System Log Level, SQL++ Consistency, Workers, Language compatibility, Script Timeout, and Timer Context Max Size are additional options available during the Eventing Function definition process.

A binding is a construct that allows separating environment specific variables (example: keyspace names, external endpoint URLs plus credentials, or global constants) from the Eventing Function’s source code. It provides a level of indirection between environment specific artifacts to symbolic names, to help moving an Eventing Function definition from development to production environments without changing code. Binding names must be valid JavaScript identifiers and must not conflict with any built-in types.

An Eventing Function can have no binding, one binding, or several bindings. There are three distinct types of bindings:

Bucket alias

Bucket aliases allow the JavaScript in an Eventing Function to access Couchbase KV collections from the Data Service or KV. The keyspaces (bucket.scope.collection) are then accessible by the bound name as a JavaScript map in the global space of the Eventing Function.

An Eventing Function can listen to multiple collections via a wildcard of * for the scope and/or the collection. For these functions, the bucket alias (or binding) used by the JavaScript code can also contain a wildcard of * for the scope and/or the collection. If bucket alias contains a wildcard of * only the Advanced Keyspace Accessors will be able to read or write the Data Service (or KV).

You can add bucket aliases via the 'Bucket alias' choice then entering a tuple of: alias-name, keyspace, and an access level. Where the alias-name that you can use to refer to the keyspace or collection from your Eventing Function code; the keyspace is the full path to a collection in the cluster; and the access level to the keyspace is either 'read only' or 'read and write'.

URL alias

These bindings are utilized by the cURL language construct to access external resources. The binding specifies the endpoint, the protocol (http/https), and credentials if necessary. Cookie support can be enabled via the binding if desired when accessing trusted remote nodes. When a URL binding limits access through to be the URL specified or descendants of it. The target of a URL binding should not be a node that belongs to the Couchbase cluster.

You can add URL bindings via the 'URL alias' choice then entering the following: alias-name, URL, allow cookies setting, security settings of validate SSL certificate and an auth type of (no auth, basic, bearer, and digest). For more details refer to cURL Bindings.

Constant alias

These bindings are utilized by the Eventing Function’s JavaScript code as global variables.

You can add URL bindings via the 'Constant alias' choice then entering an alias-name and value. The value can be either an integer, decimal number, string, boolean, or a JSON object. For example you might have an alias of debug with a value of true (or false) to control verbose logging this would act just like adding a statement const debug = true; at the beginning of your JavaScript code (although the Eventing syntax wouldn’t allow this global to be added to the actual JavaScript).

The deploy operation activates an Eventing Function in a cluster.

This operation activates an Eventing Function. Source validations are performed, and only valid Eventing Function can be deployed. Deployment transpiles the code and creates the executable artifacts. The source code of an activated (or deployed and running) Eventing Function cannot be edited. Unless an Eventing Function is in deployed state, it will not receive or process any events (mutations or Timer callbacks). Deployment of an Eventing Function creates necessary metadata, spawns worker processes, calculates initial partitions, and initiates check-pointing of DCP stream to processes.

Deployment for DCP observer (or Feed Boundary) has two variations controlled by the setting of the Eventing Function’s "Deployment Feed Boundary":

This operation causes the Eventing Function to stop processing events of all types and shuts down the worker processes associated with the Eventing Function. It deletes all timers created by the Eventing Function being undeployed and their context documents. It releases any runtime resources acquired by the Eventing Function. An Eventing Function in the Undeployed state can have its code edited and settings altered. Newly created Eventing Functions start in Undeployed state.

This action stops all processing associated with an Eventing Function including timer callbacks and performs a checkpoint (to be used for a subsequent resume). An Eventing Function in the Paused state can have its code edited and settings altered. Eventing Functions in Paused state can be either Resumed or Undeployed.

This action continues processing of an Eventing Function that was previously Paused. The Resume process is akin to a Deploy but utilizes a progress checkpoint (made when the Eventing Function was paused) to restart such that no mutations are reprocessed or lost. The backlog of mutations that occurred when the Eventing Function was paused will now be processed. The backlog of timers that came due when the Eventing Function was paused will now fire even if that timer is now in the past. Depending on the system capacity and how long the Eventing Function was paused, clearing the backlog may take some time before Eventing Function moves on to current mutations and timers.

When an Eventing Function is deleted, the source code implementing the Eventing Function, all timers and timer contexts, all processing checkpoints, application logs and other artifacts in the metadata provider are purged. A future Eventing Function by the same name has no relation to a prior deleted Eventing Function of the same name. Only undeployed Eventing Function can be deleted.

Debug is a special flag on an Eventing Function that causes the next event instance received by the Eventing Function to be trapped and sent to a separate v8 worker with debugging enabled. The debug worker pauses the trapped event processing and opens a TCP port and generates a Chrome Developer Tools URL with a session cookie that can be used to control the debug worker. All other events, except the trapped event instance, continue unencumbered. If the debugged event instance completes execution, another event instance is trapped for debugging, and this continues till debugging is stopped, at which point any trapped instance runs to completion and the debugging worker becomes passive.

Debugging is convenience feature intended to help during Eventing Function development and should not be used in production environments. It also be noted that using the debugger does not provide correctness or functionality guarantees.