Creating an application

Modules, rocks and applications

To make our game logic available to other developers and Lua applications, let’s put it into a Lua module.

A module (called “rock” in Lua) is an optional library which enhances Tarantool functionality. So, we can install our logic as a module in Tarantool and use it from any Tarantool application or module. Like applications, modules in Tarantool can be written in Lua (rocks), C or C++.

Modules are good for two things:

• easier code management (reuse, packaging, versioning), and
• hot code reload without restarting the Tarantool instance.

Technically, a module is a file with source code that exports its functions in an API. For example, here is a Lua module named mymodule.lua that exports one function named myfun:

local exports = {}
exports.myfun = function(input_string)
   print('Hello', input_string)
end
return exports

To launch the function myfun() – from another module, from a Lua application, or from Tarantool itself, – we need to save this module as a file, then load this module with the require() directive and call the exported function.

For example, here’s a Lua application that uses myfun() function from mymodule.lua module:

-- loading the module
local mymodule = require('mymodule')

-- calling myfun() from within test() function
local test = function()
  mymodule.myfun()
end

A thing to remember here is that the require() directive takes load paths to Lua modules from the package.path variable. This is a semicolon-separated string, where a question mark is used to interpolate the module name. By default, this variable contains system-wide Lua paths and the working directory. But if we put our modules inside a specific folder (e.g. scripts/), we need to add this folder to package.path before any calls to require():

package.path = 'scripts/?.lua;' .. package.path

For our microservice, a simple and convenient solution would be to put all methods in a Lua module (say pokemon.lua) and to write a Lua application (say game.lua) that initializes the gaming environment and starts the game loop.

Now let’s get down to implementation details. In our game, we need three entities:

• map, which is an array of pokémons with coordinates of respawn locations; in this version of the game, let a location be a rectangle identified with two points, upper-left and lower-right;
• player, which has an ID, a name, and coordinates of the player’s location point;
• pokémon, which has the same fields as the player, plus a status (active/inactive, that is present on the map or not) and a catch probability (well, let’s give our pokémons a chance to escape :-) )

We’ll store these entities as tuples in Tarantool spaces. But to deliver our backend application as a microservice, the good practice would be to send/receive our data in the universal JSON format, thus using Tarantool as a document storage.

Avro schemas

To store JSON data as tuples, we will apply a savvy practice which reduces data footprint and ensures all stored documents are valid. We will use Tarantool module avro-schema which checks the schema of a JSON document and converts it to a Tarantool tuple. The tuple will contain only field values, and thus take a lot less space than the original document. In avro-schema terms, converting JSON documents to tuples is “flattening”, and restoring the original documents is “unflattening”.

First you need to install the module with tarantoolctl rocks install avro-schema.

Further usage is quite straightforward:

1. For each entity, we need to define a schema in Apache Avro schema syntax, where we list the entity’s fields with their names and Avro data types.
2. At initialization, we call avro-schema.create() that creates objects in memory for all schema entities, and compile() that generates flatten/unflatten methods for each entity.
3. Further on, we just call flatten/unflatten methods for a respective entity on receiving/sending the entity’s data.

Here’s what our schema definitions for the player and pokémon entities look like:

local schema = {
    player = {
        type="record",
        name="player_schema",
        fields={
            {name="id", type="long"},
            {name="name", type="string"},
            {
                name="location",
                type= {
                    type="record",
                    name="player_location",
                    fields={
                        {name="x", type="double"},
                        {name="y", type="double"}
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    },
    pokemon = {
        type="record",
        name="pokemon_schema",
        fields={
            {name="id", type="long"},
            {name="status", type="string"},
            {name="name", type="string"},
            {name="chance", type="double"},
            {
                name="location",
                type= {
                    type="record",
                    name="pokemon_location",
                    fields={
                        {name="x", type="double"},
                        {name="y", type="double"}
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

And here’s how we create and compile our entities at initialization:

-- load avro-schema module with require()
local avro = require('avro_schema')

-- create models
local ok_m, pokemon = avro.create(schema.pokemon)
local ok_p, player = avro.create(schema.player)
if ok_m and ok_p then
    -- compile models
    local ok_cm, compiled_pokemon = avro.compile(pokemon)
    local ok_cp, compiled_player = avro.compile(player)
    if ok_cm and ok_cp then
        -- start the game
        <...>
    else
        log.error('Schema compilation failed')
    end
else
    log.info('Schema creation failed')
end
return false

As for the map entity, it would be an overkill to introduce a schema for it, because we have only one map in the game, it has very few fields, and – which is most important – we use the map only inside our logic, never exposing it to external users.

Next, we need methods to implement the game logic. To simulate object-oriented programming in our Lua code, let’s store all Lua functions and shared variables in a single local variable (let’s name it as game). This will allow us to address functions or variables from within our module as self.func_name or self.var_name. Like this:

local game = {
    -- a local variable
    num_players = 0,

    -- a method that prints a local variable
    hello = function(self)
      print('Hello! Your player number is ' .. self.num_players .. '.')
    end,

    -- a method that calls another method and returns a local variable
    sign_in = function(self)
      self.num_players = self.num_players + 1
      self:hello()
      return self.num_players
    end
}

In OOP terms, we can now regard local variables inside game as object fields, and local functions as object methods.

So, our game module will have the following methods:

• catch() to calculate whether the pokémon was caught (besides the coordinates of both the player and pokémon, this method will apply a probability factor, so not every pokémon within the player’s reach will be caught);
• respawn() to add missing pokémons to the map, say, every 60 seconds (we assume that a frightened pokémon runs away, so we remove a pokémon from the map on any catch attempt and add it back to the map in a while);
• notify() to log information about caught pokémons (like “Player 1 caught pokémon A”);
• start() to initialize the game (it will create database spaces, create and compile avro schemas, and launch respawn()).

Besides, it would be convenient to have methods for working with Tarantool storage. For example:

• add_pokemon() to add a pokémon to the database, and
• map() to populate the map with all pokémons stored in Tarantool.

We’ll need these two methods primarily when initializing our game, but we can also call them later, for example to test our code.

Bootstrapping a database

Let’s discuss game initialization. In start() method, we need to populate Tarantool spaces with pokémon data. Why not keep all game data in memory? Why use a database? The answer is: persistence. Without a database, we risk losing data on power outage, for example. But if we store our data in an in-memory database, Tarantool takes care to persist it on disk whenever it’s changed. This gives us one more benefit: quick startup in case of failure. Tarantool has a smart algorithm that quickly loads all data from disk into memory on startup, so the warm-up takes little time.

We’ll be using functions from Tarantool built-in box module:

• box.schema.create_space('pokemons') to create a space named pokemon for storing information about pokémons (we don’t create a similar space for players, because we intend to only send/receive player information via API calls, so we needn’t store it);
• box.space.pokemons:create_index('primary', {type = 'hash', parts = {1, 'unsigned'}}) to create a primary HASH index by pokémon ID;
• box.space.pokemons:create_index('status', {type = 'tree', parts = {2, 'str'}}) to create a secondary TREE index by pokémon status.

Notice the parts = argument in the index specification. The pokémon ID is the first field in a Tarantool tuple since it’s the first member of the respective Avro type. So does the pokémon status. The actual JSON document may have ID or status fields at any position of the JSON map.

The implementation of start() method looks like this:

-- create game object
start = function(self)
    -- create spaces and indexes
    box.once('init', function()
        box.schema.create_space('pokemons')
        box.space.pokemons:create_index(
            "primary", {type = 'hash', parts = {1, 'unsigned'}}
        )
        box.space.pokemons:create_index(
            "status", {type = "tree", parts = {2, 'str'}}
        )
    end)

    -- create models
    local ok_m, pokemon = avro.create(schema.pokemon)
    local ok_p, player = avro.create(schema.player)
    if ok_m and ok_p then
        -- compile models
        local ok_cm, compiled_pokemon = avro.compile(pokemon)
        local ok_cp, compiled_player = avro.compile(player)
        if ok_cm and ok_cp then
            -- start the game
            <...>
        else
            log.error('Schema compilation failed')
        end
    else
        log.info('Schema creation failed')
    end
    return false
end

GIS

Now let’s discuss catch(), which is the main method in our gaming logic.

Here we receive the player’s coordinates and the target pokémon’s ID number, and we need to answer whether the player has actually caught the pokémon or not (remember that each pokémon has a chance to escape).

First thing, we validate the received player data against its Avro schema. And we check whether such a pokémon exists in our database and is displayed on the map (the pokémon must have the active status):

catch = function(self, pokemon_id, player)
    -- check player data
    local ok, tuple = self.player_model.flatten(player)
    if not ok then
        return false
    end
    -- get pokemon data
    local p_tuple = box.space.pokemons:get(pokemon_id)
    if p_tuple == nil then
        return false
    end
    local ok, pokemon = self.pokemon_model.unflatten(p_tuple)
    if not ok then
        return false
    end
    if pokemon.status ~= self.state.ACTIVE then
        return false
    end
    -- more catch logic to follow
    <...>
end

Next, we calculate the answer: caught or not.

To work with geographical coordinates, we use Tarantool gis module.

To keep things simple, we don’t load any specific map, assuming that we deal with a world map. And we do not validate incoming coordinates, assuming again that all received locations are within the planet Earth.

We use two geo-specific variables:

• wgs84, which stands for the latest revision of the World Geodetic System standard, WGS84. Basically, it comprises a standard coordinate system for the Earth and represents the Earth as an ellipsoid.
• nationalmap, which stands for the US National Atlas Equal Area. This is a projected coordinates system based on WGS84. It gives us a zero base for location projection and allows positioning our players and pokémons in meters.

Both these systems are listed in the EPSG Geodetic Parameter Registry, where each system has a unique number. In our code, we assign these listing numbers to respective variables:

wgs84 = 4326,
nationalmap = 2163,

For our game logic, we need one more variable, catch_distance, which defines how close a player must get to a pokémon before trying to catch it. Let’s set the distance to 100 meters.

catch_distance = 100,

Now we’re ready to calculate the answer. We need to project the current location of both player (p_pos) and pokémon (m_pos) on the map, check whether the player is close enough to the pokémon (using catch_distance), and calculate whether the player has caught the pokémon (here we generate some random value and let the pokémon escape if the random value happens to be less than 100 minus pokémon’s chance value):

-- project locations
local m_pos = gis.Point(
    {pokemon.location.x, pokemon.location.y}, self.wgs84
):transform(self.nationalmap)
local p_pos = gis.Point(
    {player.location.x, player.location.y}, self.wgs84
):transform(self.nationalmap)

-- check catch distance condition
if p_pos:distance(m_pos) > self.catch_distance then
    return false
end
-- try to catch pokemon
local caught = math.random(100) >= 100 - pokemon.chance
if caught then
    -- update and notify on success
    box.space.pokemons:update(
        pokemon_id, {{'=', self.STATUS, self.state.CAUGHT}}
    )
    self:notify(player, pokemon)
end
return caught

Index iterators

By our gameplay, all caught pokémons are returned back to the map. We do this for all pokémons on the map every 60 seconds using respawn() method. We iterate through pokémons by status using Tarantool index iterator function index_object:pairs() and reset the statuses of all “caught” pokémons back to “active” using box.space.pokemons:update().

respawn = function(self)
    fiber.name('Respawn fiber')
    for _, tuple in box.space.pokemons.index.status:pairs(
           self.state.CAUGHT) do
        box.space.pokemons:update(
            tuple[self.ID],
            {{'=', self.STATUS, self.state.ACTIVE}}
        )
    end
 end

For readability, we introduce named fields:

ID = 1, STATUS = 2,

The complete implementation of start() now looks like this:

-- create game object
start = function(self)
    -- create spaces and indexes
    box.once('init', function()
       box.schema.create_space('pokemons')
       box.space.pokemons:create_index(
           "primary", {type = 'hash', parts = {1, 'unsigned'}}
       )
       box.space.pokemons:create_index(
           "status", {type = "tree", parts = {2, 'str'}}
       )
    end)

    -- create models
    local ok_m, pokemon = avro.create(schema.pokemon)
    local ok_p, player = avro.create(schema.player)
    if ok_m and ok_p then
        -- compile models
        local ok_cm, compiled_pokemon = avro.compile(pokemon)
        local ok_cp, compiled_player = avro.compile(player)
        if ok_cm and ok_cp then
            -- start the game
            self.pokemon_model = compiled_pokemon
            self.player_model = compiled_player
            self.respawn()
            log.info('Started')
            return true
         else
            log.error('Schema compilation failed')
         end
    else
        log.info('Schema creation failed')
    end
    return false
end

Fibers

But wait! If we launch it as shown above – self.respawn() – the function will be executed only once, just like all the other methods. But we need to execute respawn() every 60 seconds. Creating a fiber is the Tarantool way of making application logic work in the background at all times.

A fiber exists for executing instruction sequences but it is not a thread. The key difference is that threads use preemptive multitasking, while fibers use cooperative multitasking. This gives fibers the following two advantages over threads:

• Better controllability. Threads often depend on the kernel’s thread scheduler to preempt a busy thread and resume another thread, so preemption may occur unpredictably. Fibers yield themselves to run another fiber while executing, so yields are controlled by application logic.
• Higher performance. Threads require more resources to preempt as they need to address the system kernel. Fibers are lighter and faster as they don’t need to address the kernel to yield.

Yet fibers have some limitations as compared with threads, the main limitation being no multi-core mode. All fibers in an application belong to a single thread, so they all use the same CPU core as the parent thread. Meanwhile, this limitation is not really serious for Tarantool applications, because a typical bottleneck for Tarantool is the HDD, not the CPU.

A fiber has all the features of a Lua coroutine and all programming concepts that apply for Lua coroutines will apply for fibers as well. However, Tarantool has made some enhancements for fibers and has used fibers internally. So, although use of coroutines is possible and supported, use of fibers is recommended.

Well, performance or controllability are of little importance in our case. We’ll launch respawn() in a fiber to make it work in the background all the time. To do so, we’ll need to amend respawn():

respawn = function(self)
    -- let's give our fiber a name;
    -- this will produce neat output in fiber.info()
    fiber.name('Respawn fiber')
    while true do
        for _, tuple in box.space.pokemons.index.status:pairs(
                self.state.CAUGHT) do
            box.space.pokemons:update(
                tuple[self.ID],
                {{'=', self.STATUS, self.state.ACTIVE}}
            )
        end
        fiber.sleep(self.respawn_time)
    end
end

and call it as a fiber in start():

start = function(self)
    -- create spaces and indexes
        <...>
    -- create models
        <...>
    -- compile models
        <...>
    -- start the game
       self.pokemon_model = compiled_pokemon
       self.player_model = compiled_player
       fiber.create(self.respawn, self)
       log.info('Started')
    -- errors if schema creation or compilation fails
       <...>
end

Logging

One more helpful function that we used in start() was log.infо() from Tarantool log module. We also need this function in notify() to add a record to the log file on every successful catch:

-- event notification
notify = function(self, player, pokemon)
    log.info("Player '%s' caught '%s'", player.name, pokemon.name)
end

We use default Tarantool log settings, so we’ll see the log output in console when we launch our application in script mode.

Great! We’ve discussed all programming practices used in our Lua module (see pokemon.lua).

Now let’s prepare the test environment. As planned, we write a Lua application (see game.lua) to initialize Tarantool’s database module, initialize our game, call the game loop and simulate a couple of player requests.

To launch our microservice, we put both pokemon.lua module and game.lua application in the current directory, install all external modules, and launch the Tarantool instance running our game.lua application (this example is for Ubuntu):

$ ls
game.lua  pokemon.lua
$ sudo apt-get install tarantool-gis
$ sudo apt-get install tarantool-avro-schema
$ tarantool game.lua

Tarantool starts and initializes the database. Then Tarantool executes the demo logic from game.lua: adds a pokémon named Pikachu (its chance to be caught is very high, 99.1), displays the current map (it contains one active pokémon, Pikachu) and processes catch requests from two players. Player1 is located just near the lonely Pikachu pokémon and Player2 is located far away from it. As expected, the catch results in this output are “true” for Player1 and “false” for Player2. Finally, Tarantool displays the current map which is empty, because Pikachu is caught and temporarily inactive:

$ tarantool game.lua
2017-01-09 20:19:24.605 [6282] main/101/game.lua C> version 1.7.3-43-gf5fa1e1
2017-01-09 20:19:24.605 [6282] main/101/game.lua C> log level 5
2017-01-09 20:19:24.605 [6282] main/101/game.lua I> mapping 1073741824 bytes for tuple arena...
2017-01-09 20:19:24.609 [6282] main/101/game.lua I> initializing an empty data directory
2017-01-09 20:19:24.634 [6282] snapshot/101/main I> saving snapshot `./00000000000000000000.snap.inprogress'
2017-01-09 20:19:24.635 [6282] snapshot/101/main I> done
2017-01-09 20:19:24.641 [6282] main/101/game.lua I> ready to accept requests
2017-01-09 20:19:24.786 [6282] main/101/game.lua I> Started
---
- {'id': 1, 'status': 'active', 'location': {'y': 2, 'x': 1}, 'name': 'Pikachu', 'chance': 99.1}
...

2017-01-09 20:19:24.789 [6282] main/101/game.lua I> Player 'Player1' caught 'Pikachu'
true
false
--- []
...

2017-01-09 20:19:24.789 [6282] main C> entering the event loop

nginx

In the real life, this microservice would work over HTTP. Let’s add nginx web server to our environment and make a similar demo. But how do we make Tarantool methods callable via REST API? We use nginx with Tarantool nginx upstream module and create one more Lua script (app.lua) that exports three of our game methods – add_pokemon(), map() and catch() – as REST endpoints of the nginx upstream module:

local game = require('pokemon')
box.cfg{listen=3301}
game:start()

-- add, map and catch functions exposed to REST API
function add(request, pokemon)
    return {
        result=game:add_pokemon(pokemon)
    }
end

function map(request)
    return {
        map=game:map()
    }
end

function catch(request, pid, player)
    local id = tonumber(pid)
    if id == nil then
        return {result=false}
    end
    return {
        result=game:catch(id, player)
    }
end

An easy way to configure and launch nginx would be to create a Docker container based on a Docker image with nginx and the upstream module already installed (see http/Dockerfile). We take a standard nginx.conf, where we define an upstream with our Tarantool backend running (this is another Docker container, see details below):

upstream tnt {
      server pserver:3301 max_fails=1 fail_timeout=60s;
      keepalive 250000;
}

and add some Tarantool-specific parameters (see descriptions in the upstream module’s README file):

server {
  server_name tnt_test;

  listen 80 default deferred reuseport so_keepalive=on backlog=65535;

  location = / {
      root /usr/local/nginx/html;
  }

  location /api {
    # answers check infinity timeout
    tnt_read_timeout 60m;
    if ( $request_method = GET ) {
       tnt_method "map";
    }
    tnt_http_rest_methods get;
    tnt_http_methods all;
    tnt_multireturn_skip_count 2;
    tnt_pure_result on;
    tnt_pass_http_request on parse_args;
    tnt_pass tnt;
  }
}

Likewise, we put Tarantool server and all our game logic in a second Docker container based on the official Tarantool 1.9 image (see src/Dockerfile) and set the container’s default command to tarantool app.lua. This is the backend.

Non-blocking IO

To test the REST API, we create a new script (client.lua), which is similar to our game.lua application, but makes HTTP POST and GET requests rather than calling Lua functions:

local http = require('curl').http()
local json = require('json')
local URI = os.getenv('SERVER_URI')
local fiber = require('fiber')

local player1 = {
    name="Player1",
    id=1,
    location = {
        x=1.0001,
        y=2.0003
    }
}
local player2 = {
    name="Player2",
    id=2,
    location = {
        x=30.123,
        y=40.456
    }
}

local pokemon = {
    name="Pikachu",
    chance=99.1,
    id=1,
    status="active",
    location = {
        x=1,
        y=2
    }
}

function request(method, body, id)
    local resp = http:request(
        method, URI, body
    )
    if id ~= nil then
        print(string.format('Player %d result: %s',
            id, resp.body))
    else
        print(resp.body)
    end
end

local players = {}
function catch(player)
    fiber.sleep(math.random(5))
    print('Catch pokemon by player ' .. tostring(player.id))
    request(
        'POST', '{"method": "catch",
        "params": [1, '..json.encode(player)..']}',
        tostring(player.id)
    )
    table.insert(players, player.id)
end

print('Create pokemon')
request('POST', '{"method": "add",
    "params": ['..json.encode(pokemon)..']}')
request('GET', '')

fiber.create(catch, player1)
fiber.create(catch, player2)

-- wait for players
while #players ~= 2 do
    fiber.sleep(0.001)
end

request('GET', '')
os.exit()

When you run this script, you’ll notice that both players have equal chances to make the first attempt at catching the pokémon. In a classical Lua script, a networked call blocks the script until it’s finished, so the first catch attempt can only be done by the player who entered the game first. In Tarantool, both players play concurrently, since all modules are integrated with Tarantool cooperative multitasking and use non-blocking I/O.

Indeed, when Player1 makes its first REST call, the script doesn’t block. The fiber running catch() function on behalf of Player1 issues a non-blocking call to the operating system and yields control to the next fiber, which happens to be the fiber of Player2. Player2’s fiber does the same. When the network response is received, Player1’s fiber is activated by Tarantool cooperative scheduler, and resumes its work. All Tarantool modules use non-blocking I/O and are integrated with Tarantool cooperative scheduler. For module developers, Tarantool provides an API.

For our HTTP test, we create a third container based on the official Tarantool 1.9 image (see client/Dockerfile) and set the container’s default command to tarantool client.lua.

To run this test locally, download our pokemon project from GitHub and say:

$ docker-compose build
$ docker-compose up

Docker Compose builds and runs all the three containers: pserver (Tarantool backend), phttp (nginx) and pclient (demo client). You can see log messages from all these containers in the console, pclient saying that it made an HTTP request to create a pokémon, made two catch requests, requested the map (empty since the pokémon is caught and temporarily inactive) and exited:

pclient_1  | Create pokemon
<...>
pclient_1  | {"result":true}
pclient_1  | {"map":[{"id":1,"status":"active","location":{"y":2,"x":1},"name":"Pikachu","chance":99.100000}]}
pclient_1  | Catch pokemon by player 2
pclient_1  | Catch pokemon by player 1
pclient_1  | Player 1 result: {"result":true}
pclient_1  | Player 2 result: {"result":false}
pclient_1  | {"map":[]}
pokemon_pclient_1 exited with code 0

Congratulations! Here’s the end point of our walk-through. As further reading, see more about installing and contributing a module.

See also reference on Tarantool modules and C API, and don’t miss our Lua cookbook recipes.