Circuit Breaker in Ruby with Circuitbox

 

 

Remote calls

Remote calls are a crucial part of our systems then we need to perform some interaction with external services.

 

And these become also points of failure of our applications.

 

 

 

Remote calls

The more critical that supplier it, the more significant the impact of its failure will generate and propagate in our apps.

 

While an error here and there is tolerated, what would happen to your system if the supplier service is degraded?

 
 

Remote calls

Imagine something went really wrong and all requests to that service are timing out.

 

Your consumer application will also end up in a degraded and taking at least the timeout time to return with an error.

Catastrophic cascade

Circuit Breaker

Circuit Breaker is a software design pattern that proposes the monitoring of the remote calls failures.

 

If a certain error rate is reached, the circuit will open and skip all the following requests within a sleep window.

 

When the sleep window expires it will request the external service again, but if the response is an error the circuit remains open.

 

When the downstream API start responding accordingly under the same thresholds, then the circuit will close and enable the main flow again.

😐
 

Circuit Breaker

Circuit Breaker

Circuitbox

app.get("/", function (req, res) {
  const delay = req.query.speed === "fast"  ? 50 : 200;

  setTimeout(function () {
    res.sendStatus(200);
  }, delay);
});
def index
  speed = params[:speed]

  answers = Array(0..9).map do |i|
    sleep(1)
    puts "Request number #{i+1}"
    HTTP.get("http://localhost:4000/?speed=#{speed}")
        .status
  end

  render json: answers
end
  def without_timeout
    speed = params[:speed]

    answers = Array(0..9).map do |i|
      sleep(1)
      puts "Request number #{i+1}"
      HTTP.get("http://localhost:4000/?speed=#{speed}")
          .status
    end

    render json: answers
  end
  def with_timeout
    speed = params[:speed]

    answers = Array(0..9).map do |i|
      sleep(1)
      puts "Request number #{i+1}"
      HTTP.timeout(0.1)
          .get("http://localhost:4000/?speed=#{speed}")
          .status
    end

    render json: answers
  end
class DefaultConfigClient
  def initialize(speed:)
    @speed = speed
    @circuit = ::Circuitbox.circuit(:node_client, exceptions: [HTTP::TimeoutError])
  end

  def call
    circuit.run do
      HTTP.timeout(0.1).get("http://localhost:4000/?speed=#{speed}").status
    end
  end

  private

  attr_reader :speed, :circuit
end

sleep_window: seconds the circuit stays open once it has passed the error threshold. Defaults to 90 sec.
time_window: length of the interval (in seconds) over which it calculates the error rate. Defaults to 60 sec.

volume_threshold: number of requests within time_window seconds before it calculates error rates. Defaults to 5 requests.

error_threshold: exceeding this rate will open the circuit (checked on failures). Defaults to 50%.

circuit name

exceptions to monitor

default value

class CustomConfigClient
  def initialize(speed:)
    @speed = speed
    @circuit = ::Circuitbox.circuit(
      :node_client_custom_config,
      exceptions: [HTTP::TimeoutError],
      time_window: 5,
      volume_threshold: 2,
      sleep_window: 2
    )
  end

  def call
    circuit.run do
      HTTP.timeout(0.1).get("http://localhost:4000/?speed=#{speed}").status
    end
  end

  #...

We are setting time_window (the interval observed) as 5 seconds.

We are setting volume_threshold to 2, so we need to get at least 2 requests to calculate the error rate.

Finally, we override sleep_window to be 2 seconds.

# ...

  def recover_cb
    speed = params[:speed]

    answers = Array(0..9).map do |i|
      sleep(1)
      puts "Request number #{i + 1}"
      speed = 'fast' if i > 3
      CustomConfigClient.new(speed: speed).call
    end

    render json: answers
  end

# ...

After 4 requests switch to fast mode.

 

speed is slow, circuit closed

speed is fast, circuit open

speed is fast, circuit closed

Partial result

The app depends on various queries to answer with an optimal response and there is a time constraint it cannot wait too long for any of the APIs.

 

If any of the APIs is down, the circuit opens, but the system keeps working in a partial state.

places

gov

shows

Conclusion

A circuit breaker is a pattern that helps us to keep our systems operating or partially operating.

 

The idea is to stop pursuing unresponsive services and get back querying them when they are healthy.

 

We manage to make our applications more resilient when we fail gracefully.

 

There are implementations available for us to plug in and start using.

 

Fine-tuning the configurations to better suit the application needs.

 

Thanks!

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