ChangeControl

ChangeControl is a tool for managing automated changes in node applications and was inspired by liquibase. You might use it to bootstrap your application with reference data, or perform a migration prior to deploying a new release. Without tools like ChangeControl these types of change require human interaction and accumulate to the point where performing a release involves black magic. Creating a new environment requires deep magic from the dawn of time!

Dependencies

ChangeControl requires a Redis instance to track which changes have been executed. We appreciate this will be a major inconvenience to others, however our project uses Redis, and we wanted something up quickly. Sorry.

Concepts

At the finest granularity is a Change, which is little more than a JavaScript function and an id.

Change = A JavaScript function + an Id

You can execute changes, pretend to execute them, or record that you've executed them, even if you haven't. Changes are clumped into ChangeSets. We tend to create a single ChangeSet per release.

ChangeSet = A list of Changes + an Id

Just like Changes, you can execute ChangeSets, pretend to execute them or just record that you have. Finally you have the ChangeLog. Every time you execute a Change a record is written to the ChangeLog.

ChangeLog = A list of the changes that have been executed

Once a Change has been recorded in the ChangeLog it typically won't be executed again. Furthermore if someone modifies the Change after it has been executed ChangeControl will complain loudly and fail. It would obviously be bad for two processes to execute a ChangeSet at the same time, so the ChangeLog is locked during processing. Once the ChangeSet has been fully applied, the lock is released. This leads to problems when if one of your Changes dies unexpectedly or is killed, since the ChangeLog will still be locked. If this happens you need to manually 'unlock' the ChangeLog. You can also 'dump' the ChangeLog or 'clear' it.

Usage

1. Create a ChangeSet

   // changes/release-1.0.js
   var ChangeSet = require('changecontrol').ChangeSet;
   
   exports.init = function(redis, changeLog) {
   
       var changeSet = ChangeSet.create('release-1.0', changeLog);     
       
       changeSet.add('init:foo:bar', function(next) {
           redis.set('foo:bar', 'a', next);
       });
   
       changeSet.add('init:pirates', function(next) {
           var multi = redis.multi();
           multi.mset(
               'Blackbeard', 'Queen Anne\'s Revenge',                  
               'Long John Silver', 'Hispaniola'
           );
           multi.exec(next);
       });
   
       return changeSet;
   }; 

2. Initialise the ChangeLog

   var changeLog = require('changecontrol').ChangeLog.create('my-awesome-project', redis);

3. Initialise the ChangeSet

   var changeSet = require('changes/release-1.0').init(changeLog, redis);

4. Execute the ChangeSet

   changeSet.execute(function(err) {
       console.log("Pieces of Eight");
   })

In practice you'll (hopefully) want to execute all the ChangeSets found in the 'changes' directory automatically when your application starts. You'll probabably also want a script for testing the changes locally and for unlocking the ChangeLog when something unexpected happens. You'll find a starter for ten in the examples folder.

Targetting specific changes

You can add a parameter to changeSet.execute to be more specific about the change(s) you want to execute, e.g.

changeSet.execute('init:pirates:*', function(err) {
    console.log("Pieces of Eight");
})

Would execute 'init:pirates:captains' and 'init:pirates:ships', but not 'init:ninja:masters'. The sync, pretend and clear operations also expect a similar first parameter.

Run Always

Sometimes you'll want to run a Change everytime your application starts (e.g. backing up log files). You can do this by specifying frequency = 'always' when you define your Change, e.g.

changeSet.add('backup:ships:log', function(next) {
    // Some Code
}, { frequency: 'always'});