cold-start

Create lazy singleton functions with cold-start capabilities.

Why

A cold start is the first time your code has been executed in a while (5–25minutes).

This concept has been using for some infrastructure providers, such as:

• AWS Lambda shutting down λ functions after an inactivity time.
• Heroku Dynos sleeping instances after 30 minutes no web traffic activity.

This library brings you this concept to be applied to any piece of software, like:

• Keep up a pool of servers where actually just a few of them are actively used.
• Keep expensive process running that most of the time it isn't being used.
• Wrap some sensible pieces of code that need to be restarted after a while.

The mission of the library is to keep on sync machine resources with real usage.

It's specially useful when you want to shutdown a long-time process that actually is not being used, cutting down infrastructure costs.

Install

$ npm install @kikobeats/cold-start --save

Usage

const coldStart = require('@kikobeats/cold-start')()
const createBrowserless = require('browserless')
const ms = require('ms')

const getBrowserless = coldStart({
  // every cold start function need to have an unique name
  name: 'browserless',
  // setup lazy intialization, it should be return something to be use into succesive calls
  start: createBrowserless,
  // setup teardown, if it's necessary
  stop: browserless => browserless.destroy(),
  // how much idle time to consider the function can be stopped.
  duration: ms('5m')
})

;(async () => {
  // first call will initialize the cold start function
  await getBrowserless()

  // succesive calls will reuse the instance
  await getBrowserless()

  // If the cold start function is not being called in a time window of 5m,
  // the cold start function will be destroyed.
  // The first call after that will allocate it again
  await getBrowserless()
})()

API

createColdStart([options])

It creates a new cold start storage, returning a function to be used for registering any cold start over the storage.

options

store

Type: object
Default: {}

It sets the storage to be used for keeping cold start functions running on background.

After initialization, store can be accessed by .store instance method.

shutdown

Type: boolean
Default: false

It sets the logic to run for shutting down all the cold start functions running.

After initialization, shutdown method can by .shutdown instance method.

coldStart([options])

It register a new cold start function into the associated storage

options

name

Required
Type: string

An unique name for identifying the cold start function.

start

Required
Type: function

The function to be executed in order of getting the value to be retrieved into the successive function calls.

stop

Required
Type: function

A teardown function to be executed before shutdown the cold start function.

duration

Required
Type: number

How much idle time can be considered a cold start function is inactive and should be shutting down.

License

@kikobeats/cold-start © Kiko Beats, released under the MIT License.
Authored and maintained by Kiko Beats with help from contributors.

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