Add documentation about Federation Queries and EDUs

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Paul "LeoNerd" Evans 2014-08-14 17:50:43 +01:00
parent 856f29c03c
commit 94eb2560f4

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@ -29,15 +29,40 @@ can also be performed.
| |<--------( HTTP )-----------| |
+------------------+ +------------------+
There are three main kinds of communication that occur between home servers:
Transactions and PDUs
=====================
* Queries
These are single request/response interactions between a given pair of
servers, initiated by one side sending an HTTP request to obtain some
information, and responded by the other. They are not persisted and contain
no long-term significant history. They simply request a snapshot state at the
instant the query is made.
The communication between home servers is performed by a bidirectional exchange
of messages. These messages are called Transactions, and are encoded as JSON
objects with a dict as the top-level element, passed over HTTP. A Transaction is
meaningful only to the pair of home servers that exchanged it; they are not
globally-meaningful.
* EDUs - Ephemeral Data Units
These are notifications of events that are pushed from one home server to
another. They are not persisted and contain no long-term significant history,
nor does the receiving home server have to reply to them.
* PDUs - Persisted Data Units
These are notifications of events that are broadcast from one home server to
any others that are interested in the same "context" (namely, a Room ID).
They are persisted to long-term storage and form the record of history for
that context.
Where Queries are presented directly across the HTTP connection as GET requests
to specific URLs, EDUs and PDUs are further wrapped in an envelope called a
Transaction, which is transferred from the origin to the destination home server
using a PUT request.
Transactions and EDUs/PDUs
==========================
The transfer of EDUs and PDUs between home servers is performed by an exchange
of Transaction messages, which are encoded as JSON objects with a dict as the
top-level element, passed over an HTTP PUT request. A Transaction is meaningful
only to the pair of home servers that exchanged it; they are not globally-
meaningful.
Each transaction has an opaque ID and timestamp (UNIX epoch time in miliseconds)
generated by its origin server, an origin and destination server name, a list of
@ -49,7 +74,8 @@ Transaction carries.
"origin":"red",
"destination":"blue",
"prev_ids":["e1da392e61898be4d2009b9fecce5325"],
"pdus":[...]}
"pdus":[...],
"edus":[...]}
The "previous IDs" field will contain a list of previous transaction IDs that
the origin server has sent to this destination. Its purpose is to act as a
@ -58,7 +84,9 @@ successfully received that Transaction, or ask for a retransmission if not.
The "pdus" field of a transaction is a list, containing zero or more PDUs.[*]
Each PDU is itself a dict containing a number of keys, the exact details of
which will vary depending on the type of PDU.
which will vary depending on the type of PDU. Similarly, the "edus" field is
another list containing the EDUs. This key may be entirely absent if there are
no EDUs to transfer.
(* Normally the PDU list will be non-empty, but the server should cope with
receiving an "empty" transaction, as this is useful for informing peers of other
@ -112,6 +140,15 @@ so on. This part needs refining. And writing in its own document as the details
relate to the server/system as a whole, not specifically to server-server
federation.]]
EDUs, by comparison to PDUs, do not have an ID, a context, or a list of
"previous" IDs. The only mandatory fields for these are the type, origin and
destination home server names, and the actual nested content.
{"edu_type":"m.presence",
"origin":"blue",
"destination":"orange",
"content":...}
Protocol URLs
=============
@ -179,3 +216,16 @@ To stream events all the events:
Retrieves all of the transactions later than any version given by the "v"
arguments. [[TODO(paul): I'm not sure what the "origin" argument does because
I think at some point in the code it's got swapped around.]]
To make a query:
GET .../query/:query_type
Query args: as specified by the individual query types
Response: JSON encoding of a response object
Performs a single query request on the receiving home server. The Query Type
part of the path specifies the kind of query being made, and its query
arguments have a meaning specific to that kind of query. The response is a
JSON-encoded object whose meaning also depends on the kind of query.