What is a Property Lock?​

A Property Lock in PIPEFORCE can be put on any property in the property store and hinders a user or a group of users altering this property. This can be useful for example to avoid double-edits with race conditions, for maintenance reasons or in state conditions. Just to name a few examples.

Such a lock in PIPEFORCE can be:

• exclusive to a user = only this particular user can edit this property

• exclusive to a role (permission) = only users with given role / permission can edit

• exclusive to a group = only users which are member of a certain group can edit this property

• exclusive to a namespace = only users within this namespace can edit this property

• global = no one can edit this property (except users with permission ROLE_SYSTEM).

A lock can also be generated using a time-to-live (ttl) value in order to remove the lock automatically from the property after this given amount of time has been expired. In case such a ttl is not set, the lock is not released automatically and must be removed manually. A lock can be removed by users, this lock is exclusive to or by the system.

Create a Property Lock​

You can create a lock on a property using the command property.lock.put.

Here is an example:

This will create the default lock of type user on a property with key global/app/myapp/data/mydata. This lock will be automatically set as exclusive to the currently logged-in user.

Also see: Commands Reference | PIPEFORCE

Technical Background​

What happens in case a lock must be created for a Property in the backend?

1. The property attribute locked will be set to true. In case the lock is if type trash, additionally the attribute trashed will be set to true. See Property Store (Document Database) for more details about these attributes.

2. A new tag with name property.lock will be created and put on the locked property. The value of the tag will be set to the lock tag in JSON format.

3. Any write access to a property in the backend will check whether the property is locked or not and if so, whether the lock must take in effect or not. In case the lock is in effect, an exception is thrown.

Lock exclusive to user​

A lock exclusive to a user allows only this particular user to alter the property.

You can set the user exclusive lock implicitly, like this:

This is the default lock. You can also specify the type:

In both cases, the lock will be created exclusively to the currently logged-in user.

In case you would like to set the lock for a different user as the one currently logged-in, you have to specify its uuid. For example:

In this example, a user with username someUsername is loaded from IAM and then its uuid is used to create a lock for him.

Lock exclusive to role​

A lock exclusive to a role allows only users with this particular role / permission to alter the property.

In this example only users with role ROLE_SUPPORT can alter the property.

Alos see: Users, Groups, Roles and Permissions

Lock exclusive to group​

A lock exclusive to a group allows only users which are member of this particular group to alter the property.

In this example only users which are member of custom group Sales can alter the property.

Also see: Users, Groups, Roles and Permissions

Lock exclusive to namespace​

A namespace lock allows only users within the given namespace (realm) to alter the property.

Global Lock​

A global lock denies to alter a property for all users except those with ROLE_SYSTEM assigned.

Trash Lock​

A lock of type trash is a special lock, since it not only puts a global lock on a property, it also makes the property invisible from most of the listings in the system. Differently to the other lock types, in case the ttl is set: the property will be fully deleted after this time has been expired.

In this example, a trash lock has been set which expires after 10 days. Since it is a trash lock, the property will be deleted after these 10 days.

Also see Property Trash Bin

Getting a Property Lock​

After a lock has been created, the response will return the so called lock tag which holds all required information about a lock in JSON format. Such a lock tag can also be loaded using the command property.lock.get:

• ts = The Unix timestamp this lock has been created in milliseconds.

• ttl = The time-to-live in milliseconds, after this lock must be removed automatically. If null, the lock will be kept until manually removed.

• type = One of user, role, group, namespace, global or trash.

• uuid = The uuid of the user this lock is exclusive to. Only set in case the lock type is set to user.

• name = This value depends on the lock type. If type is user, this contains the username of the user, this lock is exclusive to (is automatically set by the backend). If type is one of role, group or namespace, the name must be set to the name of the selected resource, this lock is exclusive to. For example the name of the role, group or namespace. If type is global or trash the name is typically empty.

• details = Some additional, optional information with the lock.

Also see: https://pipeforce.github.io/docs/api/commands#propertylockget-v1

Remove a Property Lock​

Manually​

In order to manually remove a lock, use the command property.lock.remove.

For example:

Also see https://pipeforce.github.io/docs/api/commands#propertylockremove-v1

Automatically​

In order to automatically release a lock after a certain amount of time, use the parameter ttl (ttl = time-to-live) when creating the lock. This parameter defines a time in milliseconds after which to remove the lock. After this time has been expired, the lock will be removed from the property.

In this example, the user exclusive lock will be automatically removed after 1 minute.