I’m working on some code that uses a shared YArray to synchronize data between clients. I’ve built a test framework that allows me to:
- make application-level changes in one client
- capture the YUpdates generated by the Yjs layer for that client
- apply those YUpdates to the Yjs layer for a second client
- use .observeDeep() on the shared YArray to invoke code that propagates the effect of those changes to the application level in the second client
- validate that state meets expectations at each step in the process
This is mostly working great, etc.
But I’ve run into a specific situation in which moving from step (3) to step (4) involves .observeDeep() being called with both a TextEvent and an ArrayEvent – specifically, one in which the ArrayEvent is adding nodes to the Yjs hierarchy in a way that affects the path that should be used for the TextEvent.
In the current state of things, it appears that the TextEvent always precedes the ArrayEvent. However, it further appears that the path encoded in the TextEvent reflects the state of the world that would result after the ArrayEvent had been applied – e.g., meaning that processing the Events in the given order (TextEvent, then ArrayEvent) yields incorrect behavior (either applying the affect of the TextEvent to the wrong Yjs element, or possibly throwing an exception because no Yjs element can be found at the specified path) – meaning that although validation succeeded at steps (1) through (3), it fails at step (4).
I can also reproduce this with a test case that yields a MapEvent instead of a TextEvent.
I suspect what this means is that when I receive a batch of Events via .observeDeep(), I need to have some policy for the order in which they should be applied to the application-level representation (i.e., other than the ~obvious choice of apply them in sequential order, as that is yielding incorrect behavior). One example of such might be “always apply ArrayEvents first, then other Event types” – but while that would address the problems I’m seeing in these test case (and not cause any of my other existing test cases to fail), it also feels like a potentially ad hoc solution based on a limited number of examples.
Ergo my question: When .observeDeep() is invoked with more than one event, what should I assume about how those events relate to one another and how they should be applied to the application-level representation? Is there a static policy that I can use (e.g., the aforementioned “ArrayEvents before other Events”), are there annotations that I can use to construct an appropriate order, or something else?
Hopefully I’ve provided enough context, but happy to answer questions if I haven’t.
Thanks!