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How to Set Up Cross-Platform, Multi-Type Atomic Counters

by Mark Piller on September 1, 2019

There are plenty of use cases when mBaaS-powered applications must use a centralized mechanism for incrementing or decrementing a value. There are several approaches for maintaining a counter – some apps use a database, others keep it in the server-side business logic (Cloud Code).

Backendless offers a specialized API for working with atomic counters. The API is cross-platform – any number of different clients (including REST) can work with the same counter and update it concurrently. Every counter in Backendless has a name, which is assigned by the client application. The sample below demonstrates the API for incrementing and retrieving the value of a counter.

IAtomic counter = Backendless.Counters.of("my counter");
counter.incrementAndGet(new AsyncCallback()
{
   @Override
   public void handleResponse(Long response)
   {
       Log.i( TAG, "Counter value: " + response );
   }

   @Override
   public void handleFault(BackendlessFault fault)
   {
       Log.e( TAG, "Server reported an error: " + fault.getMessage() );
   }
});

val counter = Backendless.Counters.of("my counter")
counter.incrementAndGet(object : AsyncCallback {
   override fun handleResponse(response: Int?) {
       Log.i(TAG, "Counter value: " + response!!)
   }

   override fun handleFault(fault: BackendlessFault) {
       Log.e(TAG, "Server reported an error: " + fault.message)
   }
})

id counter = [Backendless.shared.counters ofCounterName:@"my counter"];
[counter incrementAndGetWithResponseHandler:^(NSInteger counterValue) {
    NSLog(@"Counter value - %li", (long)counterValue);
} errorHandler:^(Fault *fault) {
    NSLog(@"Error: %@", fault.message);
}];

let counter = Backendless.shared.counters.of(counterName: "my counter")
counter.incrementAndGet(responseHandler: { counterValue in
    print("Counter value - \(counterValue)")
}, errorHandler: { fault in
    print("Error: \(fault.message ?? "")")
})

const counter = Backendless.Counters.of('my counter')

counter.incrementAndGet()
  .then(counterValue => {
    console.log(`Counter value - ${ counterValue }`)
  })
  .catch(error => {
    console.error(`Server reported an error - ${ error.message }`)
  })

IAtomic counter = Backendless.counters.of("my counter");
counter.incrementAndGet().then((value) {
 print("Counter value - $value");
});

The API is very easy to use and provides several other features like decrementing a value, performing a conditional update, retrieving the current value, and resetting a counter.

How to Set Up Cross-Platform, Multi-Type Atomic Counters

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