undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmakeitdouble3y ago0 comments

I agree with the parent on the weirdness of how the problem is stated in the first place.

On your customer and card example, the issue is not message delivery order but processing order, or more precisely prerequisite satisfaction.

My first thought looking at it was to just store the data of any of the hooks coming in, check the prerequisites each time, and only process the whole when everything needed has arrived.

Trying to dictate order from the sender without any cooperation from the receiver seems like a fool's errand, as in any real world scenario where it really matters, the receiver will also want a way to check it actually received everything in order.

0 comments

rexreed3y ago

I responded in much the same way below - your job as a sender is not to guarantee that the receiver will do its job in processing but to provide a reliable set of webhook messages so that if the receiver does fail, at least they can discover they've missed or skipped messages or are processing them out of order. As a sender, you certainly can provide guaranteed ordering or a way to identify the order of those messages. What you can't guarantee is that the receiver will process them in any given order if they choose to ignore the ordering you provide.

tasn3y ago

I understand it may not have been very clear. Though the point is that no one cares about delivery order, what they really care about is processing order. So it doesn't matter if you ensure delivery order if they process it out of order.

As for relying on the customers to get ordering correctly: it's actually more involved and easier to get wrong than people realize, and it's better to avoid it altogether in how you design your API if possible.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse