Skip to main content

Part-3: Increment and decrement operations

This is part-3 of the key-value database tutorial for codehooks.io serverless JavaScript. In this part we'll focus on how to increment and decrement values in the built-in key-value database.

Increment and decrement operations are commonly supported in key-value databases, and they can be useful for a variety of applications.

One benefit of increment and decrement operations is that they allow you to update a value in the database without having to read the current value, update it, and then write the updated value back to the database. This can be more efficient than performing these steps separately, especially if the value is being updated frequently.

Increment and decrement operations can also be useful for maintaining counters or other types of numerical data in the database. For example, you could use an increment operation to count the number of times a user has visited a webpage, or you could use a decrement operation to reduce a stock quantity in an online store when an item is purchased.

Overall, increment and decrement operations can provide a simple and efficient way to update numerical values in a key-value database.

Key-value store API for incrementing and decrementing values​

The initial value of an incremented or decremented key-value is always 0. You can increment or decrement a value with any positive integer. The minimal code example below shows usage of the two functions incr and decr with the Datastore API.

// connect to key-value store
const db = await Datastore.open();

// increment value
const val1 = await db.incr('myValue', 1);
// decrement value
const val2 = await db.decr('myValue', 1);
console.log("key-val", val1, val2);
// output: key-val, 1, 1

Lets continue with some more realistic and practical code examples.

Code example: count user API traffic​

The code example below shows a simple REST API endpoint that increments a counter in the key-value store each time it's called from a client app.

index.js
import app from 'codehooks-js' // codehooks lib for express style code

// serverless function
async function myFunc(req, res) {
  // get userID from the URL, e.g. /myendpoint/9x00fbb
  const { userID } = req.params;
  // connect to key-value store
  const db = await Datastore.open();

  // increment api count by userID
  const count = await db.incr(`API-count-${userID}`, 1);
  res.json({ count }); // returns {"count": 1}, {"count": 2}, etc.
}

// Create a GET endpoint route with the serverless function
app.get('/myendpoint/:userID', myFunc);

export default app.init(); // Bind functions to the serverless cloud

Some example values in the key-value store, after some usage of the endpoint, might look like the key-values shown below:

{ key: 'API-count-9x00fbb', value: 4 }
{ key: 'API-count-9x00fea', value: 1 }
{ key: 'API-count-out32xz', value: 5 }
{ key: 'API-count-qar870f', value: 3 }

Code example: reduce stock quantity in an e-commerce online store​

Lets say you fill and re-stock your warehouse by calling the key-value store API.

E.g. db.set('in-stock-TeslaModelZ', 100), db.set('in-stock-TeslaModelX', 45)

Having an in-stock count of our products will enable us to create an endpoint for purchasing and reducing the in-stock count like shown in the code example below.

index.js
import app from 'codehooks-js' // codehooks lib for express style code

app.post('/checkout/:basketID', async (req, res) => {
  // get basketID from the URL, e.g. /checkout/xyz123
  const { basketID } = req.params;
  // get quantity and product from POST body
  const { quantity, product } = req.body;
  // connect to key-value store
  const db = await Datastore.open();

  // decrement value
  const stock = await db.decr(`in-stock-${product}`, quantity);
  // handle case if stock === 0
  res.json({ stock, product });
})

export default app.init(); // Bind functions to the serverless cloud

The code example below shows how a JavaScript client can POST a purchase and a quantity by calling this REST API endpoint:

client-app.js
const MY_API_KEY = 'XXXXX'; // NB! Not for production. Use JWT and JWKS for secure API endpoints.
const MY_BASKET_ID = 'xyz123'; // example id

const headersList = {
 "Accept": "*/*",
 "x-api-key": MY_API_KEY,
 "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

const bodyContent = JSON.stringify({
  "product": "TeslaModelZ",
  "quantity": 1
});

const response = await fetch("https://keyvaldemo-f0fe.api.codehooks.io/prod/checkout/" + MY_BASKET_ID, { 
  method: "POST",
  body: bodyContent,
  headers: headersList
});

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

Example response:

{
  "stock": 97,
  "product": "TeslaModelZ"
}

This part-3 of the key-value store tutorial has shown how you can use the increment and decrement operations in serverless JavaScript functions with codehooks.io.