The Magic Frog: Improve Bot Stability (Task Response)

Repository

https://github.com/mktcode/the-magic-story-machine

Work Done

The work here was 2-fold.

• Voting queue to force votes to be made in sequence and synchronously
• Force vote after commentOptions to be synchronous to ensure best possible outcome

Voting Queue

It's just a list using push and shift to add details to a queue about how to vote and what to vote on. The queue is using first-in-last-out (FILO) to ensure votes are handled in order. Promises were used to avoid asynchronous collisions.

Forcing Vote after commentOptions

This isn't so much about forcing a vote as it is about ensuring the vote happens in a certain order. The request was originally sent after commentOptions which led to actions sometimes happening out of order. The queue is used in this case to prevent actions from happening out of order.

Details

diff --git a/helper.js b/helper.js
index e24aa52..84904e5 100644
--- a/helper.js
+++ b/helper.js
@@ -1,5 +1,20 @@
 const steem = require('steem');
 const locales = require('./locales');
+const EventEmitter = require('events')
+
+const voting_queue = [];
+const FIVE_SECONDS = 5000
+const TEN_MINUTES = 600000
+const THIRTY_MINUTES = 1800000
+
+const voting = {
+    length: () => { return voting_queue.length },
+    push: (obj) => { return voting_queue.push(obj) },
+    pop: () => { return voting_queue.pop() },
+    shift: () => { return voting_queue.shift() },
+    unshift: (obj) => { return voting_queue.unshift(obj) }
+}
+

Above is the actual structure for the voting queue.

 module.exports = {
   BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME: process.env.BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME,
@@ -232,35 +247,14 @@ module.exports = {
         });
 
         // vote
-        steem.broadcast.vote(this.BOT_KEY, this.BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME, this.BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME, permlink, 10000);
+        this.upvote({ author: this.BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME, permlink: permlink }, 10000)
       } else {
         console.log(err);
       }
     });
   },
   upvote(comment, weight) {
-    steem.api.getActiveVotes(comment.author, comment.permlink, (err, result) => {
-      if (err) {
-        console.log(err);
-      } else {
-        // check if already voted
-        let voted = false;
-        result.forEach((vote) => {
-          if (vote.voter === this.BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME && vote.percent > 0) {
-            voted = true;
-          }
-        });
-
-        // vote
-        if (!voted) {
-          steem.broadcast.vote(this.BOT_KEY, this.BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME, comment.author, comment.permlink, weight, (err) => {
-            if (err) {
-              console.log(err);
-            }
-          });
-        }
-      }
-    });
+    upvote_queue.push({ comment: comment, weight: weight, key: this.BOT_KEY, bot_account_name: this.BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME})
   },
   transfer(to, amount, memo) {
     steem.broadcast.transfer(this.BOT_KEY, this.BOT_ACCOUNT_NAME, to, amount.toFixed(3) + ' SBD', memo, function(err) {
@@ -269,4 +263,36 @@ module.exports = {
       }
     });
   }
-};

Above is replacing the existing function with a new function that appends the queue with memento data for voting.

+};
+
+setInterval(() => {
+  const options = voting_queue.pop()
+  if (options) {
+    real_upvote(options)
+        .catch((err) => {
+          // If there's an error, just push it back on the stack and retry it
+          // Really, we want to just do this if it's because it was inside
+          // the voting threshold. TODO: There should be a check to verify first
+          voting_queue.push(options)
+        })
+  }
+}, FIVE_SECONDS)
+
+function real_upvote(options) {
+  const {comment, weight, key, bot_account_name } = options
+  return steem.api.getActiveVotesAsync(comment.author, comment.permlink)
+    .filter((vote) => vote.voter === bot_account_name && vote.percent > 0)
+    .then((votes) => {
+      if (votes.length > 0) { // Already voted?
+        return votes
+      }
+
+      return steem.broadcast.voteAsync(key, bot_account_name, comment.author, comment.permlink, weight)
+          .then((results) => {
+            // Handle results
+          })
+          .catch((error) => {
+            // Handle voting error
+          })
+    })
+}

Above is the actual queue and voting implementation that shifts voting data off the front of the queue, then handles it.

Github

https://github.com/mktcode/the-magic-story-machine/pull/1