Introduction to Realm Mobile Platform

IntroducingRealm Mobile Platform

Build Better Apps Faster!

.

Christian Melchior@chrmelchior

About Realm• Headquartered in San Francisco, with engineering office

in Copenhagen • ~50 employees • Series B startup, $29M raised

Realm Mobile Database• On-device cross-platform object database • Launched July 2014 • Developed in the open, fully open source • 16K+ GitHub stars, 100K+ active developers

Developers Love Realm for Power, Simplicity, Ease of Use

Apps of Every Type, 1.000.000.000+ installs

Realm Mobile Platform

Users Expect More of Apps Today• Offline first: They need apps that work well offline and when network

connections are intermittent

• Reactive: They expect apps that are highly responsive, with all changes immediately reflected in the UI

• Real-time: They expect every user and device to stay in sync with each other in real-time

• Collaborative: They want highly collaborative features and experiences within their apps

• Seamless: They expect to be able to move seamlessly from device to device

The Apps You Want To Make

The AppYou Can MakePrice

Synchronisation is HARD

Deadlines

Crossplatform concerns

Backend team to busy

The Realm Mobile Platform

Realm Mobile DatabaseRealm Object Server

Real-time data sync

DemoRealmTasks - https://github.com/realm/RealmTasks

Realm Mobile

Database

Real-time Sync

Realm Object Server

SDKSDKSDK

Sync Engine Dashboard Auth

System

Encryption Layer

What is it?

Access Control Full DB access

Data connectorsObject Store

SD

SDK

SDK

Enterprise Feature

Event Framework

Developer priorities• Time-to-market: Your team need to be able to deliver quality apps

quickly and on time

• Ability: With high user expectations, the team need the ability to easily add advanced features like data sync, messaging and collaboration.

• Cross-platform: To reach the full audience, you need to be able to deliver apps for both iOS and Android

• Standardize: To manage all the apps and reduce complexity, you want to standardize on a single platform

REST is working great for the web!

Why change?

jp@realm.io

The Reality With REST

REST is brittle and cumbersome in a mobile world• What happens when there is no connectivity?

• Queueing? • Persistence?

• What about connectivity being lost during requests? • Tokens? Do they have to be persisted in app? • State-full services?

• Resource intensive • Need for multiple REST calls. High latency cost • Often incurs duplication of data • JSON parsing is expensive

Delivers Key Mobile Solutions• Eliminates network challenges • Simplifies data architecture • Unlocks existing infrastructure

SDK1 2

• Offline-first • Full database on the device

• Queries run locally • Writes apply immediately

• Reactive architecture keeps UI up-to-date • Automatic sync happens in the background • Resilient to any network conditions

Eliminate Network Challenges

Objects as API’s

MobileServer

Realtime data sync

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: nilOrderInfo: nil

Objects as API’s

MobileServer

Realtime data sync

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: nilOrderInfo: nil

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: nilOrderInfo: nil

Objects as API’s

MobileServer

Realtime data sync

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: nilOrderInfo: nil

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: nilOrderInfo: nil

Objects as API’s

MobileServer

Realtime data sync

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: nilOrderInfo: nil

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: nilOrderInfo: nil

Objects as API’s

MobileServer

Realtime data sync

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: “processing”OrderInfo: nil

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: “processing”OrderInfo: nil

Objects as API’s

MobileServer

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: “done”OrderInfo: → Realtime data sync

Objects as API’s

MobileServer

Realtime data sync

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: “done”OrderInfo: →

BuyObjectShoppingCart: →Status: “done”OrderInfo: →

Delivers Key Mobile Solutions• Eliminates network challenges • Simplifies data architecture • Unlocks existing infrastructure

Typical Application Data Flow

Native object

JSON

Native object

SQL

Native object

JSON

Native object

SQLite SQLite

• It’s just objectson the device and on the server

• Objects are live,they update—automatically and immediately—in response to changes

• Not an ORM,the database is the data model

• Easier for developers to build, change, maintain

• Reduce code complexityvia unified data format; cross-platform

• Encrypted at rest & transitObjects all the way down

Simplify Data Architecture

Delivers Key Mobile Solutions• Eliminates network challenges • Simplifies data architecture • Unlocks existing infrastructure

Legacy Systems Hold Back Mobile

XML JSONRESTSOAP

/facilities /departments{"facility": "west-1A", "departments": [ {"type": "manufacturing"}, {"type": "operations"}]}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><root> <department>manufacturing</department> <facilities>west-1A</facilities></root>

Unlock Existing Infrastructure

DC9WP

Coupon:

Coupon:

DC9WP

coupon.code = DC9WP

coupon.isValid = true

1

2

3

• Bridge legacy APIs • Shift complexity to backend

• Node.js SDK • Identical object interface • Full database capabilities • Apply changes to push data

• Event framework • Listen and respond to changes from clients • Pass along data to other systems or databases

• Supports custom authentication

The code centric view

Realm is an object database

Create native objects that map directly to the database.

// Define you model class by extending RealmObject public class Dog extends RealmObject { public String name; // fields can also be private of course public int age = 1; // default values }

public class Person extends RealmObject { @PrimaryKey public long id; public String name; // support for custom logic in accessors public RealmList<Dog> dogs; // declare one-to-many relationships }

Perform complex queries across your object graph

RealmResults<User> result2 = realm.where(User.class) .equalTo("name", "John") .or() .equalTo("name", "Peter") .findAll();

RealmResults<User> result = realm.where(User.class).findAll(); result = result.sort("age"); // Sort ascending result = result.sort("age", Sort.DESCENDING);

All changes occur in transactions offering ACID compliance

// Obtain a Realm instance Realm realm = Realm.getDefaultInstance();

realm.beginTransaction(); Book cheeseBook = realm.createObject(Book.class); cheeseBook.title = "Gouda Recipes"; cheeseBook.id = 1; realm.commitTransaction();

But Realm objects have a special capability…

Realm objects live-update in response to changes

RealmResults<Dog> puppies = realm.where(Dog.class).lessThan("age", 2); puppies.length(); // => 0

realm.beginTransaction(); Dog myDog = realm.createObject(Dog.class); myDog.name = "Rex"; myDog.age = 1; realm.commitTransaction();

puppies.length(); // => 1

Realm is a live object databaseRealm is an object database

Listen for live object changes to simplify your architecture RealmResults<Person> persons = realm.where(Person.class).findAll(); persons.addChangeListener(new RealmChangeListener() { @Override public void onChange(RealmResults<Person> change) { // ... do something with the updates (UI, etc.) ... } });

Now imagine if these live-updates came from remote changes?

Realm Object Server synchronizes object changes in real-time.

Server-side Realms

Device-side Realms

Realm Object Server

Real-time Sync

Push object changes server-side instantly via Node.js interface

Authenticating a user

SyncCredentials me = SyncCredentials.usernamePassword(username, password, true); String authURL = "http://my.realm-auth-server.com:9080/auth"; SyncUser user = SyncUser.login(me, authURL);

Open a Realm instance and get ready for synchronization

RealmConfiguration conf = new RealmConfiguration.Builder().build();

String serverURL = "realm://my.realm-server.com/~/default"; SyncConfiguration conf = new SyncConfiguration.Builder(user, serverURL).build();

Realm realm = Realm.getInstance(conf); // Any changes made to this Realm will be synced across all devices!

Conflicts will occur! How do you handle them?

Conflict Resolution• Operational Transform

• Well-known documented solution. • Guarantee convergence.

• At field level

• Delete always wins • Last write wins • Inserts in Lists are ordered by time

• https://realm.io/docs/realm-object-server/#conflict-resolution

Trigger server-side functions based on data changes across Realms

Benefits for developers• Networking abstracted away. No need to worry about

connectivity, JSON parsing, object mapping…

• Unified Data Model. Same data format and reactivity on Client and Backend.

• Straight line from Server to UI. Data can be bound directly to UI on Client.

vs.

Questions?

@chrmelchior cm@realm.io

Build Better Apps Faster!

Ressources• RealmTasks https://github.com/realm/

RealmTasks • Realm Mobile Platform https://realm.io/

products/realm-mobile-platform/ • Realm Java https://realm.io/docs/java/latest/ • More demos https://github.com/realm-demos