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Ruby gem: distributed locking on Google Cloud

Written by Hongli Lai | Oct 19, 2021 10:04:00 AM

I previously designed a robust distributed locking algorithm based on Google Cloud. Now I’m releasing a Ruby implementation of this algorithm: distributed-lock-google-cloud-storage-ruby.

To use this, add to your Gemfile:

gem 'distributed-lock-google-cloud-storage'

Its typical usage is as follows. Initialize a Lock instance. It must be backed by a Google Cloud Storage bucket and object. Then do your work within a #synchronize block.

Important: If your work is a long-running operation, then also be sure to call #check_health! periodically to check whether the lock is still healthy. This call throws an exception if it’s not healthy. Learn more in Long-running operations, lock refreshing and lock health checking.

require 'distributed-lock-google-cloud-storage'

lock = DistributedLock::GoogleCloudStorage::Lock(
  bucket_name: 'your bucket name',
  path: 'locks/mywork')
lock.synchronize do
  do_some_work

  # IMPORTANT: _periodically_ call this!
  lock.check_health!

  do_more_work
end

To learn more about this gem, please check out its README and its full API docs.