bobbbay / tarsier

A library for the unidirectional, event-based, asynchronous flow of data.

Tarsier

Unidirectional, event-based, asynchronous flow of Copy-able data.

Unidirectional

Think of Tarsier as a data structure that manages a very strict, conceptually functional flow of data. The flow of data in Tarsier looks like the following:

input : () -> InputtedState
layer_a : InputtedState -> LayeredAState
layer_b : LayeredAState -> LayeredBState
output : LayeredBState -> ()

Event-based

Tarsier is event-based. Layers specify the transformations of the insides of each data structure, and Tarsier only calls the necessary transforms when its corresponding data has changed.

struct InputtedState {
    data_1: SomeData1,
    data_2: SomeData2,
}

Now, let’s say the input layer has observed a change in the real world and updates data_1. According to the mappings laid out by the next layer, data_2 would stay the same. Therefore, Tarsier will only call the necessary mappings for data_1, leaving data_2 unchanged. This kind of event-based programming eliminates the re-serialization of large amounts of data.

Asynchronous

Everything in Tarsier is asynchronous, thread-safe, and atomic when possible thanks to the noptics library.