SwiftRetrier

🪨 Rock-solid, concise and thorough library to retry and repeat async throws jobs.

A cold retrier with all options

var conditionPublisher: AnyPublisher<Bool, Never>

// Fully configurable policy with good defaults. Also available: withConstantDelay(), withNoDelay()
let coldRetrier = withExponentialBackoff() 
    // Fetch only when you've got network and your user is authenticated for example
    .onlyWhen(conditionPublisher)
    // Ensure your retrier gives up on some conditions
    .giveUpAfter(maxAttempts: 10)
    .giveUpAfter(timeout: 30)
    .giveUpOnErrors {
        $0 is MyFatalError
    }

Exponential backoff with full jitter is the default and recommended algorithm to fetch from a backend.

Execute and repeat

You can chain a call to execute { try await job() }, but you can also reuse any cold retrier to execute multiple jobs independently.

let fetcher = coldRetrier.execute { 
    try await fetchSomething() 
}

let poller = coldRetrier
    // If you want to poll, well you can
    .repeating(withDelay: 30)
    .execute { 
        try await fetchSomethingElse() 
    }
 
// you can omit `execute` and call the retrier as a function:
let otherFetcher = coldRetrier { try await fetchSomethingElse() }

// You can always cancel hot retriers
fetcher.cancel()

Await value in concurrency context

If you don't repeat, you can wait for a single value in a concurrency context

// This will throw if you cancel the retrier or if any `giveUp*()` function matches
let value = try await withExponentialBackoff() 
    .onlyWhen(conditionPublisher)
    .giveUpAfter(maxAttempts: 10)
    .giveUpAfter(timeout: 30)
    .giveUpOnErrors {
        $0 is MyFatalError
    }
    .execute {
        try await api.fetchValue()
    }
    .value

Note that you can use cancellableValue instead of value. In this case, if the task wrapping the concurrency context is cancelled, the underlying retrier will be cancelled.

Simple events handling

Retrier events can be handled simply.

fetcher.onEach {
    switch $0 {
        case .attemptSuccess(let value):
            print("Fetched something: \(value)")
        case .attemptFailure(let failure):
            print("An attempt #\(failure.index) failed with \(failure.error)")
        case .completion(let error):
            print("Fetcher completed with \(error?.localizedDescription ?? "no error")")
    }
}

Keep in mind that the event handler will be retained until the retrier finishes (succeeding, failing or being cancelled).

Combine publishers

All retriers (including repeaters) expose Combine publishers that publish relevant events.

let cancellable = poller.publisher()
    .sink {
        switch $0 {
            case .attemptSuccess(let value):
                print("Fetched something: \(value)")
            case .attemptFailure(let failure):
                print("An attempt #\(failure.index) failed with \(failure.error)")
            case .completion(let error):
                print("Poller completed with \(error?.localizedDescription ?? "no error")")
        }
    }

• The publishers never fail, meaning their completion is always .finished and you can sink {} without handling the completion
• Instead, attemptFailure, attemptSuccess and completion events are materialized and sent as values.
• Retriers expose successPublisher(), failurePublisher() and completionPublisher() shortcuts.
• You can use publisher(propagateCancellation: true) to cancel the retrier when you're done listening to it.

Retriers contract

• All retriers are cancellable.
• Retriers retry until either:
  • their policy gives up
  • the job succeeds (except for repeaters that will delay another trial)
  • the retrier is cancelled
  • their conditionPublisher ends after having published no value or false as its last value
• When a policy gives up, the last job error is thrown on any try await retrier.value, and also embedded into a RetrierEvent.completion.
• Retriers publishers emit only on DispatchQueue.main.
• When cancelled, the retrier publishers emit a RetrierEvent.completion(CancellationError()) value then a .finished completion and no intermediary attempt result.
• All retriers start their tasks immediately on initialization, and just wait for the current main queue cycle to end before executing jobs. This way, if a retrier is created on main queue and cancelled in the same cycle, it's guaranteed to not execute the job even once.
• You can create and cancel retriers on a different DispatchQueue or even in an asynchronous context. But in this case, guarantees such as the previous one are no longer valid.
• Condition publishers events will be processed on DispatchQueue.main, but won't be delayed if they're already emitted on it.
• After a retrier is interrupted then resumed by its conditionPublisher, its policy is reused from start. Consequently giveUpAfter(maxAttempts:) and giveUpAfter(timeout:) checks are applied to the current trial, ignoring previous ones.

Retry Policies

It's important to understand that policies are not used to repeat after a success, but only to retry on failure. When repeating, the policy is reused from start after each success.

Built-in retry policies

ExponentialBackoffRetryPolicy is implemented according to state-of-the-art algorithms. Have a look to the available arguments, and you'll recognize the standard parameters and options. You can especially choose the jitter type between none, full (default) and decorrelated.

ConstantDelayRetryPolicy does what you expect, just waiting for a fixed amount of time.

You can add failure conditions using giveUp*() functions.

Homemade policy

You can create your own policies that conform RetryPolicy and they will benefit from the same modifiers. Have a look at ConstantDelayRetryPolicy.swift for a basic example.

⚠️ Policies should be stateless. To ensure that, I recommend implementing them with struct types.

If a policy needs to know about attempts history, ensure you propagate what's needed when implementing policyAfter(attemptFailure:, delay:) -> any RetryPolicy.

To create a DSL entry point using your policy:

public func withMyOwnPolicy() -> ColdRetrier {
    let policy = MyOwnPolicy()
    return ColdRetrier(policy: policy, conditionPublisher: nil)
}

Actual retrier classes

You can use the classes initializers directly, namely SimpleRetrier, ConditionalRetrier and Repeater.

Contribute

Feel free to make any comment, criticism, bug report or feature request using GitHub issues. You can also directly send me an email at pierre strange "a" with a long round tail pittscraft.com.

License

SwiftRetrier is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.