How to sort Orders in a Job Chain

Scope

• How to sort a number of orders that have been added to a job chain and to force serialized processing in a predefined order?
• The solution outline includes a job that is added to the top of the job chain and that would 
  • suspend all incoming orders until a predefined idle timeout is reached and no more orders are expected
  • sort the orders and reinsert them to the next job node in the job chain.

Solution

• Download sort_orders.zip
• Extract the archive to any folder within the ./config/live folder of your JobScheduler installation.
• The archive will extract the files included to a folder sort_orders. 
• You can store the sample files to a different folder, the solution does not make use of specific folder names.

Implementation

Components

• The solution implements a job sorter that can be added to the top of any job chain.
  • This job implements a spooler_process() function that suspends all incoming orders.
  • This job is configured for one task and with an idle timeout attribute, i.e. it executes incoming orders sequentually.
  • After the last order this job waits for the duration specified with the idle_timeout attribute for new orders. 
    • The idle timeout is configured by <job idle_timeout="10">.
    • With the idle timeout being expired this job will execute its spooler_exit() function and will sort all orders that have previously been suspended.
      • Sorting is done in alphabetical order.
      • The orders are reinserted to the next job node that follows the sorter job in the job chain.
• The solution makes use of a job chain job_chain1 that includes the job nodes for the sorter job and a hello job.

Usage

• Add two orders to the job_chain1 job chain. 
  • Use an order id in descending alphabetical order, e.g. "cba" for the order id of the first order and "abc" for the order id of the second order.
• Both orders will be suspended in the first node of the job chain.
• After 10s both orders are reinserted to the next job node in the job chain. 
  • This time the orders are processed in ascending alphabetical order.