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# ZooKeeper Programmer's Guide

### Developing Distributed Applications that use ZooKeeper

* [Introduction](#_introduction)
* [The ZooKeeper Data Model](#ch_zkDataModel)
    * [ZNodes](#sc_zkDataModel_znodes)
        * [Watches](#sc_zkDataMode_watches)
        * [Data Access](#Data+Access)
        * [Ephemeral Nodes](#Ephemeral+Nodes)
        * [Sequence Nodes -- Unique Naming](#Sequence+Nodes+--+Unique+Naming)
        * [Container Nodes](#Container+Nodes)
        * [TTL Nodes](#TTL+Nodes)
    * [Time in ZooKeeper](#sc_timeInZk)
    * [ZooKeeper Stat Structure](#sc_zkStatStructure)
* [ZooKeeper Sessions](#ch_zkSessions)
* [ZooKeeper Watches](#ch_zkWatches)
    * [Semantics of Watches](#sc_WatchSemantics)
    * [Remove Watches](#sc_WatchRemoval)
    * [What ZooKeeper Guarantees about Watches](#sc_WatchGuarantees)
    * [Things to Remember about Watches](#sc_WatchRememberThese)
* [ZooKeeper access control using ACLs](#sc_ZooKeeperAccessControl)
    * [ACL Permissions](#sc_ACLPermissions)
        * [Builtin ACL Schemes](#sc_BuiltinACLSchemes)
        * [ZooKeeper C client API](#ZooKeeper+C+client+API)
* [Pluggable ZooKeeper authentication](#sc_ZooKeeperPluggableAuthentication)
* [Consistency Guarantees](#ch_zkGuarantees)
* [Bindings](#ch_bindings)
    * [Java Binding](#Java+Binding)
        * [Client Configuration Parameters](#sc_java_client_configuration)
    * [C Binding](#C+Binding)
        * [Installation](#Installation)
        * [Building Your Own C Client](#Building+Your+Own+C+Client)
* [Building Blocks: A Guide to ZooKeeper Operations](#ch_guideToZkOperations)
    * [Handling Errors](#sc_errorsZk)
    * [Connecting to ZooKeeper](#sc_connectingToZk)
* [Program Structure, with Simple Example](#ch_programStructureWithExample)
* [Gotchas: Common Problems and Troubleshooting](#ch_gotchas)

<a name="_introduction"></a>

## Introduction

This document is a guide for developers wishing to create
distributed applications that take advantage of ZooKeeper's coordination
services. It contains conceptual and practical information.

The first four sections of this guide present higher level
discussions of various ZooKeeper concepts. These are necessary both for an
understanding of how ZooKeeper works as well how to work with it. It does
not contain source code, but it does assume a familiarity with the
problems associated with distributed computing. The sections in this first
group are:

* [The ZooKeeper Data Model](#ch_zkDataModel)
* [ZooKeeper Sessions](#ch_zkSessions)
* [ZooKeeper Watches](#ch_zkWatches)
* [Consistency Guarantees](#ch_zkGuarantees)

The next four sections provide practical programming
information. These are:

* [Building Blocks: A Guide to ZooKeeper Operations](#ch_guideToZkOperations)
* [Bindings](#ch_bindings)
* [Gotchas: Common Problems and Troubleshooting](#ch_gotchas)

The book concludes with an [appendix](#apx_linksToOtherInfo) containing links to other
useful, ZooKeeper-related information.

Most of the information in this document is written to be accessible as
stand-alone reference material. However, before starting your first
ZooKeeper application, you should probably at least read the chapters on
the [ZooKeeper Data Model](#ch_zkDataModel) and [ZooKeeper Basic Operations](#ch_guideToZkOperations).

<a name="ch_zkDataModel"></a>

## The ZooKeeper Data Model

ZooKeeper has a hierarchal name space, much like a distributed file
system. The only difference is that each node in the namespace can have
data associated with it as well as children. It is like having a file
system that allows a file to also be a directory. Paths to nodes are
always expressed as canonical, absolute, slash-separated paths; there are
no relative reference. Any unicode character can be used in a path subject
to the following constraints:

* The null character (\\u0000) cannot be part of a path name. (This
  causes problems with the C binding.)
* The following characters can't be used because they don't
  display well, or render in confusing ways: \\u0001 - \\u001F and \\u007F
  - \\u009F.
* The following characters are not allowed: \\ud800 - uF8FF,
  \\uFFF0 - uFFFF.
* The "." character can be used as part of another name, but "."
  and ".." cannot alone be used to indicate a node along a path,
  because ZooKeeper doesn't use relative paths. The following would be
  invalid: "/a/b/./c" or "/a/b/../c".
* The token "zookeeper" is reserved.

<a name="sc_zkDataModel_znodes"></a>

### ZNodes

Every node in a ZooKeeper tree is referred to as a
_znode_. Znodes maintain a stat structure that
includes version numbers for data changes, acl changes. The stat
structure also has timestamps. The version number, together with the
timestamp, allows ZooKeeper to validate the cache and to coordinate
updates. Each time a znode's data changes, the version number increases.
For instance, whenever a client retrieves data, it also receives the
version of the data. And when a client performs an update or a delete,
it must supply the version of the data of the znode it is changing. If
the version it supplies doesn't match the actual version of the data,
the update will fail. (This behavior can be overridden.)

######Note

>In distributed application engineering, the word
_node_ can refer to a generic host machine, a
server, a member of an ensemble, a client process, etc. In the ZooKeeper
documentation, _znodes_ refer to the data nodes.
_Servers_ refer to machines that make up the
ZooKeeper service; _quorum peers_ refer to the
servers that make up an ensemble; client refers to any host or process
which uses a ZooKeeper service.

Znodes are the main enitity that a programmer access. They have
several characteristics that are worth mentioning here.

<a name="sc_zkDataMode_watches"></a>

#### Watches

Clients can set watches on znodes. Changes to that znode trigger
the watch and then clear the watch. When a watch triggers, ZooKeeper
sends the client a notification. More information about watches can be
found in the section
[ZooKeeper Watches](#ch_zkWatches).

<a name="Data+Access"></a>

#### Data Access

The data stored at each znode in a namespace is read and written
atomically. Reads get all the data bytes associated with a znode and a
write replaces all the data. Each node has an Access Control List
(ACL) that restricts who can do what.

ZooKeeper was not designed to be a general database or large
object store. Instead, it manages coordination data. This data can
come in the form of configuration, status information, rendezvous, etc.
A common property of the various forms of coordination data is that
they are relatively small: measured in kilobytes.
The ZooKeeper client and the server implementations have sanity checks
to ensure that znodes have less than 1M of data, but the data should
be much less than that on average. Operating on relatively large data
sizes will cause some operations to take much more time than others and
will affect the latencies of some operations because of the extra time
needed to move more data over the network and onto storage media. If
large data storage is needed, the usually pattern of dealing with such
data is to store it on a bulk storage system, such as NFS or HDFS, and
store pointers to the storage locations in ZooKeeper.

<a name="Ephemeral+Nodes"></a>

#### Ephemeral Nodes

ZooKeeper also has the notion of ephemeral nodes. These znodes
exists as long as the session that created the znode is active. When
the session ends the znode is deleted. Because of this behavior
ephemeral znodes are not allowed to have children.

<a name="Sequence+Nodes+--+Unique+Naming"></a>

#### Sequence Nodes -- Unique Naming

When creating a znode you can also request that
ZooKeeper append a monotonically increasing counter to the end
of path. This counter is unique to the parent znode. The
counter has a format of %010d -- that is 10 digits with 0
(zero) padding (the counter is formatted in this way to
simplify sorting), i.e. "<path>0000000001". See
[Queue
Recipe](recipes.html#sc_recipes_Queues) for an example use of this feature. Note: the
counter used to store the next sequence number is a signed int
(4bytes) maintained by the parent node, the counter will
overflow when incremented beyond 2147483647 (resulting in a
name "<path>-2147483648").

<a name="Container+Nodes"></a>

#### Container Nodes

**Added in 3.5.3**

ZooKeeper has the notion of container znodes. Container znodes are
special purpose znodes useful for recipes such as leader, lock, etc.
When the last child of a container is deleted, the container becomes
a candidate to be deleted by the server at some point in the future.

Given this property, you should be prepared to get
KeeperException.NoNodeException when creating children inside of
container znodes. i.e. when creating child znodes inside of container znodes
always check for KeeperException.NoNodeException and recreate the container
znode when it occurs.

<a name="TTL+Nodes"></a>

#### TTL Nodes

**Added in 3.5.3**

When creating PERSISTENT or PERSISTENT_SEQUENTIAL znodes,
you can optionally set a TTL in milliseconds for the znode. If the znode
is not modified within the TTL and has no children it will become a candidate
to be deleted by the server at some point in the future.

Note: TTL Nodes must be enabled via System property as they
are disabled by default. See the [Administrator's Guide](zookeeperAdmin.html#sc_configuration) for
details. If you attempt to create TTL Nodes without the
proper System property set the server will throw
KeeperException.UnimplementedException.

<a name="sc_timeInZk"></a>
 
### Time in ZooKeeper

ZooKeeper tracks time multiple ways:

* **Zxid**
  Every change to the ZooKeeper state receives a stamp in the
  form of a _zxid_ (ZooKeeper Transaction Id).
  This exposes the total ordering of all changes to ZooKeeper. Each
  change will have a unique zxid and if zxid1 is smaller than zxid2
  then zxid1 happened before zxid2.
* **Version numbers**
  Every change to a node will cause an increase to one of the
  version numbers of that node. The three version numbers are version
  (number of changes to the data of a znode), cversion (number of
  changes to the children of a znode), and aversion (number of changes
  to the ACL of a znode).
* **Ticks**
  When using multi-server ZooKeeper, servers use ticks to define
  timing of events such as status uploads, session timeouts,
  connection timeouts between peers, etc. The tick time is only
  indirectly exposed through the minimum session timeout (2 times the
  tick time); if a client requests a session timeout less than the
  minimum session timeout, the server will tell the client that the
  session timeout is actually the minimum session timeout.
* **Real time**
  ZooKeeper doesn't use real time, or clock time, at all except
  to put timestamps into the stat structure on znode creation and
  znode modification.

<a name="sc_zkStatStructure"></a>

### ZooKeeper Stat Structure

The Stat structure for each znode in ZooKeeper is made up of the
following fields:

* **czxid**
  The zxid of the change that caused this znode to be
  created.
* **mzxid**
  The zxid of the change that last modified this znode.
* **pzxid**
  The zxid of the change that last modified children of this znode.
* **ctime**
  The time in milliseconds from epoch when this znode was
  created.
* **mtime**
  The time in milliseconds from epoch when this znode was last
  modified.
* **version**
  The number of changes to the data of this znode.
* **cversion**
  The number of changes to the children of this znode.
* **aversion**
  The number of changes to the ACL of this znode.
* **ephemeralOwner**
  The session id of the owner of this znode if the znode is an
  ephemeral node. If it is not an ephemeral node, it will be
  zero.
* **dataLength**
  The length of the data field of this znode.
* **numChildren**
  The number of children of this znode.

<a name="ch_zkSessions"></a>

## ZooKeeper Sessions

A ZooKeeper client establishes a session with the ZooKeeper
service by creating a handle to the service using a language
binding. Once created, the handle starts off in the CONNECTING state
and the client library tries to connect to one of the servers that
make up the ZooKeeper service at which point it switches to the
CONNECTED state. During normal operation the client handle will be in one of these
two states. If an unrecoverable error occurs, such as session
expiration or authentication failure, or if the application explicitly
closes the handle, the handle will move to the CLOSED state.
The following figure shows the possible state transitions of a
ZooKeeper client:

![State transitions](images/state_dia.jpg)

To create a client session the application code must provide
a connection string containing a comma separated list of host:port pairs,
each corresponding to a ZooKeeper server (e.g. "127.0.0.1:4545" or
"127.0.0.1:3000,127.0.0.1:3001,127.0.0.1:3002"). The ZooKeeper
client library will pick an arbitrary server and try to connect to
it. If this connection fails, or if the client becomes
disconnected from the server for any reason, the client will
automatically try the next server in the list, until a connection
is (re-)established.

**Added in 3.2.0**: An
optional "chroot" suffix may also be appended to the connection
string. This will run the client commands while interpreting all
paths relative to this root (similar to the unix chroot
command). If used the example would look like:
"127.0.0.1:4545/app/a" or
"127.0.0.1:3000,127.0.0.1:3001,127.0.0.1:3002/app/a" where the
client would be rooted at "/app/a" and all paths would be relative
to this root - ie getting/setting/etc...  "/foo/bar" would result
in operations being run on "/app/a/foo/bar" (from the server
perspective). This feature is particularly useful in multi-tenant
environments where each user of a particular ZooKeeper service
could be rooted differently. This makes re-use much simpler as
each user can code his/her application as if it were rooted at
"/", while actual location (say /app/a) could be determined at
deployment time.

When a client gets a handle to the ZooKeeper service,
ZooKeeper creates a ZooKeeper session, represented as a 64-bit
number, that it assigns to the client. If the client connects to a
different ZooKeeper server, it will send the session id as a part
of the connection handshake.  As a security measure, the server
creates a password for the session id that any ZooKeeper server
can validate.The password is sent to the client with the session
id when the client establishes the session. The client sends this
password with the session id whenever it reestablishes the session
with a new server.

One of the parameters to the ZooKeeper client library call
to create a ZooKeeper session is the session timeout in
milliseconds. The client sends a requested timeout, the server
responds with the timeout that it can give the client. The current
implementation requires that the timeout be a minimum of 2 times
the tickTime (as set in the server configuration) and a maximum of
20 times the tickTime. The ZooKeeper client API allows access to
the negotiated timeout.

When a client (session) becomes partitioned from the ZK
serving cluster it will begin searching the list of servers that
were specified during session creation. Eventually, when
connectivity between the client and at least one of the servers is
re-established, the session will either again transition to the
"connected" state (if reconnected within the session timeout
value) or it will transition to the "expired" state (if
reconnected after the session timeout). It is not advisable to
create a new session object (a new ZooKeeper.class or zookeeper
handle in the c binding) for disconnection. The ZK client library
will handle reconnect for you. In particular we have heuristics
built into the client library to handle things like "herd effect",
etc... Only create a new session when you are notified of session
expiration (mandatory).

Session expiration is managed by the ZooKeeper cluster
itself, not by the client. When the ZK client establishes a
session with the cluster it provides a "timeout" value detailed
above. This value is used by the cluster to determine when the
client's session expires. Expirations happens when the cluster
does not hear from the client within the specified session timeout
period (i.e. no heartbeat). At session expiration the cluster will
delete any/all ephemeral nodes owned by that session and
immediately notify any/all connected clients of the change (anyone
watching those znodes). At this point the client of the expired
session is still disconnected from the cluster, it will not be
notified of the session expiration until/unless it is able to
re-establish a connection to the cluster. The client will stay in
disconnected state until the TCP connection is re-established with
the cluster, at which point the watcher of the expired session
will receive the "session expired" notification.

Example state transitions for an expired session as seen by
the expired session's watcher:

1. 'connected' : session is established and client
  is communicating with cluster (client/server communication is
  operating properly)
1. .... client is partitioned from the
  cluster
1. 'disconnected' : client has lost connectivity
  with the cluster
1. .... time elapses, after 'timeout' period the
  cluster expires the session, nothing is seen by client as it is
  disconnected from cluster
1. .... time elapses, the client regains network
  level connectivity with the cluster
1. 'expired' : eventually the client reconnects to
  the cluster, it is then notified of the
  expiration

Another parameter to the ZooKeeper session establishment
call is the default watcher. Watchers are notified when any state
change occurs in the client. For example if the client loses
connectivity to the server the client will be notified, or if the
client's session expires, etc... This watcher should consider the
initial state to be disconnected (i.e. before any state changes
events are sent to the watcher by the client lib). In the case of
a new connection, the first event sent to the watcher is typically
the session connection event.

The session is kept alive by requests sent by the client. If
the session is idle for a period of time that would timeout the
session, the client will send a PING request to keep the session
alive. This PING request not only allows the ZooKeeper server to
know that the client is still active, but it also allows the
client to verify that its connection to the ZooKeeper server is
still active. The timing of the PING is conservative enough to
ensure reasonable time to detect a dead connection and reconnect
to a new server.

Once a connection to the server is successfully established
(connected) there are basically two cases where the client lib generates
connectionloss (the result code in c binding, exception in Java -- see
the API documentation for binding specific details) when either a synchronous or
asynchronous operation is performed and one of the following holds:

1. The application calls an operation on a session that is no
  longer alive/valid
1. The ZooKeeper client disconnects from a server when there
  are pending operations to that server, i.e., there is a pending asynchronous call.

**Added in 3.2.0 -- SessionMovedException**. There is an internal
exception that is generally not seen by clients called the SessionMovedException.
This exception occurs because a request was received on a connection for a session
which has been reestablished on a different server. The normal cause of this error is
a client that sends a request to a server, but the network packet gets delayed, so
the client times out and connects to a new server. When the delayed packet arrives at
the first server, the old server detects that the session has moved, and closes the
client connection. Clients normally do not see this error since they do not read
from those old connections. (Old connections are usually closed.) One situation in which this
condition can be seen is when two clients try to reestablish the same connection using
a saved session id and password. One of the clients will reestablish the connection
and the second client will be disconnected (causing the pair to attempt to re-establish
its connection/session indefinitely).

**Updating the list of servers**.  We allow a client to
update the connection string by providing a new comma separated list of host:port pairs,
each corresponding to a ZooKeeper server. The function invokes a probabilistic load-balancing
algorithm which may cause the client to disconnect from its current host with the goal
to achieve expected uniform number of connections per server in the new list.
In case the current host to which the client is connected is not in the new list
this call will always cause the connection to be dropped. Otherwise, the decision
is based on whether the number of servers has increased or decreased and by how much.

For example, if the previous connection string contained 3 hosts and now the list contains
these 3 hosts and 2 more hosts, 40% of clients connected to each of the 3 hosts will
move to one of the new hosts in order to balance the load. The algorithm will cause the client
to drop its connection to the current host to which it is connected with probability 0.4 and in this
case cause the client to connect to one of the 2 new hosts, chosen at random.

Another example -- suppose we have 5 hosts and now update the list to remove 2 of the hosts,
the clients connected to the 3 remaining hosts will stay connected, whereas all clients connected
to the 2 removed hosts will need to move to one of the 3 hosts, chosen at random. If the connection
is dropped, the client moves to a special mode where he chooses a new server to connect to using the
probabilistic algorithm, and not just round robin.

In the first example, each client decides to disconnect with probability 0.4 but once the decision is
made, it will try to connect to a random new server and only if it cannot connect to any of the new
servers will it try to connect to the old ones. After finding a server, or trying all servers in the
new list and failing to connect, the client moves back to the normal mode of operation where it picks
an arbitrary server from the connectString and attempts to connect to it. If that fails, it will continue
trying different random servers in round robin. (see above the algorithm used to initially choose a server)

<a name="ch_zkWatches"></a>

## ZooKeeper Watches

All of the read operations in ZooKeeper - **getData()**, **getChildren()**, and **exists()** - have the option of setting a watch as a
side effect. Here is ZooKeeper's definition of a watch: a watch event is
one-time trigger, sent to the client that set the watch, which occurs when
the data for which the watch was set changes. There are three key points
to consider in this definition of a watch:

* **One-time trigger**
  One watch event will be sent to the client when the data has changed.
  For example, if a client does a getData("/znode1", true) and later the
  data for /znode1 is changed or deleted, the client will get a watch
  event for /znode1. If /znode1 changes again, no watch event will be
  sent unless the client has done another read that sets a new
  watch.
* **Sent to the client**
  This implies that an event is on the way to the client, but may
  not reach the client before the successful return code to the change
  operation reaches the client that initiated the change. Watches are
  sent asynchronously to watchers. ZooKeeper provides an ordering
  guarantee: a client will never see a change for which it has set a
  watch until it first sees the watch event. Network delays or other
  factors may cause different clients to see watches and return codes
  from updates at different times. The key point is that everything seen
  by the different clients will have a consistent order.
* **The data for which the watch was
  set**
  This refers to the different ways a node can change.  It
  helps to think of ZooKeeper as maintaining two lists of
  watches: data watches and child watches.  getData() and
  exists() set data watches. getChildren() sets child
  watches. Alternatively, it may help to think of watches being
  set according to the kind of data returned. getData() and
  exists() return information about the data of the node,
  whereas getChildren() returns a list of children.  Thus,
  setData() will trigger data watches for the znode being set
  (assuming the set is successful). A successful create() will
  trigger a data watch for the znode being created and a child
  watch for the parent znode. A successful delete() will trigger
  both a data watch and a child watch (since there can be no
  more children) for a znode being deleted as well as a child
  watch for the parent znode.

Watches are maintained locally at the ZooKeeper server to which the
client is connected. This allows watches to be lightweight to set,
maintain, and dispatch. When a client connects to a new server, the watch
will be triggered for any session events. Watches will not be received
while disconnected from a server. When a client reconnects, any previously
registered watches will be reregistered and triggered if needed. In
general this all occurs transparently. There is one case where a watch
may be missed: a watch for the existence of a znode not yet created will
be missed if the znode is created and deleted while disconnected.

<a name="sc_WatchSemantics"></a>

### Semantics of Watches

We can set watches with the three calls that read the state of
ZooKeeper: exists, getData, and getChildren. The following list details
the events that a watch can trigger and the calls that enable them:

* **Created event:**
  Enabled with a call to exists.
* **Deleted event:**
  Enabled with a call to exists, getData, and getChildren.
* **Changed event:**
  Enabled with a call to exists and getData.
* **Child event:**
  Enabled with a call to getChildren.

<a name="sc_WatchRemoval"></a>

### Remove Watches

We can remove the watches registered on a znode with a call to
removeWatches. Also, a ZooKeeper client can remove watches locally even
if there is no server connection by setting the local flag to true. The
following list details the events which will be triggered after the
successful watch removal.

* **Child Remove event:**
  Watcher which was added with a call to getChildren.
* **Data Remove event:**
  Watcher which was added with a call to exists or getData.

<a name="sc_WatchGuarantees"></a>

### What ZooKeeper Guarantees about Watches

With regard to watches, ZooKeeper maintains these
guarantees:

* Watches are ordered with respect to other events, other
  watches, and asynchronous replies. The ZooKeeper client libraries
  ensures that everything is dispatched in order.

* A client will see a watch event for a znode it is watching
  before seeing the new data that corresponds to that znode.

* The order of watch events from ZooKeeper corresponds to the
  order of the updates as seen by the ZooKeeper service.

<a name="sc_WatchRememberThese"></a>

### Things to Remember about Watches

* Watches are one time triggers; if you get a watch event and
  you want to get notified of future changes, you must set another
  watch.

* Because watches are one time triggers and there is latency
  between getting the event and sending a new request to get a watch
  you cannot reliably see every change that happens to a node in
  ZooKeeper. Be prepared to handle the case where the znode changes
  multiple times between getting the event and setting the watch
  again. (You may not care, but at least realize it may
  happen.)

* A watch object, or function/context pair, will only be
  triggered once for a given notification. For example, if the same
  watch object is registered for an exists and a getData call for the
  same file and that file is then deleted, the watch object would
  only be invoked once with the deletion notification for the file.

* When you disconnect from a server (for example, when the
  server fails), you will not get any watches until the connection
  is reestablished. For this reason session events are sent to all
  outstanding watch handlers. Use session events to go into a safe
  mode: you will not be receiving events while disconnected, so your
  process should act conservatively in that mode.

<a name="sc_ZooKeeperAccessControl"></a>

## ZooKeeper access control using ACLs

ZooKeeper uses ACLs to control access to its znodes (the
data nodes of a ZooKeeper data tree). The ACL implementation is
quite similar to UNIX file access permissions: it employs
permission bits to allow/disallow various operations against a
node and the scope to which the bits apply. Unlike standard UNIX
permissions, a ZooKeeper node is not limited by the three standard
scopes for user (owner of the file), group, and world
(other). ZooKeeper does not have a notion of an owner of a
znode. Instead, an ACL specifies sets of ids and permissions that
are associated with those ids.

Note also that an ACL pertains only to a specific znode. In
particular it does not apply to children. For example, if
_/app_ is only readable by ip:172.16.16.1 and
_/app/status_ is world readable, anyone will
be able to read _/app/status_; ACLs are not
recursive.

ZooKeeper supports pluggable authentication schemes. Ids are
specified using the form _scheme:expression_,
where _scheme_ is the authentication scheme
that the id corresponds to. The set of valid expressions are defined
by the scheme. For example, _ip:172.16.16.1_ is
an id for a host with the address _172.16.16.1_
using the _ip_ scheme, whereas _digest:bob:password_
is an id for the user with the name of _bob_ using
the _digest_ scheme.

When a client connects to ZooKeeper and authenticates
itself, ZooKeeper associates all the ids that correspond to a
client with the clients connection. These ids are checked against
the ACLs of znodes when a client tries to access a node. ACLs are
made up of pairs of _(scheme:expression,
perms)_. The format of
the _expression_ is specific to the scheme. For
example, the pair _(ip:19.22.0.0/16, READ)_
gives the _READ_ permission to any clients with
an IP address that starts with 19.22.

<a name="sc_ACLPermissions"></a>

### ACL Permissions

ZooKeeper supports the following permissions:

* **CREATE**: you can create a child node
* **READ**: you can get data from a node and list its children.
* **WRITE**: you can set data for a node
* **DELETE**: you can delete a child node
* **ADMIN**: you can set permissions

The _CREATE_
and _DELETE_ permissions have been broken out
of the _WRITE_ permission for finer grained
access controls. The cases for _CREATE_
and _DELETE_ are the following:

You want A to be able to do a set on a ZooKeeper node, but
not be able to _CREATE_
or _DELETE_ children.

_CREATE_
without _DELETE_: clients create requests by
creating ZooKeeper nodes in a parent directory. You want all
clients to be able to add, but only request processor can
delete. (This is kind of like the APPEND permission for
files.)

Also, the _ADMIN_ permission is there
since ZooKeeper doesn’t have a notion of file owner. In some
sense the _ADMIN_ permission designates the
entity as the owner. ZooKeeper doesn’t support the LOOKUP
permission (execute permission bit on directories to allow you
to LOOKUP even though you can't list the directory). Everyone
implicitly has LOOKUP permission. This allows you to stat a
node, but nothing more. (The problem is, if you want to call
zoo_exists() on a node that doesn't exist, there is no
permission to check.)

_ADMIN_ permission also has a special role in terms of ACLs:
in order to retrieve ACLs of a znode user has to have _READ_ or _ADMIN_
 permission, but without _ADMIN_ permission, digest hash values will be 
masked out.

<a name="sc_BuiltinACLSchemes"></a>

#### Builtin ACL Schemes

ZooKeeeper has the following built in schemes:

* **world** has a
  single id, _anyone_, that represents
  anyone.
* **auth** is a special
  scheme which ignores any provided expression and instead uses the current user,
  credentials, and scheme. Any expression (whether _user_ like with SASL
  authentication or _user:password_ like with DIGEST authentication) provided is ignored
  by the ZooKeeper server when persisting the ACL. However, the expression must still be
  provided in the ACL because the ACL must match the form _scheme:expression:perms_.
  This scheme is provided as a convenience as it is a common use-case for
  a user to create a znode and then restrict access to that znode to only that user.
  If there is no authenticated user, setting an ACL with the auth scheme will fail.
* **digest** uses
  a _username:password_ string to generate
  MD5 hash which is then used as an ACL ID
  identity. Authentication is done by sending
  the _username:password_ in clear text. When
  used in the ACL the expression will be
  the _username:base64_
  encoded _SHA1_
  password _digest_.
* **ip** uses the
  client host IP as an ACL ID identity. The ACL expression is of
  the form _addr/bits_ where the most
  significant _bits_
  of _addr_ are matched against the most
  significant _bits_ of the client host
  IP.
* **x509** uses the client
  X500 Principal as an ACL ID identity. The ACL expression is the exact
  X500 Principal name of a client. When using the secure port, clients
  are automatically authenticated and their auth info for the x509 scheme
  is set.

<a name="ZooKeeper+C+client+API"></a>

#### ZooKeeper C client API

The following constants are provided by the ZooKeeper C
library:

* _const_ _int_ ZOO_PERM_READ; //can read node’s value and list its children
* _const_ _int_ ZOO_PERM_WRITE;// can set the node’s value
* _const_ _int_ ZOO_PERM_CREATE; //can create children
* _const_ _int_ ZOO_PERM_DELETE;// can delete children
* _const_ _int_ ZOO_PERM_ADMIN; //can execute set_acl()
* _const_ _int_ ZOO_PERM_ALL;// all of the above flags OR’d together

The following are the standard ACL IDs:

* _struct_ Id ZOO_ANYONE_ID_UNSAFE; //(‘world’,’anyone’)
* _struct_ Id ZOO_AUTH_IDS;// (‘auth’,’’)

ZOO_AUTH_IDS empty identity string should be interpreted as “the identity of the creator”.

ZooKeeper client comes with three standard ACLs:

* _struct_ ACL_vector ZOO_OPEN_ACL_UNSAFE; //(ZOO_PERM_ALL,ZOO_ANYONE_ID_UNSAFE)
* _struct_ ACL_vector ZOO_READ_ACL_UNSAFE;// (ZOO_PERM_READ, ZOO_ANYONE_ID_UNSAFE)
* _struct_ ACL_vector ZOO_CREATOR_ALL_ACL; //(ZOO_PERM_ALL,ZOO_AUTH_IDS)

The ZOO_OPEN_ACL_UNSAFE is completely open free for all
ACL: any application can execute any operation on the node and
can create, list and delete its children. The
ZOO_READ_ACL_UNSAFE is read-only access for any
application. CREATE_ALL_ACL grants all permissions to the
creator of the node. The creator must have been authenticated by
the server (for example, using “_digest_”
scheme) before it can create nodes with this ACL.

The following ZooKeeper operations deal with ACLs:

* _int_ _zoo_add_auth_
  (zhandle_t \*zh,_const_ _char_*
  scheme,_const_ _char_*
  cert, _int_ certLen, void_completion_t
  completion, _const_ _void_
  \*data);

The application uses the zoo_add_auth function to
authenticate itself to the server. The function can be called
multiple times if the application wants to authenticate using
different schemes and/or identities.

* _int_ _zoo_create_
  (zhandle_t \*zh, _const_ _char_
  \*path, _const_ _char_
  \*value,_int_
  valuelen, _const_ _struct_
  ACL_vector \*acl, _int_
  flags,_char_
  \*realpath, _int_
  max_realpath_len);

zoo_create(...) operation creates a new node. The acl
parameter is a list of ACLs associated with the node. The parent
node must have the CREATE permission bit set.

* _int_ _zoo_get_acl_
  (zhandle_t \*zh, _const_ _char_
  \*path,_struct_ ACL_vector
  \*acl, _struct_ Stat \*stat);

This operation returns a node’s ACL info. The node must have READ or ADMIN
permission set. Without ADMIN permission, the digest hash values will be masked out.

* _int_ _zoo_set_acl_
  (zhandle_t \*zh, _const_ _char_
  \*path, _int_
  version,_const_ _struct_
  ACL_vector \*acl);

This function replaces node’s ACL list with a new one. The
node must have the ADMIN permission set.

Here is a sample code that makes use of the above APIs to
authenticate itself using the “_foo_” scheme
and create an ephemeral node “/xyz” with create-only
permissions.

######Note
>This is a very simple example which is intended to show
how to interact with ZooKeeper ACLs
specifically. See *.../trunk/zookeeper-client/zookeeper-client-c/src/cli.c*
for an example of a C client implementation



    #include <string.h>
    #include <errno.h>
    
    #include "zookeeper.h"
    
    static zhandle_t *zh;
    
    /**
     * In this example this method gets the cert for your
     *   environment -- you must provide
     */
    char *foo_get_cert_once(char* id) { return 0; }

    /** Watcher function -- empty for this example, not something you should
     * do in real code */
    void watcher(zhandle_t *zzh, int type, int state, const char *path,
             void *watcherCtx) {}
    
    int main(int argc, char argv) {
      char buffer[512];
      char p[2048];
      char *cert=0;
      char appId[64];

      strcpy(appId, "example.foo_test");
      cert = foo_get_cert_once(appId);
      if(cert!=0) {
        fprintf(stderr,
            "Certificate for appid [%s] is [%s]\n",appId,cert);
        strncpy(p,cert, sizeof(p)-1);
        free(cert);
      } else {
        fprintf(stderr, "Certificate for appid [%s] not found\n",appId);
        strcpy(p, "dummy");
      }
    
      zoo_set_debug_level(ZOO_LOG_LEVEL_DEBUG);
    
      zh = zookeeper_init("localhost:3181", watcher, 10000, 0, 0, 0);
      if (!zh) {
        return errno;
      }
      if(zoo_add_auth(zh,"foo",p,strlen(p),0,0)!=ZOK)
        return 2;
    
      struct ACL CREATE_ONLY_ACL[] = {{ZOO_PERM_CREATE, ZOO_AUTH_IDS}};
      struct ACL_vector CREATE_ONLY = {1, CREATE_ONLY_ACL};
      int rc = zoo_create(zh,"/xyz","value", 5, &CREATE_ONLY, ZOO_EPHEMERAL,
                      buffer, sizeof(buffer)-1);
    
      /** this operation will fail with a ZNOAUTH error */
      int buflen= sizeof(buffer);
      struct Stat stat;
      rc = zoo_get(zh, "/xyz", 0, buffer, &buflen, &stat);
      if (rc) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Error %d for %s\n", rc, __LINE__);
      }
    
      zookeeper_close(zh);
      return 0;
    }


<a name="sc_ZooKeeperPluggableAuthentication"></a>

## Pluggable ZooKeeper authentication

ZooKeeper runs in a variety of different environments with
various different authentication schemes, so it has a completely
pluggable authentication framework. Even the builtin authentication
schemes use the pluggable authentication framework.

To understand how the authentication framework works, first you must
understand the two main authentication operations. The framework
first must authenticate the client. This is usually done as soon as
the client connects to a server and consists of validating information
sent from or gathered about a client and associating it with the connection.
The second operation handled by the framework is finding the entries in an
ACL that correspond to client. ACL entries are <_idspec,
permissions_> pairs. The _idspec_ may be
a simple string match against the authentication information associated
with the connection or it may be a expression that is evaluated against that
information. It is up to the implementation of the authentication plugin
to do the match. Here is the interface that an authentication plugin must
implement:


    public interface AuthenticationProvider {
        String getScheme();
        KeeperException.Code handleAuthentication(ServerCnxn cnxn, byte authData[]);
        boolean isValid(String id);
        boolean matches(String id, String aclExpr);
        boolean isAuthenticated();
    }


The first method _getScheme_ returns the string
that identifies the plugin. Because we support multiple methods of authentication,
an authentication credential or an _idspec_ will always be
prefixed with _scheme:_. The ZooKeeper server uses the scheme
returned by the authentication plugin to determine which ids the scheme
applies to.

_handleAuthentication_ is called when a client
sends authentication information to be associated with a connection. The
client specifies the scheme to which the information corresponds. The
ZooKeeper server passes the information to the authentication plugin whose
_getScheme_ matches the scheme passed by the client. The
implementor of _handleAuthentication_ will usually return
an error if it determines that the information is bad, or it will associate information
with the connection using _cnxn.getAuthInfo().add(new Id(getScheme(), data))_.

The authentication plugin is involved in both setting and using ACLs. When an
ACL is set for a znode, the ZooKeeper server will pass the id part of the entry to
the _isValid(String id)_ method. It is up to the plugin to verify
that the id has a correct form. For example, _ip:172.16.0.0/16_
is a valid id, but _ip:host.com_ is not. If the new ACL includes
an "auth" entry, _isAuthenticated_ is used to see if the
authentication information for this scheme that is assocatied with the connection
should be added to the ACL. Some schemes
should not be included in auth. For example, the IP address of the client is not
considered as an id that should be added to the ACL if auth is specified.

ZooKeeper invokes _matches(String id, String aclExpr)_ when checking an ACL. It
needs to match authentication information of the client against the relevant ACL
entries. To find the entries which apply to the client, the ZooKeeper server will
find the scheme of each entry and if there is authentication information
from that client for that scheme, _matches(String id, String aclExpr)_
will be called with _id_ set to the authentication information
that was previously added to the connection by _handleAuthentication_ and
_aclExpr_ set to the id of the ACL entry. The authentication plugin
uses its own logic and matching scheme to determine if _id_ is included
in _aclExpr_.

There are two built in authentication plugins: _ip_ and
_digest_. Additional plugins can adding using system properties. At
startup the ZooKeeper server will look for system properties that start with
"zookeeper.authProvider." and interpret the value of those properties as the class name
of an authentication plugin. These properties can be set using the
_-Dzookeeeper.authProvider.X=com.f.MyAuth_ or adding entries such as
the following in the server configuration file:


    authProvider.1=com.f.MyAuth
    authProvider.2=com.f.MyAuth2


Care should be taking to ensure that the suffix on the property is unique. If there are
duplicates such as _-Dzookeeeper.authProvider.X=com.f.MyAuth -Dzookeeper.authProvider.X=com.f.MyAuth2_,
only one will be used. Also all servers must have the same plugins defined, otherwise clients using
the authentication schemes provided by the plugins will have problems connecting to some servers.

<a name="ch_zkGuarantees"></a>

## Consistency Guarantees

ZooKeeper is a high performance, scalable service. Both reads and
write operations are designed to be fast, though reads are faster than
writes. The reason for this is that in the case of reads, ZooKeeper can
serve older data, which in turn is due to ZooKeeper's consistency
guarantees:

* *Sequential Consistency* :
    Updates from a client will be applied in the order that they
    were sent.

* *Atomicity* :
    Updates either succeed or fail -- there are no partial
    results.

* *Single System Image* :
    A client will see the same view of the service regardless of
    the server that it connects to.

* *Reliability* :
    Once an update has been applied, it will persist from that
    time forward until a client overwrites the update. This guarantee
    has two corollaries:
    1. If a client gets a successful return code, the update will
      have been applied. On some failures (communication errors,
      timeouts, etc) the client will not know if the update has
      applied or not. We take steps to minimize the failures, but the
      guarantee is only present with successful return codes.
      (This is called the _monotonicity condition_ in Paxos.)
    1. Any updates that are seen by the client, through a read
      request or successful update, will never be rolled back when
      recovering from server failures.

* *Timeliness* :
    The clients view of the system is guaranteed to be up-to-date
    within a certain time bound (on the order of tens of seconds).
    Either system changes will be seen by a client within this bound, or
    the client will detect a service outage.

Using these consistency guarantees it is easy to build higher level
functions such as leader election, barriers, queues, and read/write
revocable locks solely at the ZooKeeper client (no additions needed to
ZooKeeper). See [Recipes and Solutions](recipes.html)
for more details.

######Note

>Sometimes developers mistakenly assume one other guarantee that
ZooKeeper does _not_ in fact make. This is:
> * Simultaneously Consistent Cross-Client Views* :
    ZooKeeper does not guarantee that at every instance in
    time, two different clients will have identical views of
    ZooKeeper data. Due to factors like network delays, one client
    may perform an update before another client gets notified of the
    change. Consider the scenario of two clients, A and B. If client
    A sets the value of a znode /a from 0 to 1, then tells client B
    to read /a, client B may read the old value of 0, depending on
    which server it is connected to. If it
    is important that Client A and Client B read the same value,
    Client B should should call the **sync()** method from the ZooKeeper API
    method before it performs its read.
    So, ZooKeeper by itself doesn't guarantee that changes occur
    synchronously across all servers, but ZooKeeper
    primitives can be used to construct higher level functions that
    provide useful client synchronization. (For more information,
    see the [ZooKeeper Recipes](recipes.html).

<a name="ch_bindings"></a>

## Bindings

The ZooKeeper client libraries come in two languages: Java and C.
The following sections describe these.

<a name="Java+Binding"></a>

### Java Binding

There are two packages that make up the ZooKeeper Java binding:
**org.apache.zookeeper** and **org.apache.zookeeper.data**. The rest of the
packages that make up ZooKeeper are used internally or are part of the
server implementation. The **org.apache.zookeeper.data** package is made up of
generated classes that are used simply as containers.

The main class used by a ZooKeeper Java client is the **ZooKeeper** class. Its two constructors differ only
by an optional session id and password. ZooKeeper supports session
recovery accross instances of a process. A Java program may save its
session id and password to stable storage, restart, and recover the
session that was used by the earlier instance of the program.

When a ZooKeeper object is created, two threads are created as
well: an IO thread and an event thread. All IO happens on the IO thread
(using Java NIO). All event callbacks happen on the event thread.
Session maintenance such as reconnecting to ZooKeeper servers and
maintaining heartbeat is done on the IO thread. Responses for
synchronous methods are also processed in the IO thread. All responses
to asynchronous methods and watch events are processed on the event
thread. There are a few things to notice that result from this
design:

* All completions for asynchronous calls and watcher callbacks
  will be made in order, one at a time. The caller can do any
  processing they wish, but no other callbacks will be processed
  during that time.
* Callbacks do not block the processing of the IO thread or the
  processing of the synchronous calls.
* Synchronous calls may not return in the correct order. For
  example, assume a client does the following processing: issues an
  asynchronous read of node **/a** with
  _watch_ set to true, and then in the completion
  callback of the read it does a synchronous read of **/a**. (Maybe not good practice, but not illegal
  either, and it makes for a simple example.)
  Note that if there is a change to **/a** between the asynchronous read and the
  synchronous read, the client library will receive the watch event
  saying **/a** changed before the
  response for the synchronous read, but because the completion
  callback is blocking the event queue, the synchronous read will
  return with the new value of **/a**
  before the watch event is processed.

Finally, the rules associated with shutdown are straightforward:
once a ZooKeeper object is closed or receives a fatal event
(SESSION_EXPIRED and AUTH_FAILED), the ZooKeeper object becomes invalid.
On a close, the two threads shut down and any further access on zookeeper
handle is undefined behavior and should be avoided.

<a name="sc_java_client_configuration"></a>

#### Client Configuration Parameters

The following list contains configuration properties for the Java client. You can set any
of these properties using Java system properties. For server properties, please check the
[Server configuration section of the Admin Guide](zookeeperAdmin.html#sc_configuration).
The ZooKeeper Wiki also has useful pages about
[ZooKeeper SSL support](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ZOOKEEPER/ZooKeeper+SSL+User+Guide), 
and [SASL authentication for ZooKeeper](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ZOOKEEPER/ZooKeeper+and+SASL).


* *zookeeper.sasl.client* :
    Set the value to **false** to disable
    SASL authentication. Default is **true**.

* *zookeeper.sasl.clientconfig* :
    Specifies the context key in the JAAS login file. Default is "Client".

* *zookeeper.server.principal* :
    Specifies the server principal to be used by the client for authentication, while connecting to the zookeeper
    server, when Kerberos authentication is enabled. If this configuration is provided, then 
    the ZooKeeper client will NOT USE any of the following parameters to determine the server principal: 
    zookeeper.sasl.client.username, zookeeper.sasl.client.canonicalize.hostname, zookeeper.server.realm
    Note: this config parameter is working only for ZooKeeper 3.5.7+, 3.6.0+

* *zookeeper.sasl.client.username* :
    Traditionally, a principal is divided into three parts: the primary, the instance, and the realm.
    The format of a typical Kerberos V5 principal is primary/instance@REALM.
    zookeeper.sasl.client.username specifies the primary part of the server principal. Default
    is "zookeeper". Instance part is derived from the server IP. Finally server's principal is
    username/IP@realm, where username is the value of zookeeper.sasl.client.username, IP is
    the server IP, and realm is the value of zookeeper.server.realm.

* *zookeeper.sasl.client.canonicalize.hostname* :
    Expecting the zookeeper.server.principal parameter is not provided, the ZooKeeper client will try to
    determine the 'instance' (host) part of the ZooKeeper server principal. First it takes the hostname provided 
    as the ZooKeeper server connection string. Then it tries to 'canonicalize' the address by getting
    the fully qualified domain name belonging to the address. You can disable this 'canonicalization'
    by setting: zookeeper.sasl.client.canonicalize.hostname=false

* *zookeeper.server.realm* :
    Realm part of the server principal. By default it is the client principal realm.

* *zookeeper.disableAutoWatchReset* :
    This switch controls whether automatic watch resetting is enabled. Clients automatically
    reset watches during session reconnect by default, this option allows the client to turn off
    this behavior by setting zookeeper.disableAutoWatchReset to **true**.

* *zookeeper.client.secure* :
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    If you want to connect to the server secure client port, you need to set this property to
    **true**
    on the client. This will connect to server using SSL with specified credentials. Note that
    it requires the Netty client.

* *zookeeper.clientCnxnSocket* :
    Specifies which ClientCnxnSocket to be used. Possible values are
    **org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxnSocketNIO**
    and
    **org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxnSocketNetty**
    . Default is
    **org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxnSocketNIO**
    . If you want to connect to server's secure client port, you need to set this property to
    **org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxnSocketNetty**
    on client.

* *zookeeper.ssl.keyStore.location and zookeeper.ssl.keyStore.password* :
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the file path to a JKS containing the local credentials to be used for SSL connections,
    and the password to unlock the file.

* *zookeeper.ssl.trustStore.location and zookeeper.ssl.trustStore.password* :
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the file path to a JKS containing the remote credentials to be used for SSL connections,
    and the password to unlock the file.

* *zookeeper.ssl.keyStore.type* and *zookeeper.ssl.trustStore.type*:
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the file format of keys/trust store files used to establish TLS connection to the ZooKeeper server. 
    Values: JKS, PEM, PKCS12 or null (detect by filename). Default: null.
    **New in 3.6.3, 3.7.0:**
    The format BCFKS was added.

* *jute.maxbuffer* :
    It specifies the maximum size of the incoming data from the server. The default value is 4194304
    Bytes , or just 4 MB. This is really a sanity check. The ZooKeeper server is designed to store and send
    data on the order of kilobytes. If incoming data length is more than this value, an IOException
    is raised.

* *zookeeper.kinit* :
    Specifies path to kinit binary. Default is "/usr/bin/kinit".

<a name="C+Binding"></a>

### C Binding

The C binding has a single-threaded and multi-threaded library.
The multi-threaded library is easiest to use and is most similar to the
Java API. This library will create an IO thread and an event dispatch
thread for handling connection maintenance and callbacks. The
single-threaded library allows ZooKeeper to be used in event driven
applications by exposing the event loop used in the multi-threaded
library.

The package includes two shared libraries: zookeeper_st and
zookeeper_mt. The former only provides the asynchronous APIs and
callbacks for integrating into the application's event loop. The only
reason this library exists is to support the platforms were a
_pthread_ library is not available or is unstable
(i.e. FreeBSD 4.x). In all other cases, application developers should
link with zookeeper_mt, as it includes support for both Sync and Async
API.

<a name="Installation"></a>

#### Installation

If you're building the client from a check-out from the Apache
repository, follow the steps outlined below. If you're building from a
project source package downloaded from apache, skip to step **3**.

1. Run `ant compile_jute` from the ZooKeeper
  top level directory (*.../trunk*).
  This will create a directory named "generated" under
  *.../trunk/zookeeper-client/zookeeper-client-c*.
1. Change directory to the*.../trunk/zookeeper-client/zookeeper-client-c*
  and run `autoreconf -if` to bootstrap **autoconf**, **automake** and **libtool**. Make sure you have **autoconf version 2.59** or greater installed.
  Skip to step**4**.
1. If you are building from a project source package,
  unzip/untar the source tarball and cd to the*
              zookeeper-x.x.x/zookeeper-client/zookeeper-client-c* directory.
1. Run `./configure <your-options>` to
  generate the makefile. Here are some of options the **configure** utility supports that can be
  useful in this step:
  * `--enable-debug`
    Enables optimization and enables debug info compiler
    options. (Disabled by default.)
  * `--without-syncapi`
    Disables Sync API support; zookeeper_mt library won't be
    built. (Enabled by default.)
  * `--disable-static`
    Do not build static libraries. (Enabled by
    default.)
  * `--disable-shared`
    Do not build shared libraries. (Enabled by
    default.)
######Note
>See INSTALL for general information about running **configure**.
1. Run `make` or `make
  install` to build the libraries and install them.
1. To generate doxygen documentation for the ZooKeeper API, run
  `make doxygen-doc`. All documentation will be
  placed in a new subfolder named docs. By default, this command
  only generates HTML. For information on other document formats,
  run `./configure --help`

<a name="Building+Your+Own+C+Client"></a>

#### Building Your Own C Client

In order to be able to use the ZooKeeper C API in your application
you have to remember to

1. Include ZooKeeper header: `#include <zookeeper/zookeeper.h>`
1. If you are building a multithreaded client, compile with
  `-DTHREADED` compiler flag to enable the multi-threaded version of
  the library, and then link against against the
  _zookeeper_mt_ library. If you are building a
  single-threaded client, do not compile with `-DTHREADED`, and be
  sure to link against the_zookeeper_st_library.

######Note
>See *.../trunk/zookeeper-client/zookeeper-client-c/src/cli.c*
for an example of a C client implementation

<a name="ch_guideToZkOperations"></a>

## Building Blocks: A Guide to ZooKeeper Operations

This section surveys all the operations a developer can perform
against a ZooKeeper server. It is lower level information than the earlier
concepts chapters in this manual, but higher level than the ZooKeeper API
Reference. 

<a name="sc_errorsZk"></a>

### Handling Errors

Both the Java and C client bindings may report errors. The Java client binding does so by throwing KeeperException, calling code() on the exception will return the specific error code. The C client binding returns an error code as defined in the enum ZOO_ERRORS. API callbacks indicate result code for both language bindings. See the API documentation (javadoc for Java, doxygen for C) for full details on the possible errors and their meaning.

<a name="sc_connectingToZk"></a>

### Connecting to ZooKeeper

Before we begin, you will have to set up a running Zookeeper server so that we can start developing the client. For C client bindings, we will be using the multithreaded library(zookeeper_mt) with a simple example written in C. To establish a connection with Zookeeper server, we make use of C API - _zookeeper_init_ with the following signature:

    int zookeeper_init(const char *host, watcher_fn fn, int recv_timeout, const clientid_t *clientid, void *context, int flags);

* **host* :
    Connection string to zookeeper server in the format of host:port. If there are multiple servers, use comma as separator after specifying the host:port pairs. Eg: "127.0.0.1:2181,127.0.0.1:3001,127.0.0.1:3002"

* *fn* :
    Watcher function to process events when a notification is triggered.

* *recv_timeout* :
    Session expiration time in milliseconds.

* *clientid* :
    We can specify 0 for a new session. If a session has already establish previously, we could provide that client ID and it would reconnect to that previous session.

* *context* :
    Context object that can be associated with the zkhandle_t handler. If it is not used, we can set it to 0.

* *flags* :
    In an initiation, we can leave it for 0.

We will demonstrate client that outputs "Connected to Zookeeper" after successful connection or an error message otherwise. Let's call the following code _zkClient.cc_ :


    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <zookeeper/zookeeper.h>
    #include <errno.h>
    using namespace std;

    // Keeping track of the connection state
    static int connected = 0;
    static int expired   = 0;

    // *zkHandler handles the connection with Zookeeper
    static zhandle_t *zkHandler;

    // watcher function would process events
    void watcher(zhandle_t *zkH, int type, int state, const char *path, void *watcherCtx)
    {
        if (type == ZOO_SESSION_EVENT) {

            // state refers to states of zookeeper connection.
            // To keep it simple, we would demonstrate these 3: ZOO_EXPIRED_SESSION_STATE, ZOO_CONNECTED_STATE, ZOO_NOTCONNECTED_STATE
            // If you are using ACL, you should be aware of an authentication failure state - ZOO_AUTH_FAILED_STATE
            if (state == ZOO_CONNECTED_STATE) {
                connected = 1;
            } else if (state == ZOO_NOTCONNECTED_STATE ) {
                connected = 0;
            } else if (state == ZOO_EXPIRED_SESSION_STATE) {
                expired = 1;
                connected = 0;
                zookeeper_close(zkH);
            }
        }
    }

    int main(){
        zoo_set_debug_level(ZOO_LOG_LEVEL_DEBUG);

        // zookeeper_init returns the handler upon a successful connection, null otherwise
        zkHandler = zookeeper_init("localhost:2181", watcher, 10000, 0, 0, 0);

        if (!zkHandler) {
            return errno;
        }else{
            printf("Connection established with Zookeeper. \n");
        }

        // Close Zookeeper connection
        zookeeper_close(zkHandler);

        return 0;
    }


Compile the code with the multithreaded library mentioned before.

`> g++ -Iinclude/ zkClient.cpp -lzookeeper_mt -o Client`

Run the client.

`> ./Client`

From the output, you should see "Connected to Zookeeper" along with Zookeeper's DEBUG messages if the connection is successful.

<a name="ch_gotchas"></a>

## Gotchas: Common Problems and Troubleshooting

So now you know ZooKeeper. It's fast, simple, your application
works, but wait ... something's wrong. Here are some pitfalls that
ZooKeeper users fall into:

1. If you are using watches, you must look for the connected watch
  event. When a ZooKeeper client disconnects from a server, you will
  not receive notification of changes until reconnected. If you are
  watching for a znode to come into existence, you will miss the event
  if the znode is created and deleted while you are disconnected.
1. You must test ZooKeeper server failures. The ZooKeeper service
  can survive failures as long as a majority of servers are active. The
  question to ask is: can your application handle it? In the real world
  a client's connection to ZooKeeper can break. (ZooKeeper server
  failures and network partitions are common reasons for connection
  loss.) The ZooKeeper client library takes care of recovering your
  connection and letting you know what happened, but you must make sure
  that you recover your state and any outstanding requests that failed.
  Find out if you got it right in the test lab, not in production - test
  with a ZooKeeper service made up of a several of servers and subject
  them to reboots.
1. The list of ZooKeeper servers used by the client must match the
  list of ZooKeeper servers that each ZooKeeper server has. Things can
  work, although not optimally, if the client list is a subset of the
  real list of ZooKeeper servers, but not if the client lists ZooKeeper
  servers not in the ZooKeeper cluster.
1. Be careful where you put that transaction log. The most
  performance-critical part of ZooKeeper is the transaction log.
  ZooKeeper must sync transactions to media before it returns a
  response. A dedicated transaction log device is key to consistent good
  performance. Putting the log on a busy device will adversely effect
  performance. If you only have one storage device, put trace files on
  NFS and increase the snapshotCount; it doesn't eliminate the problem,
  but it can mitigate it.
1. Set your Java max heap size correctly. It is very important to
  _avoid swapping._ Going to disk unnecessarily will
  almost certainly degrade your performance unacceptably. Remember, in
  ZooKeeper, everything is ordered, so if one request hits the disk, all
  other queued requests hit the disk.
  To avoid swapping, try to set the heapsize to the amount of
  physical memory you have, minus the amount needed by the OS and cache.
  The best way to determine an optimal heap size for your configurations
  is to _run load tests_. If for some reason you
  can't, be conservative in your estimates and choose a number well
  below the limit that would cause your machine to swap. For example, on
  a 4G machine, a 3G heap is a conservative estimate to start
  with.

## Links to Other Information

Outside the formal documentation, there're several other sources of
information for ZooKeeper developers.

* *[API Reference](https://zookeeper.apache.org/doc/current/apidocs/zookeeper-server/index.html)* :
    The complete reference to the ZooKeeper API

* *[ZooKeeper Talk at the Hadoop Summit 2008](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXI9xiesUV8)* :
    A video introduction to ZooKeeper, by Benjamin Reed of Yahoo!
    Research

* *[Barrier and Queue Tutorial](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ZOOKEEPER/Tutorial)* :
    The excellent Java tutorial by Flavio Junqueira, implementing
    simple barriers and producer-consumer queues using ZooKeeper.

* *[ZooKeeper - A Reliable, Scalable Distributed Coordination System](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ZOOKEEPER/ZooKeeperArticles)* :
    An article by Todd Hoff (07/15/2008)

* *[ZooKeeper Recipes](recipes.html)* :
    Pseudo-level discussion of the implementation of various
    synchronization solutions with ZooKeeper: Event Handles, Queues,
    Locks, and Two-phase Commits.

