Acton ERN (Entity Resource Name)

Standardized Resource Management in Distributed Systems

Acton ERN provides a standardized approach for uniquely identifying and managing resources across services, partitions, and hierarchies in distributed systems.

Implement a consistent, type-safe resource naming scheme that scales with your system.

Why Acton ERN?

🔍 Problem: Resource Identification Inconsistency

In distributed systems, resources are scattered across multiple services, databases, and storage systems. Without a consistent naming scheme:

• Resources lack consistent location and reference methods
• Relationships between resources require additional tracking mechanisms
• Sorting and querying resources efficiently requires custom solutions
• Type safety is compromised, leading to runtime errors

✅ Solution: Structured, Type-Safe Resource Names

Acton ERN addresses these issues by providing:

• Consistent Structure: Every resource follows the same naming pattern, making them predictable and systematic
• Hierarchical Organization: Resources can be organized in parent-child relationships, reflecting their logical structure
• Time-Ordered Sorting: When using time-based ID types, resources can be efficiently sorted and queried by creation time
• Content-Based Addressing: When using hash-based ID types, resources with identical content can be deterministically identified
• Type Safety: The builder pattern ensures ERNs are constructed correctly at compile time

Real-World Benefits

For Microservice Architectures

• Service Discovery: Locate resources across different services using a consistent addressing scheme
• Cross-Service References: Maintain references between resources in different services without ambiguity
• Versioning Support: Track resource versions and changes over time with time-ordered IDs

For Data-Intensive Applications

• Efficient Querying: K-sortable IDs enable range queries and time-based filtering
• Data Lineage: Track relationships between derived data and source data
• Deduplication: Content-addressable IDs help identify duplicate resources

For Cloud-Native Applications

• Multi-Tenant Support: The account component clearly separates resources by tenant
• Resource Categorization: Organize resources by domain and category for structured management
• Hierarchical Structure: Model complex resource relationships with defined patterns

Quick Start

Add Acton ERN to your project:

[dependencies]
acton-ern = "1.0.0"

Creating an ERN

use acton_ern::prelude::*;

// Create a time-ordered, sortable ERN
let ern = ErnBuilder::new()
    .with::<Domain>("my-app")?
    .with::<Category>("users")?
    .with::<Account>("tenant123")?
    .with::<EntityRoot>("profile")?
    .with::<Part>("settings")?
    .build()?;

// The resulting ERN will look like:
// ern:my-app:users:tenant123:profile_01h9xz7n2e5p6q8r3t1u2v3w4x/settings

Parsing an ERN

use acton_ern::prelude::*;

// Parse an ERN from a string
let ern_str = "ern:my-app:users:tenant123:profile_01h9xz7n2e5p6q8r3t1u2v3w4x/settings";
let parsed_ern = ErnParser::new(ern_str.to_string()).parse()?;

// Access components
println!("Domain: {}", parsed_ern.domain);
println!("Category: {}", parsed_ern.category);
println!("Account: {}", parsed_ern.account);
println!("Root: {}", parsed_ern.root);
println!("Parts: {}", parsed_ern.parts);

Choose the Right ID Type for Your Needs

Acton ERN supports different ID types for different use cases:

• UnixTime (Default): Time-ordered IDs with millisecond precision for chronological sorting
• Timestamp: Time-ordered IDs with microsecond precision for higher resolution timing needs
• SHA1Name: Content-addressable IDs that are deterministic based on input, suitable for content-based resources

// Time-ordered ID (sortable by creation time)
let time_ern: Ern = ErnBuilder::new()
    .with::<Domain>("my-app")?
    .with::<Category>("events")?
    .with::<Account>("tenant123")?
    .with::<EntityRoot>("log")?
    .build()?;

// Content-addressable ID (same content = same ID)
let content_ern: Ern = ErnBuilder::new()
    .with::<Domain>("my-app")?
    .with::<Category>("documents")?
    .with::<Account>("tenant123")?
    .with::<SHA1Name>("report-2023-q4")?
    .build()?;

Optional Features

Acton ERN includes optional features:

[dependencies]
acton-ern = { version = "1.0.0", features = ["serde", "async"] }

• serde: Add serialization/deserialization support for JSON, YAML, and more
• std: Enabled by default, can be disabled for no_std environments

Working with ERNs

Hierarchical Relationships

// Check if one ERN is a child of another
if child_ern.is_child_of(&parent_ern) {
    println!("Child resource found.");
}

// Get the parent of an ERN
if let Some(parent) = child_ern.parent() {
    println!("Parent: {}", parent);
}

Combining ERNs

// Combine two ERNs (appends the parts)
let combined_ern = base_ern + extension_ern;

Development Status

Acton ERN 1.0.0 Release

The 1.0.0 release includes all core functionality, comprehensive testing, and production-ready features. See the CHANGELOG.md for details on what's included in this release.

License

This project is licensed under either of:

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Acknowledgments

• The Acton Framework team for their contributions
• All contributors who have provided input to this project

Sponsor

Govcraft is a one-person shop—no corporate backing, no investors, just me building useful tools. If this project helps you, sponsoring keeps the work going.