April 2023 Summaries

Modern software systems, often inherently distributed, face challenges like network partitions that can lead to issues such as duplicated operations when requests are retried. Idempotency, the concept where requests can be safely repeated without unintended effects, offers a solution to this problem. Knock has developed "One and Done," an Elixir library supporting idempotent requests, particularly for applications using the Plug web framework. This library, designed for ease of use and flexibility, enables applications to handle repeated requests efficiently by caching responses based on a unique Idempotency-Key. It can be integrated with any compatible cache and supports various web frameworks. The library, permissively licensed under MIT, encourages contributions and provides extensive documentation for implementation. Knock’s SDKs across multiple languages already support idempotency for workflow triggers, with plans to expand this feature to other API endpoints.

Knock has introduced a new feature called Knock translations, designed to facilitate notification localization across multiple languages and locales without incurring excessive template maintenance burdens. This system separates translation strings from notification templates, allowing for linear scaling of localization efforts as the number of languages and templates increases, and it supports programmatic updates to translations via the Knock API and CLI. The approach is inspired by frameworks like i18next and Shopify locales and addresses the challenges of traditional third-party messaging vendors that typically require separate templates for each language. By maintaining translation strings in JSON files, Knock enables easy updates and previews of templates across different locales, thereby simplifying the management of localized notifications and reducing future maintenance. This feature is available to Growth and Enterprise customers, and Knock provides migration services for those transitioning from other customer engagement platforms.