Publisher Client close() method

[colmsnowplow]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

There's currently no method to close a client. I'm using the client in a persistent environment, which isn't guaranteed to be actively processing data at any given time.

If there's a delay between messages, there's a chance that the network connection fails to resolve, eg. if the connection is closed on the server side but not client side.

In order to cover this, I need to open a new connection and I have no way to close the stale one, so basically this eventually leads to a proliferation of open but unused sockets.

Describe the solution you'd like

A client.close() method which allows me to terminate a client connection client-side.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Manually closing sockets or terminating the entire environment every time we hit a stale connection are the only real options I can see - neither are desirable for obvious reasons.

[merlinnot]

This is a great feature request, I'd benefit from it too.

There's a similar FR against Firestore: googleapis/nodejs-firestore#769
And a preliminary PR against API Client Generator for TypeScript: googleapis/gapic-generator-typescript#126

[merlinnot]

@bcoe @callmehiphop It was now implemented in the Firestore client and I got impressive gains thanks to it, see googleapis/nodejs-firestore#769 (comment). Is there a chance to prioritize this feature somehow? I have the exact same issue with PubSub, as I had with Firestore.

[bcoe]

@merlinnot just added to the schedule for our next library group meeting; @feywind probably worth having this on your radar 👍

[colmsnowplow]

Good to hear this will be discussed!

For the record/in case it's pertinent I read over the issue @merlinnot linked to for firestore, and we face exactly the same problem (although he described it better than I!)

[merlinnot]

@bcoe Did the meeting happen already?

[feywind]

@merlinnot @colmsnowplow It's been discussed a couple of times. I haven't heard a super definite "yay do it", but I think the consensus is that we're planning to do it. Basically that it probably shouldn't be necessary to use a close() method, but that it will still probably help people for now. It's behind another fire or two though :)

[merlinnot]

@feywind Some edge cases were discussed in this thread: grpc/grpc-node#1083. It's quite lengthy, but it took quite some time to get to a common understanding. Bottom line: there are some scenarios where having a close method is strictly necessary and there's no way around it. That's why a patch was made to @grpc/grpc-js, then googleapis/gapic-generator-typescript and then googleapis/nodejs-firestore.

While I do acknowledge and understand that this is not necessary in most of the scenarios, power users do and will always require it for more advanced scenarios.

[feywind]

Potentially related: #725

(for the subscriber side)