[[connection_pool]]
== Connection Pool

The connection pool is an object inside the client that is responsible for maintaining the current list of nodes.
Theoretically, nodes are either dead or alive.

However, in the real world, things are never so clear.  Nodes are sometimes in a gray-zone of _"probably dead but not
confirmed"_, _"timed-out but unclear why"_ or _"recently dead but now alive"_. The connection pool's job is to
manage this set of unruly connections and try to provide the best behavior to the client.

If a connection pool is unable to find an alive node to query against, it will return a `NoNodesAvailableException`.
This is distinct from an exception due to maximum retries.  For example, your cluster may have 10 nodes.  You execute
a request and 9 out of the 10 nodes fail due to connection timeouts.  The tenth node succeeds and the query executes.
The first nine nodes will be marked dead (depending on the connection pool being used) and their "dead" timers will begin
ticking.

When the next request is sent to the client, nodes 1-9 are still considered "dead", so they will be skipped.  The request
is sent to the only known alive node (#10), and if this node fails, a `NoNodesAvailableException` is returned. You'll note
this is much less than the `retries` value, because `retries` only applies to retries against alive nodes.  In this case,
only one node is known to be alive, so `NoNodesAvailableException` is returned.


There are several connection pool implementations that you can choose from:

=== staticNoPingConnectionPool (default)

This connection pool maintains a static list of hosts, which are assumed to be alive when the client initializes.  If
a node fails a request, it is marked as `dead` for 60 seconds and the next node is tried.  After 60 seconds, the node
is revived and put back into rotation.  Each additional failed request will cause the dead timeout to increase exponentially.

A successful request will reset the "failed ping timeout" counter.

If you wish to explicitly set the `StaticNoPingConnectionPool` implementation, you may do so with the `setConnectionPool()`
method of the ClientBuilder object:

[source,php]
----
$client = ClientBuilder::create()
            ->setConnectionPool('\Elasticsearch\ConnectionPool\StaticNoPingConnectionPool', [])
            ->build();
----

Note that the implementation is specified via a namespace path to the class.

=== staticConnectionPool

Identical to the `StaticNoPingConnectionPool`, except it pings nodes before they are used to determine if they are alive.
This may be useful for long-running scripts, but tends to be additional overhead that is unnecessary for average PHP scripts.

To use the `StaticConnectionPool`:

[source,php]
----
$client = ClientBuilder::create()
            ->setConnectionPool('\Elasticsearch\ConnectionPool\StaticConnectionPool', [])
            ->build();
----

Note that the implementation is specified via a namespace path to the class.

=== simpleConnectionPool

The `SimpleConnectionPool` simply returns the next node as specified by the Selector; it does not perform track
the "liveness" of nodes.  This pool will return nodes whether they are alive or dead.  It is just a simple pool of static
hosts.

The `SimpleConnectionPool` is not recommended for routine use, but it may be a useful debugging tool.

To use the `SimpleConnectionPool`:

[source,php]
----
$client = ClientBuilder::create()
            ->setConnectionPool('\Elasticsearch\ConnectionPool\SimpleConnectionPool', [])
            ->build();
----

Note that the implementation is specified via a namespace path to the class.

=== sniffingConnectionPool

Unlike the two previous static connection pools, this one is dynamic.  The user provides a seed list of hosts, which the
client uses to "sniff" and discover the rest of the cluster.  It achieves this through the Cluster State API.  As new
nodes are added or removed from the cluster, the client will update it's pool of active connections.

To use the `SniffingConnectionPool`:

[source,php]
----
$client = ClientBuilder::create()
            ->setConnectionPool('\Elasticsearch\ConnectionPool\SniffingConnectionPool', [])
            ->build();
----

Note that the implementation is specified via a namespace path to the class.


=== Custom Connection Pool

If you wish to implement your own custom Connection Pool, your class must implement `ConnectionPoolInterface`:

[source,php]
----
class MyCustomConnectionPool implements ConnectionPoolInterface
{

    /**
     * @param bool $force
     *
     * @return ConnectionInterface
     */
    public function nextConnection($force = false)
    {
        // code here
    }

    /**
     * @return void
     */
    public function scheduleCheck()
    {
        // code here
    }
}
----

You can then instantiate an instance of your ConnectionPool and inject it into the ClientBuilder:

[source,php]
----
$myConnectionPool = new MyCustomConnectionPool();

$client = ClientBuilder::create()
            ->setConnectionPool($myConnectionPool, [])
            ->build();
----

If your connection pool only makes minor changes, you may consider extending `AbstractConnectionPool`, which provides
some helper concrete methods.  If you choose to go down this route, you need to make sure your ConnectionPool's implementation
has a compatible constructor (since it is not defined in the interface):

[source,php]
----
class MyCustomConnectionPool extends AbstractConnectionPool implements ConnectionPoolInterface
{

    public function __construct($connections, SelectorInterface $selector, ConnectionFactory $factory, $connectionPoolParams)
    {
        parent::__construct($connections, $selector, $factory, $connectionPoolParams);
    }

    /**
     * @param bool $force
     *
     * @return ConnectionInterface
     */
    public function nextConnection($force = false)
    {
        // code here
    }

    /**
     * @return void
     */
    public function scheduleCheck()
    {
        // code here
    }
}
----

If your constructor matches AbstractConnectionPool, you may use either object injection or namespace instantiation:

[source,php]
----
$myConnectionPool = new MyCustomConnectionPool();

$client = ClientBuilder::create()
            ->setConnectionPool($myConnectionPool, [])                                      // object injection
            ->setConnectionPool('/MyProject/ConnectionPools/MyCustomConnectionPool', [])    // or namespace
            ->build();
----


=== Which connection pool to choose? PHP and connection pooling

At first glance, the `sniffingConnectionPool` implementation seems superior.  For many languages, it is.  In PHP, the
conversation is a bit more nuanced.

Because PHP is a share-nothing architecture, there is no way to maintain a connection pool across script instances.
This means that every script is responsible for creating, maintaining, and destroying connections everytime the script
is re-run.

Sniffing is a relatively lightweight operation (one API call to `/_cluster/state`, followed by pings to each node) but
it may be a non-negligible overhead for certain PHP applications.  The average PHP script will likely load the client,
execute a few queries and then close.  Imagine this script being called 1000 times per second: the sniffing connection
pool will perform the sniffing and pinging process 1000 times per second.  The sniffing process will add a large
amount of overhead

In reality, if your script only executes a few queries, the sniffing concept is _too_ robust.  It tends to be more
useful in long-lived processes which potentially "out-live" a static list.

For this reason the default connection pool is currently the `staticNoPingConnectionPool`.  You can, of course, change
this default - but we strongly recommend you load test and verify that it does not negatively impact your performance.
