There's an API that my node.js server accesses quite a bit. It requires me to change my password every 3 months. Fortunately, there's also an API call for changing the password. :) I have a cron job that runs regularly and changes the password when necessary.
If my app is accessing the API at the exact time the password is being changed, there's a potential race condition and the API call could fail. What are some good patterns for dealing with this?
I could put all the API calls into a queue, and use a cron job to pull the most recent one off the queue and run it. If the API call fails, it would stay in the queue and get run next time the cron job runs. But that seems like it might be overkill.
I could use a try/catch handler with the API call, inside a while loop, and just run the while loop until the API call completes successfully. But that's going to block the rest of my app.
I could use a try/catch handler with the API call, inside a setTimeOut, and just re-run the setTimeOut until the API call completes successfully. This way the API call would only run when the main thread is done with other work and gets around to it. But would this be a mistake if the server is under heavy load?
Is there a better pattern for dealing with this sort of thing?
The try/catch handlers would lose data in the event of a server crash, so I went with the cron job/queue approach. I'm using a queue maintained as a table in my db, so that if something interrupts the server, nothing will be lost.