Counters

DANGER

This document has not been updated since version 0.0.3 and is not ready for production. It will be updated before version 1.0 of the project is released.

Counters are integer-based values stored for account-specific statistics. (For instance, tracking how often an account uses a feature.)

How it works

Counters are defined in the Backstack dashboard and transactions are implemented in your application codebase. The current session.account.counters[id] contains an aggregate of the transacted values.

INFO

Counters can be configured to be time-based, allowing for aggregate totals for the past n days.

Codebase implementation

Initiate a counter on events you want to track for future usage assessment.

// pseudocode

if(session.account.counters.foo-downloads === 10)
  <button>Get More Foos</button>
else
  <button onClick="downloadFoo()">Download Foo</button>

function downloadFoo() {
  const result = await processDownload('Foo');
  if(result.success) {
    updateFooDownloads(1);
  }

Request

The updateFooDownloads() in the example code above would update the counter.

POST /v1/account/counters
{
  "id": "foo-downloads"
}

Parameter	Type	Description
id	Required string	The counter ID.
integer	Optional integer	A positive or negative integer (e.g. 12345) you want added to the existing total. If empty the value of 1 will be used.

Response

The Session object is updated with the counter total value.

// session object
{
  ...
  "account": {
    "counters": {
      "foo-downloads": 1,
      ...
    }
    ...
  }
}

Subtracting values

Use negative integers to offset existing values.

POST /v1/account/counters
{
  "id": "foo-downloads",
  "integer": -1
}

Resetting counters

Post an action with the value reset to reset a counter value to zero.

POST /v1/account/counters
{
  "id": "foo-downloads",
  "action": "reset"
}