Join Colonies - Technical Documentation

🎯 Overview

Join Colonies feature enables merging two bee colonies by moving boxes from source hive to target hive, with queen management options, automatic box type filtering, and complete historical tracking. Real-time event broadcasting ensures UI consistency across sessions.

🏗️ Architecture

Components

• JoinColonyModal: React component (260 lines) with two-panel hive comparison
• joinHives: GraphQL mutation with validation and atomic operations
• event-stream-filter: Real-time event broadcasting for UI updates

Services

• swarm-api: Core merge logic, box movement, status updates
• web-app: Frontend UI with interactive merge type toggle
• Redis: pub/sub for real-time event broadcasting
• event-stream-filter: WebSocket connections for live updates

Data Flow

📋 Technical Specifications

Database Schema

ALTER TABLE hives
  ADD COLUMN merged_into_hive_id INT UNSIGNED NULL,
  ADD COLUMN merge_date DATETIME NULL,
  ADD COLUMN merge_type ENUM('both_queens', 'source_queen_kept', 'target_queen_kept') NULL,
  ADD INDEX idx_merged_into_hive_id (merged_into_hive_id);

GraphQL API

Mutation

mutation JoinHives($sourceHiveId: ID!, $targetHiveId: ID!, $mergeType: MergeType!) {
  joinHives(
    sourceHiveId: $sourceHiveId
    targetHiveId: $targetHiveId
    mergeType: $mergeType
  ) {
    id
    name
    status
    mergedIntoHiveId
    mergeDate
    mergeType
    mergedFromHives {
      id
      name
      mergeDate
      mergeType
    }
  }
}

enum MergeType {
  both_queens
  source_queen_kept
  target_queen_kept
}

Query

query GetHive($hiveId: ID!) {
  hive(id: $hiveId) {
    id
    name
    status
    mergedIntoHive {
      id
      name
    }
    mergedFromHives {
      id
      name
      mergeDate
      mergeType
    }
  }
}

Redis Events

hive:join:{targetHiveId}
hive:merged:{sourceHiveId}

🔧 Implementation Details

Frontend

• Framework: React with TypeScript
• State Management: useState for modal state, target selection, merge type
• UI Components:
  • Two-panel layout (source left, target right)
  • Toggle button for merge type (cycles through 3 options)
  • Real-time validation and error handling
• Event Handling: WebSocket subscription for live updates

Backend (Go)

Box Filtering Logic

func filterMovableBoxes(boxes []Box) []Box {
    var movableBoxes []Box
    for _, box := range boxes {
        if box.Type != "BOTTOM" && box.Type != "GATE" {
            movableBoxes = append(movableBoxes, box)
        }
    }
    return movableBoxes
}

Merge Process

1. Validate source and target hives exist
2. Validate same apiary
3. Validate source not already merged
4. Get all boxes from source hive
5. Filter boxes (exclude BOTTOM and GATE)
6. Get max position in target hive
7. Begin transaction
8. Move boxes: UPDATE boxes SET hive_id = ?, position = ? WHERE id IN (?)
9. Update source hive: UPDATE hives SET status = 'merged', merged_into_hive_id = ?, merge_date = NOW(), merge_type = ? WHERE id = ?
10. Commit transaction
11. Publish Redis events
12. Return updated target hive

Performance

• Database transaction ensures atomicity (all or nothing)
• Box filtering done in memory (fast operation)
• Position recalculation batched in single UPDATE
• Redis pub/sub non-blocking for mutation response
• WebSocket events delivered asynchronously

⚙️ Configuration

No special configuration required. Uses existing:

• MySQL connection pool
• Redis connection for pub/sub
• WebSocket server in event-stream-filter