Handling of mobile applications state using Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types

Abstract: Mobile applications often must synchronize their local state with a backend to maintain an up-to-date view of the application state. Nevertheless, in some cases, the application’s ability to work offline or with poor network connectivity may be more significant than guaranteeing strong consistency. We present a method to structure the application state in a portable way using the Redux pattern and the properties of strongly typed languages. This method allows employing Conflict-free Replicated Data Types to create a custom converging state: this way, each replica can edit its local state autonomously and merge conflicts with other replicas when possible. Furthermore, we propose to keep a server as the communication channel and analyze how this architecture impacts design choices and optimizations related to CRDTs. Finally, we evaluate our method on a note-taking application using a few well-known CRDT designs and quantitatively justify our design choices.