HTTP Interface for Transactions

Transactions

ArangoDB’s transactions are executed on the server. Transactions can be executed by clients in two different ways:

  1. Via the Stream Transaction API
  2. Via the JavaScript Transaction API

The difference between these two is not difficult to understand, a short primer is listed below. For a more detailed description of how transactions work in ArangoDB and what guarantees ArangoDB can deliver please refer to Transactions.

Stream Transactions

Stream Transactions allow you to perform a multi-document transaction with individual begin and commit / abort commands. This is similar to the way traditional RDBMS do it with BEGIN, COMMIT and ROLLBACK operations.

This the recommended API for larger transactions. However the client is responsible for making sure that the transaction is committed or aborted when it is no longer needed, to avoid taking up resources.

JavaScript Transactions

JS-Transactions allow you to send the server a dedicated piece of JavaScript code (i.e. a function), which will be executed transactionally.

At the end of the function, the transaction is automatically committed, and all changes done by the transaction will be persisted. No interaction is required by the client beyond the initial start request.