Durable Objects (DO) — Unlimited single-threaded servers spread across the world

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2024-08-14 13:00:09

In this article I will showcase Durable Objects (DO), probably the most underrated compute and storage offering by Cloudflare.

I am not going to focus on how you use Durable Objects in code at all, since the goal is to explain why Durable Objects should be used more, but you can find code examples in the developer docs.

Each Durable Object instance is identified by a user-provided key, has its own throughput limits, its own durable storage, its own in-memory state, executes in single-threaded fashion, and you can influence its location if necessary.

As of the time of writing, the Cloudflare developer documentation (see here) and the Durable Objects landing page (see here) describe DOs as follows:

Durable Objects provides a powerful API for coordinating multiple clients and users — helping you build collaborative applications while maintaining strong consistency of state. […]

Durable Objects provide a powerful API for coordinating multiple clients or users, each with private, transactional and strongly consistent storage attached.