Reading events

You can use the client API to read events from a stream starting from either end of the stream. There is a method for each direction and one for reading a single event.

Read a single event

To read one event, use the following method passing the stream name, the event you want to read and whether to return the event data:

Task<EventReadResult> ReadEventAsync(string stream, long eventNumber, bool resolveLinkTos);

Example:

var readResult = await conn.ReadEventAsync(streamName, 0, true);
Console.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(readResult.Event.Value.Event.Data));

The ReadEventAsync method reads a single event from a stream at a specified position. This is the simplest case of reading events, but is still useful for situations such as reading the last event in the stream used as a starting point for a subscription. This function accepts three parameters:

Parameter	Description
string stream	The stream to read from
long eventNumber	The event number to read (use StreamPosition.End to read the last event in the stream)
bool resolveLinkTos	Determines whether any link events encountered in the stream will be resolved. See the discussion on Resolved Events for more information on this

This method returns an instance of EventReadResult which indicates if the read was successful, and if so the ResolvedEvent that was read.

Read a specific stream forwards

The ReadStreamEventsForwardAsync method reads the requested number of events in the order in which they were originally appended to the stream from a nominated starting point in the stream.

Task<StreamEventsSlice> ReadStreamEventsForwardAsync(
    string stream, long start, int count, bool resolveLinkTos
);

The parameters are:

Parameter	Description
string Stream	The name of the stream to read
long start	The earliest event to read (inclusive). For the special case of the start of the stream, you should use the constant StreamPosition.Start.
int count	The maximum number of events to read in this request (assuming that many exist between the start specified and the end of the stream)
bool resolveLinkTos	Determines whether any link events encountered in the stream will be resolved. See the discussion on Resolved Events for more information on this

Bear in mind that there could be many events in the stream. The .NET client always reads events in pages with the default page size of 4096 events. If you need to read the whole stream, you'd have to keep reading pages until the response will indicate that you reached the end of the stream.

The example below uses the ReadStreamEventsForwardAsync method in a loop to page through all events in a stream, reading 200 events at a time to build a list of all the events in the stream.

var streamEvents = new List<ResolvedEvent>();

StreamEventsSlice currentSlice;
var nextSliceStart = StreamPosition.Start;
do
{
    currentSlice = await _connection.ReadStreamEventsForwardAsync(
        "myStream", 
        nextSliceStart, 
        200, false
    );

    nextSliceStart = currentSlice.NextEventNumber;

    streamEvents.AddRange(currentSlice.Events);
} while (!currentSlice.IsEndOfStream);

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It's unlikely that client code would need to build a list in this manner. It's far more likely that you would pass events into a left fold to derive the state of some object as of a given event.

// Read a specific stream backwards
Task<StreamEventsSlice> ReadStreamEventsBackwardAsync(
    string stream, long start, int count, bool resolveLinkTos
);

// Read all events forwards
Task<AllEventsSlice> ReadAllEventsForwardAsync(
    Position position, int maxCount, bool resolveLinkTos
);

// Read all events backwards
Task<AllEventsSlice> ReadAllEventsBackwardAsync(
    Position position, int maxCount, bool resolveLinkTos
);

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These methods also have an optional parameter which allows you to specify the UserCredentials to use for the request. If you don't supply any, the default credentials for the EventStoreConnection are used (see Connecting to a server - user credentials).

Read a stream backwards

The ReadStreamEventsBackwardAsync method reads the requested number of events in the reverse order from that in which they were originally appended to the stream from a specified starting point.

The parameters are:

Parameter	Description
string Stream	The name of the stream to read
long start	The latest event to read (inclusive). For the end of the stream use the constant StreamPosition.End
int count	The maximum number of events to read in this request (assuming that many exist between the start specified and the start of the stream)
bool resolveLinkTos	Determines whether any link events encountered in the stream will be resolved. See the discussion on Resolved Events for more information on this

Read all events

EventStoreDB allows you to read events across all streams using the ReadAllEventsForwardAsync and ReadAllEventsBackwardsAsync methods. These work in the same way as the regular read methods, but use an instance of the global log file Position to reference events rather than the simple integer stream position described previously.

They also return an AllEventsSlice rather than a StreamEventsSlice which is the same except it uses global Positions rather than stream positions.

Example: Read all events forward from start to end

var allEvents = new List<ResolvedEvent>();

AllEventsSlice currentSlice;
var nextSliceStart = Position.Start;
do
{
    currentSlice = await connection.ReadAllEventsForwardAsync(
        nextSliceStart, 
        200, false
    );

    nextSliceStart = currentSlice.NextPosition;

    allEvents.AddRange(currentSlice.Events);
} while (!currentSlice.IsEndOfStream);

StreamEventsSlice

The reading methods for individual streams each return a StreamEventsSlice, which is immutable. The available members on StreamEventsSlice are:

Member	Description
string Stream	The name of the stream for the slice
ReadDirection ReadDirection	Either ReadDirection.Forward or ReadDirection.Backward depending on which method was used to read
long FromEventNumber	The sequence number of the first event in the stream
long LastEventNumber	The sequence number of the last event in the stream
long NextEventNumber	The sequence number from which the next read should be performed to continue reading the stream
bool IsEndOfStream	Whether this slice contained the end of the stream at the time it was created
ResolvedEvent[] Events	An array of the events read. See the description of how to interpret a Resolved Events below for more information on this

ResolvedEvent

When you read events from a stream (or received over a subscription) you receive an instance of the RecordedEvent class packaged inside a ResolvedEvent.

EventStoreDB supports a special event type called 'Link Events'. Think of these events as pointers to an event in another stream.

In situations where the event you read is a link event, ResolvedEvent allows you to access both the link event itself, as well as the event it points to.

The members of this class are as follows:

Member	Description
RecordedEvent Event	The event, or the resolved link event if this ResolvedEvent is a link event
RecordedEvent Link	The link event if this ResolvedEvent is a link event
RecordedEvent OriginalEvent	Returns the event read or which triggered the subscription. If this ResolvedEvent represents a link event, the link will be the OriginalEvent, otherwise it will be the event
bool IsResolved	Indicates whether this ResolvedEvent is a resolved link event
Position? OriginalPosition	The logical position of the OriginalEvent
string OriginalStreamId	The stream name of the OriginalEvent
long OriginalEventNumber	The event number in the stream of the OriginalEvent

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To ensure that the EventStoreDB server follows link events when reading, ensure you set the ResolveLinkTos parameter to true when calling read methods.

RecordedEvent

RecordedEvent contains all the data about a specific event. Instances of this class are immutable, and expose the following members:

Member	Description
string EventStreamId	The Event Stream this event belongs to
Guid EventId	The Unique Identifier representing this
long EventNumber	The number of this event in the stream
string EventType	The event type (supplied when appending)
byte[] Data	A byte array representing the data of this event
byte[] Metadata	A byte array representing the metadata associated with this event
bool IsJson	Indicates whether the content was internally marked as JSON
DateTime Created	A timestamp representing when this event was created.
long CreatedEpoch	A long representing the milliseconds since the epoch when the was created.