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Revision: 1.66
Committed: Sun Aug 21 03:02:32 2011 UTC (12 years, 9 months ago) by root
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# User Rev Content
1 root 1.25 NAME
2 root 1.48 AnyEvent - the DBI of event loop programming
3 root 1.2
4 root 1.49 EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Irssi, rxvt-unicode, IO::Async,
5 root 1.66 Qt, FLTK and POE are various supported event loops/environments.
6 root 1.2
7     SYNOPSIS
8 root 1.4 use AnyEvent;
9 root 1.2
10 root 1.62 # if you prefer function calls, look at the AE manpage for
11 root 1.60 # an alternative API.
12    
13     # file handle or descriptor readable
14 root 1.38 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
15 root 1.29
16 root 1.38 # one-shot or repeating timers
17 root 1.29 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
18 root 1.63 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...);
19 root 1.29
20     print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
21     print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
22    
23 root 1.38 # POSIX signal
24 root 1.29 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
25 root 1.3
26 root 1.38 # child process exit
27 root 1.29 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
28     my ($pid, $status) = @_;
29 root 1.2 ...
30     });
31    
32 root 1.38 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
33     my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
34    
35 root 1.16 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
36 root 1.20 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
37     $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
38 root 1.29 # use a condvar in callback mode:
39     $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
40 root 1.3
41 root 1.25 INTRODUCTION/TUTORIAL
42     This manpage is mainly a reference manual. If you are interested in a
43     tutorial or some gentle introduction, have a look at the AnyEvent::Intro
44     manpage.
45    
46 root 1.47 SUPPORT
47 root 1.63 An FAQ document is available as AnyEvent::FAQ.
48    
49     There also is a mailinglist for discussing all things AnyEvent, and an
50     IRC channel, too.
51 root 1.47
52     See the AnyEvent project page at the Schmorpforge Ta-Sa Software
53 root 1.48 Repository, at <http://anyevent.schmorp.de>, for more info.
54 root 1.47
55 root 1.14 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
56     Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
57     nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
58    
59     Executive Summary: AnyEvent is *compatible*, AnyEvent is *free of
60     policy* and AnyEvent is *small and efficient*.
61    
62     First and foremost, *AnyEvent is not an event model* itself, it only
63 root 1.28 interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
64 root 1.14 pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
65 root 1.16 the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
66     only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process.
67 root 1.28 AnyEvent cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between
68     those event loops.
69 root 1.14
70     The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
71     programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
72     religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
73     module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
74     model you use.
75    
76 root 1.16 For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
77     actually doing all I/O *synchronously*...), using them in your module is
78 root 1.63 like joining a cult: After you join, you are dependent on them and you
79 root 1.28 cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
80     that isn't them. What's worse, all the potential users of your module
81 root 1.16 are *also* forced to use the same event loop you use.
82    
83     AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
84     fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
85 root 1.64 with the rest: POE + EV? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if your module
86     uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it, too. But if
87     your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all event models
88     it supports (including stuff like IO::Async, as long as those use one of
89     the supported event loops. It is easy to add new event loops to
90 root 1.63 AnyEvent, too, so it is future-proof).
91 root 1.14
92 root 1.16 In addition to being free of having to use *the one and only true event
93 root 1.14 model*, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
94 root 1.22 modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
95 root 1.63 follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and to the point, by only
96     offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
97     technically possible.
98 root 1.14
99 root 1.24 Of course, AnyEvent comes with a big (and fully optional!) toolbox of
100     useful functionality, such as an asynchronous DNS resolver, 100%
101     non-blocking connects (even with TLS/SSL, IPv6 and on broken platforms
102     such as Windows) and lots of real-world knowledge and workarounds for
103     platform bugs and differences.
104    
105     Now, if you *do want* lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
106 root 1.14 useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
107     model, you should *not* use this module.
108    
109 root 1.2 DESCRIPTION
110 root 1.63 AnyEvent provides a uniform interface to various event loops. This
111     allows module authors to use event loop functionality without forcing
112     module users to use a specific event loop implementation (since more
113     than one event loop cannot coexist peacefully).
114 root 1.2
115 root 1.16 The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the Event
116 root 1.2 module.
117    
118 root 1.16 During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
119     to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
120 root 1.65 following modules is already loaded: EV, AnyEvent::Loop, Event, Glib,
121     Tk, Event::Lib, Qt, POE. The first one found is used. If none are
122 root 1.63 detected, the module tries to load the first four modules in the order
123     given; but note that if EV is not available, the pure-perl
124 root 1.65 AnyEvent::Loop should always work, so the other two are not normally
125     tried.
126 root 1.6
127     Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded,
128 root 1.16 loading an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will
129 root 1.6 likely make that model the default. For example:
130    
131     use Tk;
132     use AnyEvent;
133    
134     # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
135    
136 root 1.16 The *likely* means that, if any module loads another event model and
137 root 1.63 starts using it, all bets are off - this case should be very rare
138     though, as very few modules hardcode event loops without announcing this
139     very loudly.
140 root 1.16
141 root 1.65 The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called "AnyEvent::Loop".
142     Like other event modules you can load it explicitly and enjoy the high
143     availability of that event loop :)
144 root 1.6
145     WATCHERS
146     AnyEvent has the central concept of a *watcher*, which is an object that
147     stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
148 root 1.22 the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
149 root 1.6
150     These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
151     creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the
152 root 1.16 callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model is
153     in control).
154    
155 root 1.36 Note that callbacks must not permanently change global variables
156     potentially in use by the event loop (such as $_ or $[) and that
157 root 1.63 callbacks must not "die". The former is good programming practice in
158 root 1.36 Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
159     widely between event loops.
160    
161 root 1.63 To disable a watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
162 root 1.16 variable you store it in to "undef" or otherwise deleting all references
163     to it).
164 root 1.6
165     All watchers are created by calling a method on the "AnyEvent" class.
166    
167 root 1.16 Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for
168     example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways.
169    
170 root 1.63 One way to achieve that is this pattern:
171 root 1.16
172 root 1.25 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub {
173     # you can use $w here, for example to undef it
174     undef $w;
175     });
176 root 1.16
177     Note that "my $w; $w =" combination. This is necessary because in Perl,
178     my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are
179     declared.
180    
181 root 1.19 I/O WATCHERS
182 root 1.50 $w = AnyEvent->io (
183     fh => <filehandle_or_fileno>,
184     poll => <"r" or "w">,
185     cb => <callback>,
186     );
187    
188 root 1.16 You can create an I/O watcher by calling the "AnyEvent->io" method with
189     the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
190 root 1.6
191 root 1.43 "fh" is the Perl *file handle* (or a naked file descriptor) to watch for
192 root 1.36 events (AnyEvent might or might not keep a reference to this file
193     handle). Note that only file handles pointing to things for which
194     non-blocking operation makes sense are allowed. This includes sockets,
195     most character devices, pipes, fifos and so on, but not for example
196     files or block devices.
197    
198 root 1.16 "poll" must be a string that is either "r" or "w", which creates a
199 root 1.36 watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
200    
201     "cb" is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
202 root 1.16
203 root 1.19 Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
204     presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
205     callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
206    
207     The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of
208     it. You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on
209     the underlying file descriptor.
210 root 1.16
211 root 1.63 Some event loops issue spurious readiness notifications, so you should
212 root 1.16 always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
213     handles.
214 root 1.6
215 root 1.28 Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
216     watcher.
217 root 1.6
218     my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
219     chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
220     warn "read: $input\n";
221     undef $w;
222     });
223    
224 root 1.8 TIME WATCHERS
225 root 1.50 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => <seconds>, cb => <callback>);
226    
227     $w = AnyEvent->timer (
228     after => <fractional_seconds>,
229     interval => <fractional_seconds>,
230     cb => <callback>,
231     );
232    
233 root 1.8 You can create a time watcher by calling the "AnyEvent->timer" method
234 root 1.6 with the following mandatory arguments:
235    
236 root 1.16 "after" specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
237 root 1.19 supported) the callback should be invoked. "cb" is the callback to
238     invoke in that case.
239    
240     Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
241     presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
242     callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
243 root 1.6
244 root 1.63 The callback will normally be invoked only once. If you specify another
245 root 1.28 parameter, "interval", as a strictly positive number (> 0), then the
246     callback will be invoked regularly at that interval (in fractional
247     seconds) after the first invocation. If "interval" is specified with a
248 root 1.63 false value, then it is treated as if it were not specified at all.
249 root 1.28
250     The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
251 root 1.63 attempt is made to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval
252 root 1.28 is only approximate.
253 root 1.6
254 root 1.28 Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
255 root 1.6
256     my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
257     warn "timeout\n";
258     });
259    
260     # to cancel the timer:
261 root 1.13 undef $w;
262 root 1.6
263 root 1.28 Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
264 root 1.16
265 root 1.28 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
266     warn "timeout\n";
267 root 1.16 };
268    
269     TIMING ISSUES
270     There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
271     in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
272     o'clock").
273    
274     While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way,
275     they use absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your
276     clock "jumps", for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards
277 root 1.18 from the wrong date of 2014-01-01 to 2008-01-01, a watcher that is
278 root 1.63 supposed to fire "after a second" might actually take six years to
279 root 1.18 finally fire.
280 root 1.16
281     AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is
282 root 1.63 conscious of these issues is EV, which offers both relative (ev_timer,
283     based on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on
284     wallclock time) timers.
285 root 1.16
286     AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
287     AnyEvent API.
288    
289 root 1.24 AnyEvent has two additional methods that return the "current time":
290    
291     AnyEvent->time
292     This returns the "current wallclock time" as a fractional number of
293     seconds since the Epoch (the same thing as "time" or
294     "Time::HiRes::time" return, and the result is guaranteed to be
295     compatible with those).
296    
297     It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each
298     call will check the system clock, which usually gets updated
299     frequently.
300    
301     AnyEvent->now
302     This also returns the "current wallclock time", but unlike "time",
303     above, this value might change only once per event loop iteration,
304     depending on the event loop (most return the same time as "time",
305     above). This is the time that AnyEvent's timers get scheduled
306     against.
307    
308     *In almost all cases (in all cases if you don't care), this is the
309     function to call when you want to know the current time.*
310    
311     This function is also often faster then "AnyEvent->time", and thus
312     the preferred method if you want some timestamp (for example,
313 root 1.63 AnyEvent::Handle uses this to update its activity timeouts).
314 root 1.24
315     The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very
316 root 1.63 exact with your timing; you can skip it without a bad conscience.
317 root 1.24
318     For a practical example of when these times differ, consider
319     Event::Lib and EV and the following set-up:
320    
321 root 1.63 The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callbacks
322 root 1.24 at time=500 (assume no other callbacks delay processing). In your
323     callback, you wait a second by executing "sleep 1" (blocking the
324     process for a second) and then (at time=501) you create a relative
325     timer that fires after three seconds.
326    
327     With Event::Lib, "AnyEvent->time" and "AnyEvent->now" will both
328     return 501, because that is the current time, and the timer will be
329     scheduled to fire at time=504 (501 + 3).
330    
331     With EV, "AnyEvent->time" returns 501 (as that is the current time),
332     but "AnyEvent->now" returns 500, as that is the time the last event
333     processing phase started. With EV, your timer gets scheduled to run
334     at time=503 (500 + 3).
335    
336     In one sense, Event::Lib is more exact, as it uses the current time
337     regardless of any delays introduced by event processing. However,
338     most callbacks do not expect large delays in processing, so this
339     causes a higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the
340     current time).
341    
342     In another sense, EV is more exact, as your timer will be scheduled
343     at the same time, regardless of how long event processing actually
344     took.
345    
346     In either case, if you care (and in most cases, you don't), then you
347     can get whatever behaviour you want with any event loop, by taking
348     the difference between "AnyEvent->time" and "AnyEvent->now" into
349     account.
350    
351 root 1.37 AnyEvent->now_update
352 root 1.65 Some event loops (such as EV or AnyEvent::Loop) cache the current
353     time for each loop iteration (see the discussion of AnyEvent->now,
354     above).
355 root 1.37
356     When a callback runs for a long time (or when the process sleeps),
357     then this "current" time will differ substantially from the real
358     time, which might affect timers and time-outs.
359    
360     When this is the case, you can call this method, which will update
361     the event loop's idea of "current time".
362    
363 root 1.56 A typical example would be a script in a web server (e.g.
364     "mod_perl") - when mod_perl executes the script, then the event loop
365     will have the wrong idea about the "current time" (being potentially
366     far in the past, when the script ran the last time). In that case
367     you should arrange a call to "AnyEvent->now_update" each time the
368     web server process wakes up again (e.g. at the start of your script,
369     or in a handler).
370    
371 root 1.37 Note that updating the time *might* cause some events to be handled.
372    
373 root 1.16 SIGNAL WATCHERS
374 root 1.50 $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => <uppercase_signal_name>, cb => <callback>);
375    
376 root 1.16 You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, "signal" is the signal
377 root 1.28 *name* in uppercase and without any "SIG" prefix, "cb" is the Perl
378     callback to be invoked whenever a signal occurs.
379 root 1.16
380 root 1.19 Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
381     presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
382     callbacks cannot use arguments passed to signal watcher callbacks.
383    
384 root 1.22 Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
385     invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous
386 root 1.16 means that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the
387 root 1.22 process, but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
388 root 1.16
389     The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a
390 root 1.46 signal between multiple watchers, and AnyEvent will ensure that signals
391     will not interrupt your program at bad times.
392 root 1.16
393 root 1.46 This watcher might use %SIG (depending on the event loop used), so
394     programs overwriting those signals directly will likely not work
395     correctly.
396    
397 root 1.47 Example: exit on SIGINT
398    
399     my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
400    
401 root 1.57 Restart Behaviour
402     While restart behaviour is up to the event loop implementation, most
403     will not restart syscalls (that includes Async::Interrupt and AnyEvent's
404     pure perl implementation).
405    
406     Safe/Unsafe Signals
407     Perl signals can be either "safe" (synchronous to opcode handling) or
408     "unsafe" (asynchronous) - the former might get delayed indefinitely, the
409     latter might corrupt your memory.
410    
411     AnyEvent signal handlers are, in addition, synchronous to the event
412     loop, i.e. they will not interrupt your running perl program but will
413     only be called as part of the normal event handling (just like timer,
414     I/O etc. callbacks, too).
415    
416 root 1.47 Signal Races, Delays and Workarounds
417     Many event loops (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt, IO::Async) do not support attaching
418     callbacks to signals in a generic way, which is a pity, as you cannot do
419 root 1.50 race-free signal handling in perl, requiring C libraries for this.
420 root 1.63 AnyEvent will try to do its best, which means in some cases, signals
421 root 1.50 will be delayed. The maximum time a signal might be delayed is specified
422     in $AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY (default: 10 seconds). This variable
423     can be changed only before the first signal watcher is created, and
424     should be left alone otherwise. This variable determines how often
425     AnyEvent polls for signals (in case a wake-up was missed). Higher values
426 root 1.46 will cause fewer spurious wake-ups, which is better for power and CPU
427 root 1.50 saving.
428    
429     All these problems can be avoided by installing the optional
430     Async::Interrupt module, which works with most event loops. It will not
431     work with inherently broken event loops such as Event or Event::Lib (and
432 root 1.63 not with POE currently, as POE does its own workaround with one-second
433 root 1.50 latency). For those, you just have to suffer the delays.
434 root 1.16
435     CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
436 root 1.50 $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => <process id>, cb => <callback>);
437    
438 root 1.63 You can also watch for a child process exit and catch its exit status.
439 root 1.16
440 root 1.63 The child process is specified by the "pid" argument (on some backends,
441 root 1.48 using 0 watches for any child process exit, on others this will croak).
442     The watcher will be triggered only when the child process has finished
443     and an exit status is available, not on any trace events
444     (stopped/continued).
445 root 1.30
446     The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
447     waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you *can* rely on child watcher
448     callback arguments.
449    
450     This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for "SIGCHLD",
451     and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
452     random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g.
453     inside "system", is just fine).
454 root 1.19
455     There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start
456     them *after* the child process was created, and this means the process
457     could have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
458    
459 root 1.41 Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async
460     do, see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event
461     models that *do* handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded
462     before the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place).
463     AnyEvent's pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless
464     of when you start the watcher.
465 root 1.19
466     This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first thing in
467     an AnyEvent program, you *have* to create at least one watcher before
468     you "fork" the child (alternatively, you can call "AnyEvent::detect").
469    
470 root 1.46 As most event loops do not support waiting for child events, they will
471 root 1.65 be emulated by AnyEvent in most cases, in which case the latency and
472     race problems mentioned in the description of signal watchers apply.
473 root 1.46
474 root 1.19 Example: fork a process and wait for it
475    
476 root 1.25 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
477 root 1.62
478     my $pid = fork or exit 5;
479    
480     my $w = AnyEvent->child (
481 root 1.25 pid => $pid,
482     cb => sub {
483     my ($pid, $status) = @_;
484     warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
485     $done->send;
486     },
487     );
488 root 1.62
489     # do something else, then wait for process exit
490 root 1.25 $done->recv;
491 root 1.19
492 root 1.38 IDLE WATCHERS
493 root 1.50 $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => <callback>);
494    
495 root 1.63 This will repeatedly invoke the callback after the process becomes idle,
496     until either the watcher is destroyed or new events have been detected.
497 root 1.59
498     Idle watchers are useful when there is a need to do something, but it is
499     not so important (or wise) to do it instantly. The callback will be
500     invoked only when there is "nothing better to do", which is usually
501     defined as "all outstanding events have been handled and no new events
502     have been detected". That means that idle watchers ideally get invoked
503     when the event loop has just polled for new events but none have been
504     detected. Instead of blocking to wait for more events, the idle watchers
505     will be invoked.
506    
507     Unfortunately, most event loops do not really support idle watchers
508     (only EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest,
509     AnyEvent will simply call the callback "from time to time".
510 root 1.38
511     Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the program
512     is otherwise idle:
513    
514     my @lines; # read data
515     my $idle_w;
516     my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
517     push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
518    
519     # start an idle watcher, if not already done
520     $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
521     # handle only one line, when there are lines left
522     if (my $line = shift @lines) {
523     print "handled when idle: $line";
524     } else {
525     # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
526     undef $idle_w;
527     }
528     });
529     });
530    
531 root 1.16 CONDITION VARIABLES
532 root 1.50 $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
533    
534     $cv->send (<list>);
535     my @res = $cv->recv;
536    
537 root 1.20 If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
538     require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
539     will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
540    
541 root 1.45 AnyEvent is slightly different: it expects somebody else to run the
542     event loop and will only block when necessary (usually when told by the
543     user).
544 root 1.6
545 root 1.62 The tool to do that is called a "condition variable", so called because
546     they represent a condition that must become true.
547 root 1.6
548 root 1.45 Now is probably a good time to look at the examples further below.
549    
550 root 1.20 Condition variables can be created by calling the "AnyEvent->condvar"
551     method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
552     "cb", which specifies a callback to be called when the condition
553 root 1.29 variable becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument
554     (but not the results).
555 root 1.20
556 root 1.22 After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes
557     "true" by calling the "send" method (or calling the condition variable
558 root 1.23 as if it were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for
559     the "->send" method).
560 root 1.20
561 root 1.62 Since condition variables are the most complex part of the AnyEvent API,
562     here are some different mental models of what they are - pick the ones
563     you can connect to:
564    
565     * Condition variables are like callbacks - you can call them (and pass
566     them instead of callbacks). Unlike callbacks however, you can also
567     wait for them to be called.
568    
569     * Condition variables are signals - one side can emit or send them,
570     the other side can wait for them, or install a handler that is
571     called when the signal fires.
572    
573     * Condition variables are like "Merge Points" - points in your program
574     where you merge multiple independent results/control flows into one.
575    
576 root 1.63 * Condition variables represent a transaction - functions that start
577 root 1.62 some kind of transaction can return them, leaving the caller the
578     choice between waiting in a blocking fashion, or setting a callback.
579    
580     * Condition variables represent future values, or promises to deliver
581     some result, long before the result is available.
582 root 1.20
583     Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has
584     finished, for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http
585     requests, then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to
586     signal the availability of results. The user can either act when the
587     callback is called or can synchronously "->recv" for the results.
588    
589     You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
590     you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
591     could "->recv" in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
592     button of your app, which would "->send" the "quit" event.
593 root 1.16
594     Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
595 root 1.22 two pieces of code that call "->recv" in a round-robin fashion, you
596 root 1.16 lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller,
597     but you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in
598     callbacks, as this asks for trouble.
599 root 1.14
600 root 1.20 Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
601     used by AnyEvent itself are all named "_ae_XXX" to make subclassing easy
602     (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
603     AnyEvent). To subclass, use "AnyEvent::CondVar" as base class and call
604 root 1.63 its "new" method in your own "new" method.
605 root 1.20
606     There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side"
607     which eventually calls "-> send", and the "consumer side", which waits
608     for the send to occur.
609 root 1.6
610 root 1.22 Example: wait for a timer.
611 root 1.6
612 root 1.60 # condition: "wait till the timer is fired"
613     my $timer_fired = AnyEvent->condvar;
614 root 1.20
615 root 1.60 # create the timer - we could wait for, say
616     # a handle becomign ready, or even an
617     # AnyEvent::HTTP request to finish, but
618 root 1.20 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
619     my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
620     after => 1,
621 root 1.60 cb => sub { $timer_fired->send },
622 root 1.20 );
623    
624     # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
625 root 1.53 # calls ->send
626 root 1.60 $timer_fired->recv;
627 root 1.20
628 root 1.22 Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that condition
629 root 1.45 variables are also callable directly.
630 root 1.22
631     my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
632     my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
633     $done->recv;
634    
635 root 1.29 Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
636     callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from the
637     main program:
638    
639     use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
640    
641     ...
642    
643     my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
644    
645 root 1.45 And this is how you would just set a callback to be called whenever the
646 root 1.29 results are available:
647    
648     $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
649     my @info = $_[0]->recv;
650     });
651    
652 root 1.20 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
653     These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
654     code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also the
655     producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
656     uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
657    
658     $cv->send (...)
659     Flag the condition as ready - a running "->recv" and all further
660     calls to "recv" will (eventually) return after this method has been
661     called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
662    
663     If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
664     immediately from within send.
665    
666     Any arguments passed to the "send" call will be returned by all
667     future "->recv" calls.
668    
669 root 1.22 Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly (as
670 root 1.45 if they were a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as
671     calling "send".
672 root 1.22
673 root 1.20 $cv->croak ($error)
674 root 1.63 Similar to send, but causes all calls to "->recv" to invoke
675 root 1.20 "Carp::croak" with the given error message/object/scalar.
676    
677     This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
678 root 1.45 user/consumer. Doing it this way instead of calling "croak" directly
679 root 1.63 delays the error detection, but has the overwhelming advantage that
680 root 1.45 it diagnoses the error at the place where the result is expected,
681 root 1.63 and not deep in some event callback with no connection to the actual
682 root 1.45 code causing the problem.
683 root 1.20
684     $cv->begin ([group callback])
685     $cv->end
686     These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events
687     into one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel
688     might want to use a condition variable for the whole process.
689    
690     Every call to "->begin" will increment a counter, and every call to
691     "->end" will decrement it. If the counter reaches 0 in "->end", the
692 root 1.52 (last) callback passed to "begin" will be executed, passing the
693     condvar as first argument. That callback is *supposed* to call
694     "->send", but that is not required. If no group callback was set,
695     "send" will be called without any arguments.
696 root 1.20
697 root 1.42 You can think of "$cv->send" giving you an OR condition (one call
698     sends), while "$cv->begin" and "$cv->end" giving you an AND
699     condition (all "begin" calls must be "end"'ed before the condvar
700     sends).
701    
702     Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for
703     example, STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for
704     both streams to close before activating a condvar:
705    
706     my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
707    
708     $cv->begin; # first watcher
709     my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
710     defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
711     or $cv->end;
712     });
713    
714     $cv->begin; # second watcher
715     my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
716     defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
717     or $cv->end;
718     });
719    
720     $cv->recv;
721    
722     This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle),
723     there is one call to "begin", so the condvar waits for all calls to
724     "end" before sending.
725    
726     The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as
727     the there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks
728 root 1.63 that are begun can potentially be zero:
729 root 1.20
730     my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
731    
732     my %result;
733 root 1.52 $cv->begin (sub { shift->send (\%result) });
734 root 1.20
735     for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
736     $cv->begin;
737     ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
738     $result{$host} = ...;
739     $cv->end;
740     };
741     }
742    
743     $cv->end;
744    
745     This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
746     "send" after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
747     order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to "begin" when it
748     starts each ping request and calls "end" when it has received some
749     result for it. Since "begin" and "end" only maintain a counter, the
750     order in which results arrive is not relevant.
751    
752     There is an additional bracketing call to "begin" and "end" outside
753     the loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the
754     callback to be called once the counter reaches 0, and second, it
755     ensures that "send" is called even when "no" hosts are being pinged
756     (the loop doesn't execute once).
757    
758 root 1.42 This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
759 root 1.63 potentially zero) subrequests: use an outer "begin"/"end" pair to
760 root 1.42 set the callback and ensure "end" is called at least once, and then,
761     for each subrequest you start, call "begin" and for each subrequest
762     you finish, call "end".
763 root 1.20
764     METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
765     These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the code
766     awaits the condition.
767    
768     $cv->recv
769     Wait (blocking if necessary) until the "->send" or "->croak" methods
770 root 1.63 have been called on $cv, while servicing other watchers normally.
771 root 1.20
772     You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid
773     but will return immediately.
774    
775     If an error condition has been set by calling "->croak", then this
776     function will call "croak".
777    
778     In list context, all parameters passed to "send" will be returned,
779     in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
780 root 1.6
781 root 1.45 Note that doing a blocking wait in a callback is not supported by
782     any event loop, that is, recursive invocation of a blocking "->recv"
783     is not allowed, and the "recv" call will "croak" if such a condition
784     is detected. This condition can be slightly loosened by using
785     Coro::AnyEvent, which allows you to do a blocking "->recv" from any
786     thread that doesn't run the event loop itself.
787    
788 root 1.15 Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
789 root 1.16 (programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so *if you are
790 root 1.45 using this from a module, never require a blocking wait*. Instead,
791     let the caller decide whether the call will block or not (for
792     example, by coupling condition variables with some kind of request
793     results and supporting callbacks so the caller knows that getting
794     the result will not block, while still supporting blocking waits if
795     the caller so desires).
796 root 1.20
797 root 1.63 You can ensure that "->recv" never blocks by setting a callback and
798 root 1.20 only calling "->recv" from within that callback (or at a later
799     time). This will work even when the event loop does not support
800     blocking waits otherwise.
801    
802     $bool = $cv->ready
803     Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether "send" or
804     "croak" have been called.
805    
806 root 1.29 $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
807 root 1.20 This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and
808     optionally replaces it before doing so.
809    
810 root 1.63 The callback will be called when the condition becomes "true", i.e.
811     when "send" or "croak" are called, with the only argument being the
812     condition variable itself. If the condition is already true, the
813     callback is called immediately when it is set. Calling "recv" inside
814     the callback or at any later time is guaranteed not to block.
815 root 1.8
816 root 1.43 SUPPORTED EVENT LOOPS/BACKENDS
817     The available backend classes are (every class has its own manpage):
818 root 1.7
819 root 1.43 Backends that are autoprobed when no other event loop can be found.
820     EV is the preferred backend when no other event loop seems to be in
821 root 1.51 use. If EV is not installed, then AnyEvent will fall back to its own
822     pure-perl implementation, which is available everywhere as it comes
823     with AnyEvent itself.
824 root 1.7
825 root 1.43 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
826 root 1.65 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl AnyEvent::Loop, fast and portable.
827 root 1.43
828     Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
829 root 1.63 These will be used if they are already loaded when the first watcher
830     is created, in which case it is assumed that the application is
831     using them. This means that AnyEvent will automatically pick the
832 root 1.43 right backend when the main program loads an event module before
833     anything starts to create watchers. Nothing special needs to be done
834     by the main program.
835    
836 root 1.51 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
837 root 1.43 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, slow but very stable.
838     AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very broken.
839 root 1.18 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
840 root 1.43 AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, very slow, some limitations.
841 root 1.48 AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi used when running within irssi.
842 root 1.64 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async.
843     AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa based on Cocoa::EventLoop.
844 root 1.65 AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK2 based on FLTK (fltk 2 binding).
845 root 1.43
846     Backends with special needs.
847     Qt requires the Qt::Application to be instantiated first, but will
848     otherwise be picked up automatically. As long as the main program
849     instantiates the application before any AnyEvent watchers are
850     created, everything should just work.
851    
852     AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt.
853    
854     Event loops that are indirectly supported via other backends.
855     Some event loops can be supported via other modules:
856 root 1.19
857 root 1.43 There is no direct support for WxWidgets (Wx) or Prima.
858    
859     WxWidgets has no support for watching file handles. However, you can
860     use WxWidgets through the POE adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that
861     simply polls 20 times per second, which was considered to be too
862     horrible to even consider for AnyEvent.
863    
864     Prima is not supported as nobody seems to be using it, but it has a
865     POE backend, so it can be supported through POE.
866    
867     AnyEvent knows about both Prima and Wx, however, and will try to
868     load POE when detecting them, in the hope that POE will pick them
869     up, in which case everything will be automatic.
870    
871     GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
872     These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
873     write AnyEvent extension modules.
874    
875     $AnyEvent::MODEL
876     Contains "undef" until the first watcher is being created, before
877     the backend has been autodetected.
878    
879     Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is
880     the name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is
881 root 1.63 usually one of the "AnyEvent::Impl::xxx" modules, but can be any
882 root 1.43 other class in the case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g.
883     in *rxvt-unicode* it will be "urxvt::anyevent").
884 root 1.7
885 root 1.8 AnyEvent::detect
886     Returns $AnyEvent::MODEL, forcing autodetection of the event model
887     if necessary. You should only call this function right before you
888 root 1.16 would have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as
889 root 1.63 possible at runtime, and not e.g. during initialisation of your
890     module.
891 root 1.43
892 root 1.65 The effect of calling this function is as if a watcher had been
893     created (specifically, actions that happen "when the first watcher
894     is created" happen when calling detetc as well).
895    
896 root 1.43 If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
897     created, use "post_detect".
898 root 1.8
899 root 1.20 $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
900     Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event
901 root 1.63 model is autodetected (or immediately if that has already happened).
902 root 1.20
903 root 1.43 The block will be executed *after* the actual backend has been
904     detected ($AnyEvent::MODEL is set), but *before* any watchers have
905     been created, so it is possible to e.g. patch @AnyEvent::ISA or do
906     other initialisations - see the sources of AnyEvent::Strict or
907     AnyEvent::AIO to see how this is used.
908    
909     The most common usage is to create some global watchers, without
910     forcing event module detection too early, for example, AnyEvent::AIO
911     creates and installs the global IO::AIO watcher in a "post_detect"
912     block to avoid autodetecting the event module at load time.
913    
914 root 1.20 If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an
915     object that automatically removes the callback again when it is
916 root 1.48 destroyed (or "undef" when the hook was immediately executed). See
917     AnyEvent::AIO for a case where this is useful.
918    
919     Example: Create a watcher for the IO::AIO module and store it in
920 root 1.63 $WATCHER, but do so only do so after the event loop is initialised.
921 root 1.48
922     our WATCHER;
923    
924     my $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect {
925     $WATCHER = AnyEvent->io (fh => IO::AIO::poll_fileno, poll => 'r', cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
926     };
927    
928     # the ||= is important in case post_detect immediately runs the block,
929     # as to not clobber the newly-created watcher. assigning both watcher and
930     # post_detect guard to the same variable has the advantage of users being
931     # able to just C<undef $WATCHER> if the watcher causes them grief.
932    
933     $WATCHER ||= $guard;
934 root 1.20
935     @AnyEvent::post_detect
936     If there are any code references in this array (you can "push" to it
937 root 1.63 before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will be called directly
938 root 1.20 after the event loop has been chosen.
939    
940     You should check $AnyEvent::MODEL before adding to this array,
941 root 1.43 though: if it is defined then the event loop has already been
942     detected, and the array will be ignored.
943    
944     Best use "AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }" when your application
945 root 1.58 allows it, as it takes care of these details.
946 root 1.20
947 root 1.43 This variable is mainly useful for modules that can do something
948     useful when AnyEvent is used and thus want to know when it is
949     initialised, but do not need to even load it by default. This array
950     provides the means to hook into AnyEvent passively, without loading
951     it.
952 root 1.20
953 root 1.58 Example: To load Coro::AnyEvent whenever Coro and AnyEvent are used
954     together, you could put this into Coro (this is the actual code used
955     by Coro to accomplish this):
956    
957     if (defined $AnyEvent::MODEL) {
958     # AnyEvent already initialised, so load Coro::AnyEvent
959     require Coro::AnyEvent;
960     } else {
961     # AnyEvent not yet initialised, so make sure to load Coro::AnyEvent
962     # as soon as it is
963     push @AnyEvent::post_detect, sub { require Coro::AnyEvent };
964     }
965    
966 root 1.65 AnyEvent::postpone { BLOCK }
967     Arranges for the block to be executed as soon as possible, but not
968     before the call itself returns. In practise, the block will be
969     executed just before the event loop polls for new events, or shortly
970     afterwards.
971    
972     This function never returns anything (to make the "return postpone {
973     ... }" idiom more useful.
974    
975     To understand the usefulness of this function, consider a function
976     that asynchronously does something for you and returns some
977     transaction object or guard to let you cancel the operation. For
978     example, "AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect":
979    
980     # start a conenction attempt unless one is active
981     $self->{connect_guard} ||= AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect "www.example.net", 80, sub {
982     delete $self->{connect_guard};
983     ...
984     };
985    
986     Imagine that this function could instantly call the callback, for
987     example, because it detects an obvious error such as a negative port
988     number. Invoking the callback before the function returns causes
989     problems however: the callback will be called and will try to delete
990     the guard object. But since the function hasn't returned yet, there
991     is nothing to delete. When the function eventually returns it will
992     assign the guard object to "$self->{connect_guard}", where it will
993     likely never be deleted, so the program thinks it is still trying to
994     connect.
995    
996     This is where "AnyEvent::postpone" should be used. Instead of
997     calling the callback directly on error:
998    
999     $cb->(undef), return # signal error to callback, BAD!
1000     if $some_error_condition;
1001    
1002     It should use "postpone":
1003    
1004     AnyEvent::postpone { $cb->(undef) }, return # signal error to callback, later
1005     if $some_error_condition;
1006    
1007 root 1.66 AnyEvent::log $level, $msg[, @args]
1008     Log the given $msg at the given $level.
1009    
1010     Loads AnyEvent::Log on first use and calls "AnyEvent::Log::log" -
1011     consequently, look at the AnyEvent::Log documentation for details.
1012    
1013     If you want to sprinkle loads of logging calls around your code,
1014     consider creating a logger callback with the "AnyEvent::Log::logger"
1015     function.
1016    
1017 root 1.6 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
1018     As a module author, you should "use AnyEvent" and call AnyEvent methods
1019     freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
1020    
1021 root 1.16 Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
1022 root 1.6 decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called,
1023     so by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your
1024     module to load the event module first.
1025    
1026 root 1.20 Never call "->recv" on a condition variable unless you *know* that the
1027     "->send" method has been called on it already. This is because it will
1028     stall the whole program, and the whole point of using events is to stay
1029     interactive.
1030 root 1.16
1031 root 1.20 It is fine, however, to call "->recv" when the user of your module
1032 root 1.16 requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
1033 root 1.63 called "results" that returns the results, it may call "->recv" freely,
1034     as the user of your module knows what she is doing. Always).
1035 root 1.16
1036 root 1.6 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
1037     There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
1038     dictate which event model to use.
1039    
1040 root 1.63 If the program is not event-based, it need not do anything special, even
1041     when it depends on a module that uses an AnyEvent. If the program itself
1042     uses AnyEvent, but does not care which event loop is used, all it needs
1043     to do is "use AnyEvent". In either case, AnyEvent will choose the best
1044     available loop implementation.
1045 root 1.16
1046 root 1.23 If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
1047     Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
1048 root 1.16 event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it:
1049     generally speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason
1050     is that modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent
1051     will decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers,
1052 root 1.63 and it might choose the wrong one unless you load the correct one
1053 root 1.16 yourself.
1054 root 1.6
1055 root 1.23 You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
1056 root 1.65 "AnyEvent::Loop" module, which gives you similar behaviour everywhere,
1057     but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
1058 root 1.23
1059     MAINLOOP EMULATION
1060     Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
1061     only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event
1062     loop.
1063    
1064     In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
1065    
1066     AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
1067    
1068     This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
1069    
1070     Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case it
1071     is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
1072     variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program
1073     should exit cleanly.
1074 root 1.2
1075 root 1.19 OTHER MODULES
1076     The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
1077 root 1.43 AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other
1078     AnyEvent modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the
1079 root 1.66 modules come as part of AnyEvent, the others are available via CPAN (see
1080     <http://search.cpan.org/search?m=module&q=anyevent%3A%3A*> for a longer
1081     non-exhaustive list), and the list is heavily biased towards modules of
1082     the AnyEvent author himself :)
1083 root 1.19
1084     AnyEvent::Util
1085 root 1.63 Contains various utility functions that replace often-used blocking
1086     functions such as "inet_aton" with event/callback-based versions.
1087 root 1.19
1088 root 1.22 AnyEvent::Socket
1089     Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
1090     addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking
1091     tcp connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and
1092     more.
1093    
1094 root 1.28 AnyEvent::Handle
1095     Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and
1096     writes, supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully
1097 root 1.63 transparent and non-blocking SSL/TLS (via AnyEvent::TLS).
1098 root 1.28
1099 root 1.23 AnyEvent::DNS
1100     Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
1101    
1102 root 1.62 AnyEvent::HTTP, AnyEvent::IRC, AnyEvent::XMPP, AnyEvent::GPSD,
1103     AnyEvent::IGS, AnyEvent::FCP
1104     Implement event-based interfaces to the protocols of the same name
1105     (for the curious, IGS is the International Go Server and FCP is the
1106     Freenet Client Protocol).
1107    
1108     AnyEvent::Handle::UDP
1109     Here be danger!
1110    
1111     As Pauli would put it, "Not only is it not right, it's not even
1112     wrong!" - there are so many things wrong with AnyEvent::Handle::UDP,
1113 root 1.63 most notably its use of a stream-based API with a protocol that
1114 root 1.62 isn't streamable, that the only way to improve it is to delete it.
1115    
1116     It features data corruption (but typically only under load) and
1117     general confusion. On top, the author is not only clueless about UDP
1118     but also fact-resistant - some gems of his understanding: "connect
1119     doesn't work with UDP", "UDP packets are not IP packets", "UDP only
1120     has datagrams, not packets", "I don't need to implement proper error
1121     checking as UDP doesn't support error checking" and so on - he
1122     doesn't even understand what's wrong with his module when it is
1123     explained to him.
1124    
1125     AnyEvent::DBI
1126     Executes DBI requests asynchronously in a proxy process for you,
1127 root 1.63 notifying you in an event-based way when the operation is finished.
1128 root 1.62
1129     AnyEvent::AIO
1130     Truly asynchronous (as opposed to non-blocking) I/O, should be in
1131     the toolbox of every event programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently
1132     fuses IO::AIO and AnyEvent together, giving AnyEvent access to
1133     event-based file I/O, and much more.
1134 root 1.26
1135 root 1.19 AnyEvent::HTTPD
1136 root 1.62 A simple embedded webserver.
1137 root 1.19
1138     AnyEvent::FastPing
1139     The fastest ping in the west.
1140    
1141     Coro
1142 root 1.20 Has special support for AnyEvent via Coro::AnyEvent.
1143    
1144 root 1.51 SIMPLIFIED AE API
1145     Starting with version 5.0, AnyEvent officially supports a second, much
1146     simpler, API that is designed to reduce the calling, typing and memory
1147 root 1.60 overhead by using function call syntax and a fixed number of parameters.
1148 root 1.51
1149     See the AE manpage for details.
1150    
1151 root 1.30 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1152     In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1153     caller to do that if required. The AnyEvent::Strict module (see also the
1154     "PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT" environment variable, below) provides strict
1155     checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1156     development.
1157    
1158     As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown
1159     while executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop
1160     specific, but also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the
1161     job of the main program.
1162    
1163     The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually within
1164     "condvar->recv"), the Event and EV modules call "$Event/EV::DIED->()",
1165     Glib uses "install_exception_handler" and so on.
1166 root 1.6
1167 root 1.4 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
1168 root 1.30 The following environment variables are used by this module or its
1169 root 1.40 submodules.
1170    
1171     Note that AnyEvent will remove *all* environment variables starting with
1172     "PERL_ANYEVENT_" from %ENV when it is loaded while taint mode is
1173     enabled.
1174 root 1.4
1175 root 1.18 "PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE"
1176 root 1.19 By default, AnyEvent will be completely silent except in fatal
1177     conditions. You can set this environment variable to make AnyEvent
1178     more talkative.
1179    
1180 root 1.66 When set to 5 or higher, causes AnyEvent to warn about unexpected
1181 root 1.19 conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified
1182     by "PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL".
1183    
1184 root 1.66 When set to 7 or higher, cause AnyEvent to report to STDERR which
1185 root 1.18 event model it chooses.
1186    
1187 root 1.46 When set to 8 or higher, then AnyEvent will report extra information
1188     on which optional modules it loads and how it implements certain
1189     features.
1190    
1191 root 1.28 "PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT"
1192     AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
1193     argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true
1194     value will cause AnyEvent to load "AnyEvent::Strict" and then to
1195     thoroughly check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it
1196 root 1.41 finds any problems, it will croak.
1197 root 1.28
1198     In other words, enables "strict" mode.
1199    
1200 root 1.63 Unlike "use strict" (or its modern cousin, "use common::sense", it
1201 root 1.46 is definitely recommended to keep it off in production. Keeping
1202     "PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1" in your environment while developing
1203     programs can be very useful, however.
1204 root 1.28
1205 root 1.65 "PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL"
1206     If this env variable is set, then its contents will be interpreted
1207     by "AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport" (after replacing every
1208     occurance of $$ by the process pid) and an "AnyEvent::Debug::shell"
1209     is bound on that port. The shell object is saved in
1210     $AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL.
1211    
1212     This takes place when the first watcher is created.
1213    
1214     For example, to bind a debug shell on a unix domain socket in
1215     /tmp/debug<pid>.sock, you could use this:
1216    
1217 root 1.66 PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL=/tmp/debug\$\$.sock perlprog
1218 root 1.65
1219     Note that creating sockets in /tmp is very unsafe on multiuser
1220     systems.
1221    
1222     "PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP"
1223     Can be set to 0, 1 or 2 and enables wrapping of all watchers for
1224     debugging purposes. See "AnyEvent::Debug::wrap" for details.
1225    
1226 root 1.18 "PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL"
1227     This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent,
1228 root 1.65 before auto detection and -probing kicks in.
1229 root 1.18
1230 root 1.65 It normally is a string consisting entirely of ASCII letters (e.g.
1231     "EV" or "IOAsync"). The string "AnyEvent::Impl::" gets prepended and
1232     the resulting module name is loaded and - if the load was successful
1233     - used as event model backend. If it fails to load then AnyEvent
1234     will proceed with auto detection and -probing.
1235    
1236     If the string ends with "::" instead (e.g. "AnyEvent::Impl::EV::")
1237     then nothing gets prepended and the module name is used as-is (hint:
1238     "::" at the end of a string designates a module name and quotes it
1239     appropriately).
1240 root 1.18
1241 root 1.65 For example, to force the pure perl model (AnyEvent::Loop::Perl) you
1242 root 1.18 could start your program like this:
1243    
1244 root 1.25 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
1245 root 1.4
1246 root 1.22 "PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS"
1247     Used by both AnyEvent::DNS and AnyEvent::Socket to determine
1248     preferences for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might
1249     change, or be the result of auto probing).
1250    
1251     Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address
1252     families, current supported: "ipv4" and "ipv6". Only protocols
1253     mentioned will be used, and preference will be given to protocols
1254     mentioned earlier in the list.
1255    
1256     This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
1257     against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is
1258 root 1.35 likely small, as the program has to handle conenction and other
1259     failures anyways.
1260 root 1.22
1261     Examples: "PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6" - prefer IPv4 over
1262     IPv6, but support both and try to use both.
1263     "PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4" - only support IPv4, never try to
1264     resolve or contact IPv6 addresses.
1265     "PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4" support either IPv4 or IPv6, but
1266     prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
1267    
1268     "PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0"
1269     Used by AnyEvent::DNS to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension
1270     for DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic,
1271     but some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS packets, which is why it
1272     is off by default.
1273    
1274     Setting this variable to 1 will cause AnyEvent::DNS to announce
1275     EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
1276    
1277 root 1.24 "PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS"
1278     The maximum number of child processes that
1279     "AnyEvent::Util::fork_call" will create in parallel.
1280    
1281 root 1.43 "PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS"
1282     The default value for the "max_outstanding" parameter for the
1283     default DNS resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS
1284     requests that are sent to the DNS server.
1285    
1286     "PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF"
1287     The file to use instead of /etc/resolv.conf (or OS-specific
1288     configuration) in the default resolver. When set to the empty
1289     string, no default config will be used.
1290    
1291     "PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE", "PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH".
1292     When neither "ca_file" nor "ca_path" was specified during
1293     AnyEvent::TLS context creation, and either of these environment
1294     variables exist, they will be used to specify CA certificate
1295     locations instead of a system-dependent default.
1296    
1297 root 1.46 "PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_GUARD" and "PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT"
1298     When these are set to 1, then the respective modules are not loaded.
1299     Mostly good for testing AnyEvent itself.
1300    
1301 root 1.30 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
1302     This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent
1303     in a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want
1304     to provide AnyEvent compatibility.
1305    
1306     If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
1307     supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
1308     pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of the
1309     event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
1310     @AnyEvent::REGISTRY. You can do that before and even without loading
1311     AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
1312    
1313     Example:
1314    
1315     push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
1316    
1317     This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the "urxvt::anyevent::"
1318     package/class when it finds the "urxvt" package/module is already
1319     loaded.
1320    
1321     When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
1322     will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to "use" the
1323     "urxvt::anyevent" module.
1324    
1325     The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
1326     AnyEvent::Impl::EV (source code), AnyEvent::Impl::Glib (Source code) and
1327     so on for actual examples. Use "perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib" to see
1328     the sources.
1329    
1330     If you don't provide "signal" and "child" watchers than AnyEvent will
1331     provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
1332    
1333     The above example isn't fictitious, the *rxvt-unicode* (a.k.a. urxvt)
1334     terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
1335     in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded
1336     interpreter inside *rxvt-unicode*, and it is updated and maintained as
1337     part of the *rxvt-unicode* distribution.
1338    
1339     *rxvt-unicode* also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
1340     condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
1341     "die". This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls
1342     must not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
1343    
1344 root 1.16 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
1345 root 1.19 The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a
1346 root 1.16 timer to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to
1347     quit the program when the user enters quit:
1348 root 1.2
1349     use AnyEvent;
1350    
1351     my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
1352    
1353 root 1.16 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
1354     fh => \*STDIN,
1355     poll => 'r',
1356     cb => sub {
1357     warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
1358     chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
1359     warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
1360 root 1.21 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
1361 root 1.16 },
1362     );
1363 root 1.2
1364 root 1.54 my $time_watcher = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, interval => 1, cb => sub {
1365     warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' at most every second
1366     });
1367 root 1.2
1368 root 1.21 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
1369 root 1.2
1370 root 1.3 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
1371     Consider the Net::FCP module. It features (among others) the following
1372     API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
1373    
1374     my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); # blocks
1375    
1376     my $transaction = $fcp->txn_client_get ($url); # does not block
1377     $transaction->cb ( sub { ... } ); # set optional result callback
1378     my $data = $transaction->result; # possibly blocks
1379    
1380     The "client_get" method works like "LWP::Simple::get": it requests the
1381     given URL and waits till the data has arrived. It is defined to be:
1382    
1383     sub client_get { $_[0]->txn_client_get ($_[1])->result }
1384    
1385     And in fact is automatically generated. This is the blocking API of
1386     Net::FCP, and it works as simple as in any other, similar, module.
1387    
1388     More complicated is "txn_client_get": It only creates a transaction
1389     (completion, result, ...) object and initiates the transaction.
1390    
1391     my $txn = bless { }, Net::FCP::Txn::;
1392    
1393     It also creates a condition variable that is used to signal the
1394     completion of the request:
1395    
1396     $txn->{finished} = AnyAvent->condvar;
1397    
1398     It then creates a socket in non-blocking mode.
1399    
1400     socket $txn->{fh}, ...;
1401     fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK;
1402     connect $txn->{fh}, ...
1403     and !$!{EWOULDBLOCK}
1404     and !$!{EINPROGRESS}
1405     and Carp::croak "unable to connect: $!\n";
1406    
1407 root 1.4 Then it creates a write-watcher which gets called whenever an error
1408 root 1.3 occurs or the connection succeeds:
1409    
1410     $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'w', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_w });
1411    
1412     And returns this transaction object. The "fh_ready_w" callback gets
1413     called as soon as the event loop detects that the socket is ready for
1414     writing.
1415    
1416     The "fh_ready_w" method makes the socket blocking again, writes the
1417     request data and replaces the watcher by a read watcher (waiting for
1418     reply data). The actual code is more complicated, but that doesn't
1419     matter for this example:
1420    
1421     fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, 0;
1422     syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
1423     or die "connection or write error";
1424     $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
1425    
1426     Again, "fh_ready_r" waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
1427 root 1.22 result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
1428 root 1.3
1429     sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
1430    
1431     if (end-of-file or data complete) {
1432     $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
1433 root 1.21 $txn->{finished}->send;
1434 root 1.4 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
1435 root 1.3 }
1436    
1437     The "result" method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
1438     request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns
1439     the data:
1440    
1441 root 1.21 $txn->{finished}->recv;
1442 root 1.4 return $txn->{result};
1443 root 1.3
1444     The actual code goes further and collects all errors ("die"s,
1445 root 1.22 exceptions) that occurred during request processing. The "result" method
1446 root 1.16 detects whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn
1447 root 1.3 object) and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and
1448 root 1.60 other problems get reported to the code that tries to use the result,
1449 root 1.3 not in a random callback.
1450    
1451     All of this enables the following usage styles:
1452    
1453     1. Blocking:
1454    
1455     my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
1456    
1457 root 1.15 2. Blocking, but running in parallel:
1458 root 1.3
1459     my @datas = map $_->result,
1460     map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
1461     @urls;
1462    
1463     Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
1464     anything about events.
1465    
1466 root 1.15 3a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
1467 root 1.3
1468 root 1.15 use EV;
1469 root 1.3
1470     $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
1471     my $txn = shift;
1472     my $data = $txn->result;
1473     ...
1474     });
1475    
1476 root 1.15 EV::loop;
1477 root 1.3
1478     3b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
1479    
1480     use AnyEvent;
1481    
1482     my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
1483    
1484     $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
1485     ...
1486 root 1.21 $quit->send;
1487 root 1.3 });
1488    
1489 root 1.21 $quit->recv;
1490 root 1.3
1491 root 1.19 BENCHMARKS
1492     To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
1493     over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the
1494     speed of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
1495    
1496     BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
1497     Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
1498 root 1.22 through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
1499 root 1.19 timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
1500     which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
1501    
1502     Source code for this benchmark is found as eg/bench in the AnyEvent
1503 root 1.51 distribution. It uses the AE interface, which makes a real difference
1504     for the EV and Perl backends only.
1505 root 1.19
1506     Explanation of the columns
1507     *watcher* is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
1508     different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
1509     loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is
1510     acceptable and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from
1511     crashing): Glib would probably take thousands of years if asked to
1512     process the same number of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
1513    
1514     *bytes* is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
1515     RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
1516     and Perl-based overheads.
1517    
1518     *create* is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
1519     takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared
1520     between all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means
1521     closure creation and memory usage is not included in the figures.
1522    
1523     *invoke* is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple callback.
1524     The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was invoked
1525 root 1.21 "watcher" times, it would "->send" a condvar once to signal the end of
1526     this phase.
1527 root 1.19
1528     *destroy* is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a
1529     single watcher.
1530    
1531     Results
1532     name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
1533 root 1.51 EV/EV 100000 223 0.47 0.43 0.27 EV native interface
1534     EV/Any 100000 223 0.48 0.42 0.26 EV + AnyEvent watchers
1535     Coro::EV/Any 100000 223 0.47 0.42 0.26 coroutines + Coro::Signal
1536     Perl/Any 100000 431 2.70 0.74 0.92 pure perl implementation
1537     Event/Event 16000 516 31.16 31.84 0.82 Event native interface
1538     Event/Any 16000 1203 42.61 34.79 1.80 Event + AnyEvent watchers
1539     IOAsync/Any 16000 1911 41.92 27.45 16.81 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
1540     IOAsync/Any 16000 1726 40.69 26.37 15.25 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
1541     Glib/Any 16000 1118 89.00 12.57 51.17 quadratic behaviour
1542     Tk/Any 2000 1346 20.96 10.75 8.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
1543     POE/Any 2000 6951 108.97 795.32 14.24 via POE::Loop::Event
1544     POE/Any 2000 6648 94.79 774.40 575.51 via POE::Loop::Select
1545 root 1.19
1546     Discussion
1547     The benchmark does *not* measure scalability of the event loop very
1548     well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
1549     can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
1550     file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready
1551     at the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural
1552     speed boost.
1553    
1554     Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
1555     overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take
1556     twice the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested
1557     with a higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
1558    
1559     To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
1560     benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
1561     EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000
1562     CPU cycles with POE.
1563    
1564     "EV" is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
1565 root 1.51 maximal/minimal, respectively. When using the AE API there is zero
1566     overhead (when going through the AnyEvent API create is about 5-6 times
1567     slower, with other times being equal, so still uses far less memory than
1568     any other event loop and is still faster than Event natively).
1569 root 1.19
1570     The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
1571     constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the
1572     perl interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that
1573     it adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend
1574     its performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and
1575     few of them active), of course, but this was not subject of this
1576     benchmark.
1577    
1578     The "Event" module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
1579     cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
1580    
1581 root 1.41 "IO::Async" performs admirably well, about on par with "Event", even
1582     when using its pure perl backend.
1583    
1584 root 1.19 "Glib"'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a faster
1585     callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as "Event".
1586     However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of watchers
1587     increases the processing time by more than a factor of four, making it
1588     completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers (note that
1589     only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
1590     inefficiencies of "poll" do not account for this).
1591    
1592     The "Tk" adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
1593     more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
1594     precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as
1595     the file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the
1596     dup() employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does
1597     incur a hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in
1598     the figures above).
1599    
1600     "POE", regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
1601     select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't be
1602     tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and memory
1603 root 1.20 usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory as EV
1604     watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
1605     requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher).
1606     Watcher invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's
1607     pure perl implementation.
1608    
1609     The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
1610     for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
1611     small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
1612     optimally within AnyEvent::Impl::POE (and while everybody agrees that
1613     using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
1614     memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
1615     design).
1616 root 1.19
1617     Summary
1618     * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop (even
1619     when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
1620     performance with or without AnyEvent.
1621    
1622     * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead
1623     of the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such
1624 root 1.66 as EV does AnyEvent add significant overhead.
1625 root 1.19
1626     * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
1627     reasonable memory usage.
1628    
1629     BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
1630 root 1.22 This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
1631     creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
1632 root 1.19 timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an
1633     I/O watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the
1634     socket watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other
1635     "server".
1636    
1637     The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of
1638     which are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of
1639 root 1.22 active fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random).
1640 root 1.19 The timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects
1641     how most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
1642    
1643 root 1.22 In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which
1644 root 1.19 100 (1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with
1645     many connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
1646    
1647     Source code for this benchmark is found as eg/bench2 in the AnyEvent
1648 root 1.51 distribution. It uses the AE interface, which makes a real difference
1649     for the EV and Perl backends only.
1650 root 1.19
1651     Explanation of the columns
1652     *sockets* is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers"
1653     (as each server has a read and write socket end).
1654    
1655 root 1.22 *create* is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
1656 root 1.19 nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
1657    
1658     *request*, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
1659     single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and
1660     forwarding it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout
1661     and creating a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
1662    
1663     Results
1664 root 1.41 name sockets create request
1665 root 1.51 EV 20000 62.66 7.99
1666     Perl 20000 68.32 32.64
1667     IOAsync 20000 174.06 101.15 epoll
1668     IOAsync 20000 174.67 610.84 poll
1669     Event 20000 202.69 242.91
1670     Glib 20000 557.01 1689.52
1671     POE 20000 341.54 12086.32 uses POE::Loop::Event
1672 root 1.19
1673     Discussion
1674     This benchmark *does* measure scalability and overall performance of the
1675     particular event loop.
1676    
1677     EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup
1678     time is relatively high, though.
1679    
1680     Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
1681     loops Event and Glib.
1682    
1683 root 1.41 IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still
1684     quite good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
1685    
1686 root 1.19 Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you
1687     will understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead
1688     compared to the "$_->() for .."-style loop that the Perl event loop
1689     uses. Event uses select or poll in basically all documented
1690     configurations.
1691    
1692     Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
1693     clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
1694    
1695     POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as
1696     long as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even
1697     though it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
1698    
1699     Summary
1700 root 1.20 * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
1701 root 1.19
1702     * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
1703    
1704     BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
1705     While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
1706     large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
1707     I/O watchers.
1708    
1709     In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large
1710     server case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active
1711     at any one time. This should reflect performance for a small server
1712     relatively well.
1713    
1714     The columns are identical to the previous table.
1715    
1716     Results
1717     name sockets create request
1718     EV 16 20.00 6.54
1719     Perl 16 25.75 12.62
1720     Event 16 81.27 35.86
1721     Glib 16 32.63 15.48
1722     POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
1723    
1724     Discussion
1725     The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small server.
1726     While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep in
1727     mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
1728     to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency
1729     and speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a
1730     few of them).
1731    
1732     EV is again fastest.
1733    
1734 root 1.22 Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
1735 root 1.19 loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
1736     matter.
1737    
1738     POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind
1739     the others.
1740    
1741     Summary
1742     * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of watchers,
1743     as the management overhead dominates.
1744    
1745 root 1.40 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
1746     Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
1747     could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the
1748     benchmark simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks
1749     better (which shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the
1750 root 1.41 benchmark is fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from
1751     IO::Lambda isn't very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used
1752     without the extra baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent
1753     benchmark for AnyEvent.
1754 root 1.40
1755     The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
1756     connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
1757     creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it
1758 root 1.41 doesn't test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O,
1759     but it is a benchmark nevertheless.
1760 root 1.40
1761     name runtime
1762     Lambda/select 0.330 sec
1763     + optimized 0.122 sec
1764     Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
1765     + optimized 0.138 sec
1766     Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
1767     POE/select, components 0.662 sec
1768     POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
1769     POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
1770    
1771     AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
1772     AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
1773     +state machine 0.134 sec
1774    
1775 root 1.41 The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
1776 root 1.40 benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
1777     defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
1778     written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
1779     AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
1780 root 1.41 resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking
1781 root 1.40 connects generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling
1782     than blocking connects (which involve a single syscall only).
1783    
1784     The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses AnyEvent::Handle, which
1785 root 1.41 offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using
1786     conventional Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the
1787     client are 100% non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
1788    
1789     As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
1790     hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
1791     backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
1792 root 1.40
1793     And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
1794 root 1.54 slow :) AnyEvent::Handle abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda
1795     higher level ("unoptimised") abstractions by a large margin, even though
1796     it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O in a non-blocking way.
1797 root 1.41
1798     The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as eg/ae0.pl and
1799     eg/ae2.pl in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
1800 root 1.54 part of the IO::Lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
1801 root 1.40
1802 root 1.32 SIGNALS
1803     AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
1804    
1805     SIGCHLD
1806     A handler for "SIGCHLD" is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
1807     emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also,
1808     some event loops install a similar handler.
1809    
1810 root 1.44 Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE,
1811     then AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit
1812     statuses.
1813 root 1.41
1814 root 1.32 SIGPIPE
1815     A no-op handler is installed for "SIGPIPE" when $SIG{PIPE} is
1816     "undef" when AnyEvent gets loaded.
1817    
1818     The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really
1819     depend on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for
1820     shell use, or badly-written programs), but "SIGPIPE" can cause
1821     spurious and rare program exits as a lot of people do not expect
1822     "SIGPIPE" when writing to some random socket.
1823    
1824     The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring
1825     it is that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on
1826     exec.
1827    
1828     Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
1829    
1830 root 1.46 RECOMMENDED/OPTIONAL MODULES
1831     One of AnyEvent's main goals is to be 100% Pure-Perl(tm): only perl (and
1832 root 1.63 its built-in modules) are required to use it.
1833 root 1.46
1834     That does not mean that AnyEvent won't take advantage of some additional
1835     modules if they are installed.
1836    
1837 root 1.57 This section explains which additional modules will be used, and how
1838     they affect AnyEvent's operation.
1839 root 1.46
1840     Async::Interrupt
1841     This slightly arcane module is used to implement fast signal
1842     handling: To my knowledge, there is no way to do completely
1843     race-free and quick signal handling in pure perl. To ensure that
1844     signals still get delivered, AnyEvent will start an interval timer
1845 root 1.47 to wake up perl (and catch the signals) with some delay (default is
1846 root 1.46 10 seconds, look for $AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY).
1847    
1848     If this module is available, then it will be used to implement
1849     signal catching, which means that signals will not be delayed, and
1850     the event loop will not be interrupted regularly, which is more
1851 root 1.57 efficient (and good for battery life on laptops).
1852 root 1.46
1853     This affects not just the pure-perl event loop, but also other event
1854     loops that have no signal handling on their own (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt).
1855    
1856 root 1.47 Some event loops (POE, Event, Event::Lib) offer signal watchers
1857     natively, and either employ their own workarounds (POE) or use
1858     AnyEvent's workaround (using $AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY).
1859     Installing Async::Interrupt does nothing for those backends.
1860    
1861 root 1.46 EV This module isn't really "optional", as it is simply one of the
1862     backend event loops that AnyEvent can use. However, it is simply the
1863     best event loop available in terms of features, speed and stability:
1864     It supports the AnyEvent API optimally, implements all the watcher
1865     types in XS, does automatic timer adjustments even when no monotonic
1866     clock is available, can take avdantage of advanced kernel interfaces
1867     such as "epoll" and "kqueue", and is the fastest backend *by far*.
1868     You can even embed Glib/Gtk2 in it (or vice versa, see EV::Glib and
1869     Glib::EV).
1870    
1871 root 1.60 If you only use backends that rely on another event loop (e.g.
1872     "Tk"), then this module will do nothing for you.
1873    
1874 root 1.46 Guard
1875     The guard module, when used, will be used to implement
1876     "AnyEvent::Util::guard". This speeds up guards considerably (and
1877     uses a lot less memory), but otherwise doesn't affect guard
1878     operation much. It is purely used for performance.
1879    
1880     JSON and JSON::XS
1881 root 1.55 One of these modules is required when you want to read or write JSON
1882 root 1.60 data via AnyEvent::Handle. JSON is also written in pure-perl, but
1883     can take advantage of the ultra-high-speed JSON::XS module when it
1884     is installed.
1885 root 1.46
1886     Net::SSLeay
1887     Implementing TLS/SSL in Perl is certainly interesting, but not very
1888     worthwhile: If this module is installed, then AnyEvent::Handle (with
1889     the help of AnyEvent::TLS), gains the ability to do TLS/SSL.
1890    
1891     Time::HiRes
1892     This module is part of perl since release 5.008. It will be used
1893 root 1.63 when the chosen event library does not come with a timing source of
1894 root 1.65 its own. The pure-perl event loop (AnyEvent::Loop) will additionally
1895     load it to try to use a monotonic clock for timing stability.
1896 root 1.46
1897 root 1.18 FORK
1898     Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
1899 root 1.59 because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe "select" or "poll" calls
1900     - higher performance APIs such as BSD's kqueue or the dreaded Linux
1901     epoll are usually badly thought-out hacks that are incompatible with
1902     fork in one way or another. Only EV is fully fork-aware and ensures that
1903     you continue event-processing in both parent and child (or both, if you
1904     know what you are doing).
1905 root 1.18
1906 root 1.57 This means that, in general, you cannot fork and do event processing in
1907 root 1.59 the child if the event library was initialised before the fork (which
1908     usually happens when the first AnyEvent watcher is created, or the
1909     library is loaded).
1910 root 1.57
1911 root 1.18 If you have to fork, you must either do so *before* creating your first
1912 root 1.46 watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child OR you must do
1913     something completely out of the scope of AnyEvent.
1914 root 1.18
1915 root 1.57 The problem of doing event processing in the parent *and* the child is
1916     much more complicated: even for backends that *are* fork-aware or
1917     fork-safe, their behaviour is not usually what you want: fork clones all
1918     watchers, that means all timers, I/O watchers etc. are active in both
1919 root 1.59 parent and child, which is almost never what you want. USing "exec" to
1920     start worker children from some kind of manage rprocess is usually
1921     preferred, because it is much easier and cleaner, at the expense of
1922     having to have another binary.
1923 root 1.57
1924 root 1.18 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
1925     AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
1926     $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used
1927     to execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used
1928     to make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent
1929     watchers will not be active when the program uses a different event
1930     model than specified in the variable.
1931    
1932     You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
1933     before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a "BEGIN" block:
1934    
1935 root 1.25 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
1936 root 1.62
1937     use AnyEvent;
1938 root 1.18
1939 root 1.20 Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
1940     be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which
1941 root 1.28 is probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL),
1942 root 1.40 and $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
1943 root 1.20
1944 root 1.41 Note that AnyEvent will remove *all* environment variables starting with
1945     "PERL_ANYEVENT_" from %ENV when it is loaded while taint mode is
1946     enabled.
1947    
1948 root 1.26 BUGS
1949     Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are
1950     hard to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl
1951     5.10 and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other
1952 root 1.36 annoying memleaks, such as leaking on "map" and "grep" but it is usually
1953 root 1.26 not as pronounced).
1954    
1955 root 1.2 SEE ALSO
1956 root 1.63 Tutorial/Introduction: AnyEvent::Intro.
1957    
1958     FAQ: AnyEvent::FAQ.
1959    
1960 root 1.66 Utility functions: AnyEvent::Util (misc. grab-bag), AnyEvent::Log
1961     (simply logging).
1962    
1963     Development/Debugging: AnyEvent::Strict (stricter checking),
1964     AnyEvent::Debug (interactive shell, watcher tracing).
1965 root 1.22
1966 root 1.66 Supported event modules: AnyEvent::Loop, EV, EV::Glib, Glib::EV, Event,
1967     Glib::Event, Glib, Tk, Event::Lib, Qt, POE, FLTK.
1968 root 1.20
1969     Implementations: AnyEvent::Impl::EV, AnyEvent::Impl::Event,
1970     AnyEvent::Impl::Glib, AnyEvent::Impl::Tk, AnyEvent::Impl::Perl,
1971 root 1.43 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib, AnyEvent::Impl::Qt, AnyEvent::Impl::POE,
1972 root 1.66 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync, Anyevent::Impl::Irssi, AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK.
1973 root 1.3
1974 root 1.66 Non-blocking handles, pipes, stream sockets, TCP clients and servers:
1975 root 1.43 AnyEvent::Handle, AnyEvent::Socket, AnyEvent::TLS.
1976 root 1.22
1977     Asynchronous DNS: AnyEvent::DNS.
1978    
1979 root 1.63 Thread support: Coro, Coro::AnyEvent, Coro::EV, Coro::Event.
1980 root 1.3
1981 root 1.63 Nontrivial usage examples: AnyEvent::GPSD, AnyEvent::IRC,
1982 root 1.43 AnyEvent::HTTP.
1983 root 1.2
1984 root 1.17 AUTHOR
1985 root 1.25 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
1986     http://home.schmorp.de/
1987 root 1.2