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1=head1 NAME 1=head1 NAME
2 2
3AnyEvent - provide framework for multiple event loops 3AnyEvent - provide framework for multiple event loops
4 4
5Event, Coro, Glib, Tk - various supported event loops 5EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Qt and POE are various supported
6event loops.
6 7
7=head1 SYNOPSIS 8=head1 SYNOPSIS
8 9
9 use AnyEvent; 10 use AnyEvent;
10 11
12 # file descriptor readable
11 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => ..., poll => "[rw]+", cb => sub { 13 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
12 my ($poll_got) = @_; 14
15 # one-shot or repeating timers
16 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
17 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...
18
19 print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
20 print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
21
22 # POSIX signal
23 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
24
25 # child process exit
26 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
27 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
13 ... 28 ...
14 }); 29 });
15 30
16* only one io watcher per $fh and $poll type is allowed (i.e. on a socket 31 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
17you can have one r + one w or one rw watcher, not any more (limitation by 32 my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
18Tk).
19 33
20* the C<$poll_got> passed to the handler needs to be checked by looking 34 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
21for single characters (e.g. with a regex), as it can contain more event 35 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
22types than were requested (e.g. a 'w' watcher might generate 'rw' events,
23limitation by Glib).
24
25* AnyEvent will keep filehandles alive, so as long as the watcher exists,
26the filehandle exists.
27
28 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub {
29 ...
30 });
31
32* io and time watchers get canceled whenever $w is destroyed, so keep a copy
33
34* timers can only be used once and must be recreated for repeated
35operation (limitation by Glib and Tk).
36
37 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # kind of main loop replacement
38 $w->wait; # enters main loop till $condvar gets ->broadcast 36 $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
39 $w->broadcast; # wake up current and all future wait's 37 # use a condvar in callback mode:
38 $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
40 39
41* condvars are used to give blocking behaviour when neccessary. Create 40=head1 INTRODUCTION/TUTORIAL
42a condvar for any "request" or "event" your module might create, C<< 41
43->broadcast >> it when the event happens and provide a function that calls 42This manpage is mainly a reference manual. If you are interested
44C<< ->wait >> for it. See the examples below. 43in a tutorial or some gentle introduction, have a look at the
44L<AnyEvent::Intro> manpage.
45
46=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
47
48Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
49nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
50
51Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of
52policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>.
53
54First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only
55interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
56pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
57the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
58only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process. AnyEvent
59cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between those event
60loops.
61
62The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
63programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
64religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
65module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
66model you use.
67
68For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
69actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is
70like joining a cult: After you joined, you are dependent on them and you
71cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
72that isn't them. What's worse, all the potential users of your
73module are I<also> forced to use the same event loop you use.
74
75AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
76fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
77with the rest: POE + IO::Async? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if
78your module uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it,
79too. But if your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all
80event models it supports (including stuff like IO::Async, as long as those
81use one of the supported event loops. It is trivial to add new event loops
82to AnyEvent, too, so it is future-proof).
83
84In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
85model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
86modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
87follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and up to the point, by only
88offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
89technically possible.
90
91Of course, AnyEvent comes with a big (and fully optional!) toolbox
92of useful functionality, such as an asynchronous DNS resolver, 100%
93non-blocking connects (even with TLS/SSL, IPv6 and on broken platforms
94such as Windows) and lots of real-world knowledge and workarounds for
95platform bugs and differences.
96
97Now, if you I<do want> lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
98useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
99model, you should I<not> use this module.
45 100
46=head1 DESCRIPTION 101=head1 DESCRIPTION
47 102
48L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This 103L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This
49allows module authors to utilizy an event loop without forcing module 104allows module authors to utilise an event loop without forcing module
50users to use the same event loop (as only a single event loop can coexist 105users to use the same event loop (as only a single event loop can coexist
51peacefully at any one time). 106peacefully at any one time).
52 107
53The interface itself is vaguely similar but not identical to the Event 108The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
54module. 109module.
55 110
56On the first call of any method, the module tries to detect the currently 111During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
57loaded event loop by probing wether any of the following modules is 112to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
58loaded: L<Coro::Event>, L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>. The first one found is 113following modules is already loaded: L<EV>,
59used. If none is found, the module tries to load these modules in the 114L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>,
60order given. The first one that could be successfully loaded will be 115L<POE>. The first one found is used. If none are found, the module tries
61used. If still none could be found, it will issue an error. 116to load these modules (excluding Tk, Event::Lib, Qt and POE as the pure perl
117adaptor should always succeed) in the order given. The first one that can
118be successfully loaded will be used. If, after this, still none could be
119found, AnyEvent will fall back to a pure-perl event loop, which is not
120very efficient, but should work everywhere.
121
122Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
123an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
124that model the default. For example:
125
126 use Tk;
127 use AnyEvent;
128
129 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
130
131The I<likely> means that, if any module loads another event model and
132starts using it, all bets are off. Maybe you should tell their authors to
133use AnyEvent so their modules work together with others seamlessly...
134
135The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called
136C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>. Like other event modules you can load it
137explicitly and enjoy the high availability of that event loop :)
138
139=head1 WATCHERS
140
141AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that
142stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
143the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
144
145These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
146creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the
147callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model
148is in control).
149
150Note that B<callbacks must not permanently change global variables>
151potentially in use by the event loop (such as C<$_> or C<$[>) and that B<<
152callbacks must not C<die> >>. The former is good programming practise in
153Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
154widely between event loops.
155
156To disable the watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
157variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
158to it).
159
160All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
161
162Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for
163example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways.
164
165An any way to achieve that is this pattern:
166
167 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub {
168 # you can use $w here, for example to undef it
169 undef $w;
170 });
171
172Note that C<my $w; $w => combination. This is necessary because in Perl,
173my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are
174declared.
175
176=head2 I/O WATCHERS
177
178You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method
179with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
180
181C<fh> is the Perl I<file handle> (or a naked file descriptor) to watch
182for events (AnyEvent might or might not keep a reference to this file
183handle). Note that only file handles pointing to things for which
184non-blocking operation makes sense are allowed. This includes sockets,
185most character devices, pipes, fifos and so on, but not for example files
186or block devices.
187
188C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which creates a
189watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
190
191C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
192
193Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
194presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
195callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
196
197The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of it.
198You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on the
199underlying file descriptor.
200
201Some event loops issue spurious readyness notifications, so you should
202always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
203handles.
204
205Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
206watcher.
207
208 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
209 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
210 warn "read: $input\n";
211 undef $w;
212 });
213
214=head2 TIME WATCHERS
215
216You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
217method with the following mandatory arguments:
218
219C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
220supported) the callback should be invoked. C<cb> is the callback to invoke
221in that case.
222
223Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
224presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
225callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
226
227The callback will normally be invoked once only. If you specify another
228parameter, C<interval>, as a strictly positive number (> 0), then the
229callback will be invoked regularly at that interval (in fractional
230seconds) after the first invocation. If C<interval> is specified with a
231false value, then it is treated as if it were missing.
232
233The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
234attempt is done to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval is
235only approximate.
236
237Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
238
239 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
240 warn "timeout\n";
241 });
242
243 # to cancel the timer:
244 undef $w;
245
246Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
247
248 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
249 warn "timeout\n";
250 };
251
252=head3 TIMING ISSUES
253
254There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
255in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
256o'clock").
257
258While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way, they
259use absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your clock
260"jumps", for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards from
261the wrong date of 2014-01-01 to 2008-01-01, a watcher that is supposed to
262fire "after" a second might actually take six years to finally fire.
263
264AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious
265about these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer, based
266on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on wallclock time)
267timers.
268
269AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
270AnyEvent API.
271
272AnyEvent has two additional methods that return the "current time":
62 273
63=over 4 274=over 4
64 275
276=item AnyEvent->time
277
278This returns the "current wallclock time" as a fractional number of
279seconds since the Epoch (the same thing as C<time> or C<Time::HiRes::time>
280return, and the result is guaranteed to be compatible with those).
281
282It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each call
283will check the system clock, which usually gets updated frequently.
284
285=item AnyEvent->now
286
287This also returns the "current wallclock time", but unlike C<time>, above,
288this value might change only once per event loop iteration, depending on
289the event loop (most return the same time as C<time>, above). This is the
290time that AnyEvent's timers get scheduled against.
291
292I<In almost all cases (in all cases if you don't care), this is the
293function to call when you want to know the current time.>
294
295This function is also often faster then C<< AnyEvent->time >>, and
296thus the preferred method if you want some timestamp (for example,
297L<AnyEvent::Handle> uses this to update it's activity timeouts).
298
299The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very exact
300with your timing, you can skip it without bad conscience.
301
302For a practical example of when these times differ, consider L<Event::Lib>
303and L<EV> and the following set-up:
304
305The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callback at
306time=500 (assume no other callbacks delay processing). In your callback,
307you wait a second by executing C<sleep 1> (blocking the process for a
308second) and then (at time=501) you create a relative timer that fires
309after three seconds.
310
311With L<Event::Lib>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> will
312both return C<501>, because that is the current time, and the timer will
313be scheduled to fire at time=504 (C<501> + C<3>).
314
315With L<EV>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> returns C<501> (as that is the current
316time), but C<< AnyEvent->now >> returns C<500>, as that is the time the
317last event processing phase started. With L<EV>, your timer gets scheduled
318to run at time=503 (C<500> + C<3>).
319
320In one sense, L<Event::Lib> is more exact, as it uses the current time
321regardless of any delays introduced by event processing. However, most
322callbacks do not expect large delays in processing, so this causes a
323higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the current time).
324
325In another sense, L<EV> is more exact, as your timer will be scheduled at
326the same time, regardless of how long event processing actually took.
327
328In either case, if you care (and in most cases, you don't), then you
329can get whatever behaviour you want with any event loop, by taking the
330difference between C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> into
331account.
332
333=item AnyEvent->now_update
334
335Some event loops (such as L<EV> or L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) cache
336the current time for each loop iteration (see the discussion of L<<
337AnyEvent->now >>, above).
338
339When a callback runs for a long time (or when the process sleeps), then
340this "current" time will differ substantially from the real time, which
341might affect timers and time-outs.
342
343When this is the case, you can call this method, which will update the
344event loop's idea of "current time".
345
346Note that updating the time I<might> cause some events to be handled.
347
348=back
349
350=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS
351
352You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal
353I<name> in uppercase and without any C<SIG> prefix, C<cb> is the Perl
354callback to be invoked whenever a signal occurs.
355
356Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
357presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
358callbacks cannot use arguments passed to signal watcher callbacks.
359
360Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
361invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous means
362that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process,
363but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
364
365The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal
366between multiple watchers.
367
368This watcher might use C<%SIG>, so programs overwriting those signals
369directly will likely not work correctly.
370
371Example: exit on SIGINT
372
373 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
374
375=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
376
377You can also watch on a child process exit and catch its exit status.
378
379The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (if set to C<0>, it
380watches for any child process exit). The watcher will triggered only when
381the child process has finished and an exit status is available, not on
382any trace events (stopped/continued).
383
384The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
385waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you I<can> rely on child watcher
386callback arguments.
387
388This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>,
389and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
390random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g. inside
391C<system>, is just fine).
392
393There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start them
394I<after> the child process was created, and this means the process could
395have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
396
397Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async do,
398see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event models
399that I<do> handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded before
400the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place). AnyEvent's
401pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless of when you
402start the watcher.
403
404This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first
405thing in an AnyEvent program, you I<have> to create at least one
406watcher before you C<fork> the child (alternatively, you can call
407C<AnyEvent::detect>).
408
409Example: fork a process and wait for it
410
411 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
412
413 my $pid = fork or exit 5;
414
415 my $w = AnyEvent->child (
416 pid => $pid,
417 cb => sub {
418 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
419 warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
420 $done->send;
421 },
422 );
423
424 # do something else, then wait for process exit
425 $done->recv;
426
427=head2 IDLE WATCHERS
428
429Sometimes there is a need to do something, but it is not so important
430to do it instantly, but only when there is nothing better to do. This
431"nothing better to do" is usually defined to be "no other events need
432attention by the event loop".
433
434Idle watchers ideally get invoked when the event loop has nothing
435better to do, just before it would block the process to wait for new
436events. Instead of blocking, the idle watcher is invoked.
437
438Most event loops unfortunately do not really support idle watchers (only
439EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest, AnyEvent
440will simply call the callback "from time to time".
441
442Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the
443program is otherwise idle:
444
445 my @lines; # read data
446 my $idle_w;
447 my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
448 push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
449
450 # start an idle watcher, if not already done
451 $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
452 # handle only one line, when there are lines left
453 if (my $line = shift @lines) {
454 print "handled when idle: $line";
455 } else {
456 # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
457 undef $idle_w;
458 }
459 });
460 });
461
462=head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
463
464If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
465require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
466will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
467
468AnyEvent is different, it expects somebody else to run the event loop and
469will only block when necessary (usually when told by the user).
470
471The instrument to do that is called a "condition variable", so called
472because they represent a condition that must become true.
473
474Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar
475>> method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
476
477C<cb>, which specifies a callback to be called when the condition variable
478becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
479the results).
480
481After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
482by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
483were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
484->send >> method).
485
486Condition variables are similar to callbacks, except that you can
487optionally wait for them. They can also be called merge points - points
488in time where multiple outstanding events have been processed. And yet
489another way to call them is transactions - each condition variable can be
490used to represent a transaction, which finishes at some point and delivers
491a result.
492
493Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has finished,
494for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests,
495then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
496availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
497called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
498
499You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
500you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
501could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
502button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
503
504Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
505two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
506lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but
507you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks,
508as this asks for trouble.
509
510Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
511used by AnyEvent itself are all named C<_ae_XXX> to make subclassing
512easy (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
513AnyEvent). To subclass, use C<AnyEvent::CondVar> as base class and call
514it's C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
515
516There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
517eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
518for the send to occur.
519
520Example: wait for a timer.
521
522 # wait till the result is ready
523 my $result_ready = AnyEvent->condvar;
524
525 # do something such as adding a timer
526 # or socket watcher the calls $result_ready->send
527 # when the "result" is ready.
528 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
529 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
530 after => 1,
531 cb => sub { $result_ready->send },
532 );
533
534 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
535 # calls send
536 $result_ready->recv;
537
538Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that
539condition variables are also code references.
540
541 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
542 my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
543 $done->recv;
544
545Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
546callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from
547the main program:
548
549 use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
550
551 ...
552
553 my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
554
555And this is how you would just ste a callback to be called whenever the
556results are available:
557
558 $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
559 my @info = $_[0]->recv;
560 });
561
562=head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
563
564These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
565code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
566the producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
567uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
568
569=over 4
570
571=item $cv->send (...)
572
573Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->recv >> and all further
574calls to C<recv> will (eventually) return after this method has been
575called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
576
577If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
578immediately from within send.
579
580Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
581future C<< ->recv >> calls.
582
583Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly
584(as a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as calling
585C<send>. Note, however, that many C-based event loops do not handle
586overloading, so as tempting as it may be, passing a condition variable
587instead of a callback does not work. Both the pure perl and EV loops
588support overloading, however, as well as all functions that use perl to
589invoke a callback (as in L<AnyEvent::Socket> and L<AnyEvent::DNS> for
590example).
591
592=item $cv->croak ($error)
593
594Similar to send, but causes all call's to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
595C<Carp::croak> with the given error message/object/scalar.
596
597This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
598user/consumer.
599
600=item $cv->begin ([group callback])
601
602=item $cv->end
603
604These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events into
605one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel might want
606to use a condition variable for the whole process.
607
608Every call to C<< ->begin >> will increment a counter, and every call to
609C<< ->end >> will decrement it. If the counter reaches C<0> in C<< ->end
610>>, the (last) callback passed to C<begin> will be executed. That callback
611is I<supposed> to call C<< ->send >>, but that is not required. If no
612callback was set, C<send> will be called without any arguments.
613
614You can think of C<< $cv->send >> giving you an OR condition (one call
615sends), while C<< $cv->begin >> and C<< $cv->end >> giving you an AND
616condition (all C<begin> calls must be C<end>'ed before the condvar sends).
617
618Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for example,
619STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for both streams to
620close before activating a condvar:
621
622 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
623
624 $cv->begin; # first watcher
625 my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
626 defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
627 or $cv->end;
628 });
629
630 $cv->begin; # second watcher
631 my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
632 defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
633 or $cv->end;
634 });
635
636 $cv->recv;
637
638This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle), there is
639one call to C<begin>, so the condvar waits for all calls to C<end> before
640sending.
641
642The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as the
643there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks that are
644begung can potentially be zero:
645
646 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
647
648 my %result;
649 $cv->begin (sub { $cv->send (\%result) });
650
651 for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
652 $cv->begin;
653 ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
654 $result{$host} = ...;
655 $cv->end;
656 };
657 }
658
659 $cv->end;
660
661This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
662C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
663order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to C<begin> when it starts
664each ping request and calls C<end> when it has received some result for
665it. Since C<begin> and C<end> only maintain a counter, the order in which
666results arrive is not relevant.
667
668There is an additional bracketing call to C<begin> and C<end> outside the
669loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the callback
670to be called once the counter reaches C<0>, and second, it ensures that
671C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
672doesn't execute once).
673
674This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
675potentially none) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
676the callback and ensure C<end> is called at least once, and then, for each
677subrequest you start, call C<begin> and for each subrequest you finish,
678call C<end>.
679
680=back
681
682=head3 METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
683
684These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the
685code awaits the condition.
686
687=over 4
688
689=item $cv->recv
690
691Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
692>> methods have been called on c<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
693normally.
694
695You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid but
696will return immediately.
697
698If an error condition has been set by calling C<< ->croak >>, then this
699function will call C<croak>.
700
701In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
702in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
703
704Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
705(programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
706using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>, but let the
707caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
708condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
709callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
710while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
711
712Another reason I<never> to C<< ->recv >> in a module is that you cannot
713sensibly have two C<< ->recv >>'s in parallel, as that would require
714multiple interpreters or coroutines/threads, none of which C<AnyEvent>
715can supply.
716
717The L<Coro> module, however, I<can> and I<does> supply coroutines and, in
718fact, L<Coro::AnyEvent> replaces AnyEvent's condvars by coroutine-safe
719versions and also integrates coroutines into AnyEvent, making blocking
720C<< ->recv >> calls perfectly safe as long as they are done from another
721coroutine (one that doesn't run the event loop).
722
723You can ensure that C<< -recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
724only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
725time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
726waits otherwise.
727
728=item $bool = $cv->ready
729
730Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether C<send> or
731C<croak> have been called.
732
733=item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
734
735This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
736replaces it before doing so.
737
738The callback will be called when the condition becomes "true", i.e. when
739C<send> or C<croak> are called, with the only argument being the condition
740variable itself. Calling C<recv> inside the callback or at any later time
741is guaranteed not to block.
742
743=back
744
745=head1 SUPPORTED EVENT LOOPS/BACKENDS
746
747The available backend classes are (every class has its own manpage):
748
749=over 4
750
751=item Backends that are autoprobed when no other event loop can be found.
752
753EV is the preferred backend when no other event loop seems to be in
754use. If EV is not installed, then AnyEvent will try Event, and, failing
755that, will fall back to its own pure-perl implementation, which is
756available everywhere as it comes with AnyEvent itself.
757
758 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
759 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
760 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl implementation, fast and portable.
761
762=item Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
763
764These will be used when they are currently loaded when the first watcher
765is created, in which case it is assumed that the application is using
766them. This means that AnyEvent will automatically pick the right backend
767when the main program loads an event module before anything starts to
768create watchers. Nothing special needs to be done by the main program.
769
770 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, slow but very stable.
771 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very broken.
772 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
773 AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, very slow, some limitations.
774
775=item Backends with special needs.
776
777Qt requires the Qt::Application to be instantiated first, but will
778otherwise be picked up automatically. As long as the main program
779instantiates the application before any AnyEvent watchers are created,
780everything should just work.
781
782 AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt.
783
784Support for IO::Async can only be partial, as it is too broken and
785architecturally limited to even support the AnyEvent API. It also
786is the only event loop that needs the loop to be set explicitly, so
787it can only be used by a main program knowing about AnyEvent. See
788L<AnyEvent::Impl::Async> for the gory details.
789
790 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async, cannot be autoprobed.
791
792=item Event loops that are indirectly supported via other backends.
793
794Some event loops can be supported via other modules:
795
796There is no direct support for WxWidgets (L<Wx>) or L<Prima>.
797
798B<WxWidgets> has no support for watching file handles. However, you can
799use WxWidgets through the POE adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that simply
800polls 20 times per second, which was considered to be too horrible to even
801consider for AnyEvent.
802
803B<Prima> is not supported as nobody seems to be using it, but it has a POE
804backend, so it can be supported through POE.
805
806AnyEvent knows about both L<Prima> and L<Wx>, however, and will try to
807load L<POE> when detecting them, in the hope that POE will pick them up,
808in which case everything will be automatic.
809
810=back
811
812=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
813
814These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
815write AnyEvent extension modules.
816
817=over 4
818
819=item $AnyEvent::MODEL
820
821Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created, before the
822backend has been autodetected.
823
824Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is the
825name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one
826of the C<AnyEvent::Impl:xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the
827case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode> it
828will be C<urxvt::anyevent>).
829
830=item AnyEvent::detect
831
832Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model
833if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would
834have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at
835runtime, and not e.g. while initialising of your module.
836
837If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
838created, use C<post_detect>.
839
840=item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
841
842Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
843autodetected (or immediately if this has already happened).
844
845The block will be executed I<after> the actual backend has been detected
846(C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> is set), but I<before> any watchers have been
847created, so it is possible to e.g. patch C<@AnyEvent::ISA> or do
848other initialisations - see the sources of L<AnyEvent::Strict> or
849L<AnyEvent::AIO> to see how this is used.
850
851The most common usage is to create some global watchers, without forcing
852event module detection too early, for example, L<AnyEvent::AIO> creates
853and installs the global L<IO::AIO> watcher in a C<post_detect> block to
854avoid autodetecting the event module at load time.
855
856If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
857that automatically removes the callback again when it is destroyed. See
858L<Coro::BDB> for a case where this is useful.
859
860=item @AnyEvent::post_detect
861
862If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
863before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will called directly after
864the event loop has been chosen.
865
866You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
867if it is defined then the event loop has already been detected, and the
868array will be ignored.
869
870Best use C<AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }> when your application allows
871it,as it takes care of these details.
872
873This variable is mainly useful for modules that can do something useful
874when AnyEvent is used and thus want to know when it is initialised, but do
875not need to even load it by default. This array provides the means to hook
876into AnyEvent passively, without loading it.
877
878=back
879
880=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
881
882As a module author, you should C<use AnyEvent> and call AnyEvent methods
883freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
884
885Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
886decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
887by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
888to load the event module first.
889
890Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
891the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
892because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
893events is to stay interactive.
894
895It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
896requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
897called C<results> that returns the results, it should call C<< ->recv >>
898freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. always).
899
900=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
901
902There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
903dictate which event model to use.
904
905If it doesn't care, it can just "use AnyEvent" and use it itself, or not
906do anything special (it does not need to be event-based) and let AnyEvent
907decide which implementation to chose if some module relies on it.
908
909If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
910Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
911event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
912speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
913modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
914decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
915might chose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
916
917You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
918C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl> module, which gives you similar behaviour
919everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
920
921=head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
922
923Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
924only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
925
926In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
927
928 AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
929
930This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
931
932Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
933it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
934variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
935exit cleanly.
936
937
938=head1 OTHER MODULES
939
940The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
941AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other AnyEvent
942modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the modules
943come with AnyEvent, most are available via CPAN.
944
945=over 4
946
947=item L<AnyEvent::Util>
948
949Contains various utility functions that replace often-used but blocking
950functions such as C<inet_aton> by event-/callback-based versions.
951
952=item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
953
954Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
955addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
956connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
957
958=item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
959
960Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
961supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
962non-blocking SSL/TLS (via L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
963
964=item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
965
966Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
967
968=item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>
969
970A simple-to-use HTTP library that is capable of making a lot of concurrent
971HTTP requests.
972
973=item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
974
975Provides a simple web application server framework.
976
977=item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
978
979The fastest ping in the west.
980
981=item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
982
983Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process.
984
985=item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
986
987Truly asynchronous I/O, should be in the toolbox of every event
988programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent
989together.
990
991=item L<AnyEvent::BDB>
992
993Truly asynchronous Berkeley DB access. AnyEvent::BDB transparently fuses
994L<BDB> and AnyEvent together.
995
996=item L<AnyEvent::GPSD>
997
998A non-blocking interface to gpsd, a daemon delivering GPS information.
999
1000=item L<AnyEvent::IRC>
1001
1002AnyEvent based IRC client module family (replacing the older Net::IRC3).
1003
1004=item L<AnyEvent::XMPP>
1005
1006AnyEvent based XMPP (Jabber protocol) module family (replacing the older
1007Net::XMPP2>.
1008
1009=item L<AnyEvent::IGS>
1010
1011A non-blocking interface to the Internet Go Server protocol (used by
1012L<App::IGS>).
1013
1014=item L<Net::FCP>
1015
1016AnyEvent-based implementation of the Freenet Client Protocol, birthplace
1017of AnyEvent.
1018
1019=item L<Event::ExecFlow>
1020
1021High level API for event-based execution flow control.
1022
1023=item L<Coro>
1024
1025Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>.
1026
1027=back
1028
65=cut 1029=cut
66 1030
67package AnyEvent; 1031package AnyEvent;
68 1032
69no warnings; 1033no warnings;
70use strict 'vars'; 1034use strict qw(vars subs);
1035
71use Carp; 1036use Carp;
72 1037
73our $VERSION = '1.02'; 1038our $VERSION = 4.82;
74our $MODEL; 1039our $MODEL;
75 1040
76our $AUTOLOAD; 1041our $AUTOLOAD;
77our @ISA; 1042our @ISA;
78 1043
1044our @REGISTRY;
1045
1046our $WIN32;
1047
1048BEGIN {
1049 eval "sub WIN32(){ " . (($^O =~ /mswin32/i)*1) ." }";
1050 eval "sub TAINT(){ " . (${^TAINT}*1) . " }";
1051
1052 delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
1053 if ${^TAINT};
1054}
1055
79our $verbose = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1; 1056our $verbose = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
80 1057
81our @REGISTRY; 1058our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
1059
1060{
1061 my $idx;
1062 $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
1063 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
1064 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1065}
82 1066
83my @models = ( 1067my @models = (
84 [Coro::Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Coro::], 1068 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV::],
85 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::], 1069 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::],
86 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib::], 1070 [AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl::],
1071 # everything below here will not be autoprobed
1072 # as the pureperl backend should work everywhere
1073 # and is usually faster
1074 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib::], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1075 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1076 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1077 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
1078 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
87 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], 1079 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1080 [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1081 # IO::Async is just too broken - we would need workarounds for its
1082 # byzantine signal and broken child handling, among others.
1083 # IO::Async is rather hard to detect, as it doesn't have any
1084 # obvious default class.
1085# [IO::Async:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1086# [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1087# [IO::Async::Notifier:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
88); 1088);
89 1089
90our %method = map +($_ => 1), qw(io timer condvar broadcast wait cancel DESTROY); 1090our %method = map +($_ => 1),
1091 qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar one_event DESTROY);
91 1092
92sub AUTOLOAD { 1093our @post_detect;
93 $AUTOLOAD =~ s/.*://;
94 1094
95 $method{$AUTOLOAD} 1095sub post_detect(&) {
96 or croak "$AUTOLOAD: not a valid method for AnyEvent objects"; 1096 my ($cb) = @_;
97 1097
1098 if ($MODEL) {
1099 $cb->();
1100
1101 1
1102 } else {
1103 push @post_detect, $cb;
1104
1105 defined wantarray
1106 ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1107 : ()
1108 }
1109}
1110
1111sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1112 @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1113}
1114
1115sub detect() {
98 unless ($MODEL) { 1116 unless ($MODEL) {
1117 no strict 'refs';
1118 local $SIG{__DIE__};
1119
1120 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z]+)$/) {
1121 my $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$1";
1122 if (eval "require $model") {
1123 $MODEL = $model;
1124 warn "AnyEvent: loaded model '$model' (forced by \$PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
1125 } else {
1126 warn "AnyEvent: unable to load model '$model' (from \$PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL):\n$@" if $verbose;
1127 }
1128 }
1129
99 # check for already loaded models 1130 # check for already loaded models
1131 unless ($MODEL) {
100 for (@REGISTRY, @models) { 1132 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
101 my ($package, $model) = @$_; 1133 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
102 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) { 1134 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
103 if (eval "require $model") { 1135 if (eval "require $model") {
104 $MODEL = $model; 1136 $MODEL = $model;
105 warn "AnyEvent: found model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1; 1137 warn "AnyEvent: autodetected model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
106 last; 1138 last;
1139 }
107 } 1140 }
108 } 1141 }
1142
1143 unless ($MODEL) {
1144 # try to load a model
1145
1146 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1147 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
1148 if (eval "require $package"
1149 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
1150 and eval "require $model") {
1151 $MODEL = $model;
1152 warn "AnyEvent: autoprobed model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
1153 last;
1154 }
1155 }
1156
1157 $MODEL
1158 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: EV, Event or Glib.\n";
1159 }
109 } 1160 }
110 1161
111 unless ($MODEL) { 1162 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
112 # try to load a model
113 1163
114 for (@REGISTRY, @models) { 1164 unshift @ISA, $MODEL;
115 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
116 if (eval "require $model") {
117 $MODEL = $model;
118 warn "AnyEvent: autoprobed and loaded model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
119 last;
120 }
121 }
122 1165
1166 require AnyEvent::Strict if $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT};
1167
1168 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
1169 }
1170
123 $MODEL 1171 $MODEL
124 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: Coro, Event, Glib or Tk."; 1172}
1173
1174sub AUTOLOAD {
1175 (my $func = $AUTOLOAD) =~ s/.*://;
1176
1177 $method{$func}
1178 or croak "$func: not a valid method for AnyEvent objects";
1179
1180 detect unless $MODEL;
1181
1182 my $class = shift;
1183 $class->$func (@_);
1184}
1185
1186# utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1187# to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1188# allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1189sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1190 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1191
1192 # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1193 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<") : ($w, ">");
1194
1195 open my $fh2, "$mode&", $fh
1196 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1197
1198 # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1199
1200 ($fh2, $rw)
1201}
1202
1203package AnyEvent::Base;
1204
1205# default implementations for many methods
1206
1207BEGIN {
1208 if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1209 *_time = \&Time::HiRes::time;
1210 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1211 } else {
1212 *_time = sub { time }; # epic fail
1213 }
1214}
1215
1216sub time { _time }
1217sub now { _time }
1218sub now_update { }
1219
1220# default implementation for ->condvar
1221
1222sub condvar {
1223 bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1224}
1225
1226# default implementation for ->signal
1227
1228our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1229
1230sub _signal_exec {
1231 sysread $SIGPIPE_R, my $dummy, 4;
1232
1233 while (%SIG_EV) {
1234 for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1235 delete $SIG_EV{$_};
1236 $_->() for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
125 } 1237 }
126 } 1238 }
1239}
127 1240
128 @ISA = $MODEL; 1241sub signal {
1242 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
129 1243
1244 unless ($SIGPIPE_R) {
1245 require Fcntl;
1246
1247 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1248 require AnyEvent::Util;
1249
1250 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1251 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1252 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1253 } else {
1254 pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1255 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, &Fcntl::F_SETFL, &Fcntl::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1256 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, &Fcntl::F_SETFL, &Fcntl::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1257
1258 # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1259 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, &Fcntl::F_SETFD, &Fcntl::FD_CLOEXEC;
1260 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, &Fcntl::F_SETFD, &Fcntl::FD_CLOEXEC;
1261 }
1262
1263 $SIGPIPE_R
1264 or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1265
1266 $SIG_IO = AnyEvent->io (fh => $SIGPIPE_R, poll => "r", cb => \&_signal_exec);
1267 }
1268
1269 my $signal = uc $arg{signal}
1270 or Carp::croak "required option 'signal' is missing";
1271
1272 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1273 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
1274 local $!;
1275 syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1276 undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
1277 };
1278
1279 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1280}
1281
1282sub AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY {
1283 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1284
1285 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
1286
1287 # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1288 # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1289 # instead of getting the default action.
1290 undef $SIG{$signal} unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
1291}
1292
1293# default implementation for ->child
1294
1295our %PID_CB;
1296our $CHLD_W;
1297our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
1298our $WNOHANG;
1299
1300sub _sigchld {
1301 while (0 < (my $pid = waitpid -1, $WNOHANG)) {
1302 $_->($pid, $?) for (values %{ $PID_CB{$pid} || {} }),
1303 (values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} });
1304 }
1305}
1306
1307sub child {
1308 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1309
1310 defined (my $pid = $arg{pid} + 0)
1311 or Carp::croak "required option 'pid' is missing";
1312
1313 $PID_CB{$pid}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1314
1315 $WNOHANG ||= eval { local $SIG{__DIE__}; require POSIX; &POSIX::WNOHANG } || 1;
1316
1317 unless ($CHLD_W) {
1318 $CHLD_W = AnyEvent->signal (signal => 'CHLD', cb => \&_sigchld);
1319 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
1320 &_sigchld;
1321 }
1322
1323 bless [$pid, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
1324}
1325
1326sub AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY {
1327 my ($pid, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1328
1329 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb};
1330 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
1331
1332 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
1333}
1334
1335# idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1336# of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1337# the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1338sub idle {
1339 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1340
1341 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1342
1343 $rcb = sub {
1344 if ($cb) {
1345 $w = _time;
1346 &$cb;
1347 $w = _time - $w;
1348
1349 # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1350 # within some limits
1351 $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1352 $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1353
1354 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $w, cb => $rcb);
1355 } else {
1356 # clean up...
1357 undef $w;
1358 undef $rcb;
1359 }
1360 };
1361
1362 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.05, cb => $rcb);
1363
1364 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1365}
1366
1367sub AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY {
1368 undef $${$_[0]};
1369}
1370
1371package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1372
1373our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1374
1375package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1376
1377use overload
1378 '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1379 fallback => 1;
1380
1381sub _send {
1382 # nop
1383}
1384
1385sub send {
130 my $class = shift; 1386 my $cv = shift;
131 $class->$AUTOLOAD (@_); 1387 $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1388 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1389 $cv->_send;
132} 1390}
1391
1392sub croak {
1393 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1394 $_[0]->send;
1395}
1396
1397sub ready {
1398 $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1399}
1400
1401sub _wait {
1402 AnyEvent->one_event while !$_[0]{_ae_sent};
1403}
1404
1405sub recv {
1406 $_[0]->_wait;
1407
1408 Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak} if $_[0]{_ae_croak};
1409 wantarray ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} } : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
1410}
1411
1412sub cb {
1413 $_[0]{_ae_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1414 $_[0]{_ae_cb}
1415}
1416
1417sub begin {
1418 ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1419 $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1420}
1421
1422sub end {
1423 return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1424 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
1425}
1426
1427# undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
1428*broadcast = \&send;
1429*wait = \&_wait;
1430
1431=head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1432
1433In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1434caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
1435the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
1436checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1437development.
1438
1439As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
1440executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
1441also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
1442program.
1443
1444The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
1445within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
1446$Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
1447so on.
1448
1449=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
1450
1451The following environment variables are used by this module or its
1452submodules.
1453
1454Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
1455C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
1456enabled.
1457
1458=over 4
1459
1460=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
1461
1462By default, AnyEvent will be completely silent except in fatal
1463conditions. You can set this environment variable to make AnyEvent more
1464talkative.
1465
1466When set to C<1> or higher, causes AnyEvent to warn about unexpected
1467conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified by
1468C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>.
1469
1470When set to C<2> or higher, cause AnyEvent to report to STDERR which event
1471model it chooses.
1472
1473=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
1474
1475AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
1476argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
1477will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
1478check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
1479it will croak.
1480
1481In other words, enables "strict" mode.
1482
1483Unlike C<use strict>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in
1484production. Keeping C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while
1485developing programs can be very useful, however.
1486
1487=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
1488
1489This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
1490auto detection and -probing kicks in. It must be a string consisting
1491entirely of ASCII letters. The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended
1492and the resulting module name is loaded and if the load was successful,
1493used as event model. If it fails to load AnyEvent will proceed with
1494auto detection and -probing.
1495
1496This functionality might change in future versions.
1497
1498For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) you
1499could start your program like this:
1500
1501 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
1502
1503=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
1504
1505Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
1506for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
1507of auto probing).
1508
1509Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
1510current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
1511used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
1512list.
1513
1514This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
1515against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
1516small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
1517
1518Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
1519but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
1520- only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
1521addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
1522IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
1523
1524=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
1525
1526Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension
1527for DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, but
1528some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS packets, which is why it is off by
1529default.
1530
1531Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
1532EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
1533
1534=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
1535
1536The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
1537will create in parallel.
1538
1539=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
1540
1541The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
1542resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
1543sent to the DNS server.
1544
1545=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
1546
1547The file to use instead of F</etc/resolv.conf> (or OS-specific
1548configuration) in the default resolver. When set to the empty string, no
1549default config will be used.
1550
1551=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
1552
1553When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
1554L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
1555variables exist, they will be used to specify CA certificate locations
1556instead of a system-dependent default.
133 1557
134=back 1558=back
135 1559
136=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE 1560=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
1561
1562This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
1563a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
1564provide AnyEvent compatibility.
137 1565
138If you need to support another event library which isn't directly 1566If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
139supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by 1567supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
140pushing, before the first watch gets created, the package name of 1568pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of
141the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto 1569the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
142C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading 1570C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading
143AnyEvent. 1571AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
144 1572
145Example: 1573Example:
146 1574
147 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::]; 1575 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
148 1576
149This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::> module 1577This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::>
150when it finds the C<urxvt> module is loaded. When AnyEvent is loaded and 1578package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is already loaded.
151requested to find a suitable event model, it will first check for the
152urxvt module.
153 1579
1580When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
1581will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to C<use> the
1582C<urxvt::anyevent> module.
1583
1584The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
1585L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> (Source code)
1586and so on for actual examples. Use C<perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to
1587see the sources.
1588
1589If you don't provide C<signal> and C<child> watchers than AnyEvent will
1590provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
1591
154The above isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt) uses 1592The above example isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt)
155the above line exactly. An interface isn't included in AnyEvent 1593terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
156because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter inside 1594in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter
157I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the 1595inside I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the
158I<rxvt-unicode> distribution. 1596I<rxvt-unicode> distribution.
159 1597
160=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 1598I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
1599condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
1600C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
1601not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
161 1602
162The following environment variables are used by this module:
163
164C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> when set to C<2> or higher, reports which event
165model gets used.
166
167=head1 EXAMPLE 1603=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
168 1604
169The following program uses an io watcher to read data from stdin, a timer 1605The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
170to display a message once per second, and a condvar to exit the program 1606to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
171when the user enters quit: 1607program when the user enters quit:
172 1608
173 use AnyEvent; 1609 use AnyEvent;
174 1610
175 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar; 1611 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
176 1612
177 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub { 1613 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
1614 fh => \*STDIN,
1615 poll => 'r',
1616 cb => sub {
178 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r> 1617 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
179 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line 1618 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
180 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read 1619 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
181 $cv->broadcast if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i 1620 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
1621 },
182 }); 1622 );
183 1623
184 my $time_watcher; # can only be used once 1624 my $time_watcher; # can only be used once
185 1625
186 sub new_timer { 1626 sub new_timer {
187 $timer = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => sub { 1627 $timer = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => sub {
190 }); 1630 });
191 } 1631 }
192 1632
193 new_timer; # create first timer 1633 new_timer; # create first timer
194 1634
195 $cv->wait; # wait until user enters /^q/i 1635 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
196 1636
197=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE 1637=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
198 1638
199Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following 1639Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
200API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http: 1640API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
250 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request} 1690 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
251 or die "connection or write error"; 1691 or die "connection or write error";
252 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r }); 1692 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
253 1693
254Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the 1694Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
255result and signals any possible waiters that the request ahs finished: 1695result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
256 1696
257 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf}; 1697 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
258 1698
259 if (end-of-file or data complete) { 1699 if (end-of-file or data complete) {
260 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf}; 1700 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
261 $txn->{finished}->broadcast; 1701 $txn->{finished}->send;
262 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback 1702 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
263 } 1703 }
264 1704
265The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the 1705The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
266request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the 1706request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
267data: 1707data:
268 1708
269 $txn->{finished}->wait; 1709 $txn->{finished}->recv;
270 return $txn->{result}; 1710 return $txn->{result};
271 1711
272The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions) 1712The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
273that occured during request processing. The C<result> method detects 1713that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
274wether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object) 1714whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
275and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other 1715and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
276problems get reported tot he code that tries to use the result, not in a 1716problems get reported tot he code that tries to use the result, not in a
277random callback. 1717random callback.
278 1718
279All of this enables the following usage styles: 1719All of this enables the following usage styles:
280 1720
2811. Blocking: 17211. Blocking:
282 1722
283 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); 1723 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
284 1724
2852. Blocking, but parallelizing: 17252. Blocking, but running in parallel:
286 1726
287 my @datas = map $_->result, 1727 my @datas = map $_->result,
288 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_), 1728 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
289 @urls; 1729 @urls;
290 1730
291Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know 1731Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
292anything about events. 1732anything about events.
293 1733
2943a. Event-based in a main program, using any support Event module: 17343a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
295 1735
296 use Event; 1736 use EV;
297 1737
298 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub { 1738 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
299 my $txn = shift; 1739 my $txn = shift;
300 my $data = $txn->result; 1740 my $data = $txn->result;
301 ... 1741 ...
302 }); 1742 });
303 1743
304 Event::loop; 1744 EV::loop;
305 1745
3063b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too: 17463b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
307 1747
308 use AnyEvent; 1748 use AnyEvent;
309 1749
310 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar; 1750 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
311 1751
312 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub { 1752 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
313 ... 1753 ...
314 $quit->broadcast; 1754 $quit->send;
315 }); 1755 });
316 1756
317 $quit->wait; 1757 $quit->recv;
1758
1759
1760=head1 BENCHMARKS
1761
1762To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
1763over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
1764of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
1765
1766=head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
1767
1768Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
1769through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
1770timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
1771which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
1772
1773Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
1774distribution.
1775
1776=head3 Explanation of the columns
1777
1778I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
1779different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
1780loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
1781and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
1782would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
1783of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
1784
1785I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
1786RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
1787and Perl-based overheads.
1788
1789I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
1790takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
1791all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
1792and memory usage is not included in the figures.
1793
1794I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
1795callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
1796invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
1797signal the end of this phase.
1798
1799I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
1800watcher.
1801
1802=head3 Results
1803
1804 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
1805 EV/EV 400000 224 0.47 0.35 0.27 EV native interface
1806 EV/Any 100000 224 2.88 0.34 0.27 EV + AnyEvent watchers
1807 CoroEV/Any 100000 224 2.85 0.35 0.28 coroutines + Coro::Signal
1808 Perl/Any 100000 452 4.13 0.73 0.95 pure perl implementation
1809 Event/Event 16000 517 32.20 31.80 0.81 Event native interface
1810 Event/Any 16000 590 35.85 31.55 1.06 Event + AnyEvent watchers
1811 IOAsync/Any 16000 989 38.10 32.77 11.13 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
1812 IOAsync/Any 16000 990 37.59 29.50 10.61 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
1813 Glib/Any 16000 1357 102.33 12.31 51.00 quadratic behaviour
1814 Tk/Any 2000 1860 27.20 66.31 14.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
1815 POE/Event 2000 6328 109.99 751.67 14.02 via POE::Loop::Event
1816 POE/Select 2000 6027 94.54 809.13 579.80 via POE::Loop::Select
1817
1818=head3 Discussion
1819
1820The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
1821well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
1822can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
1823file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
1824the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
1825boost.
1826
1827Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
1828overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
1829the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
1830higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
1831
1832To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
1833benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
1834EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
1835cycles with POE.
1836
1837C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
1838maximal/minimal, respectively. Even when going through AnyEvent, it uses
1839far less memory than any other event loop and is still faster than Event
1840natively.
1841
1842The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
1843constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
1844interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
1845adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
1846performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
1847them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
1848
1849The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
1850cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
1851
1852C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
1853when using its pure perl backend.
1854
1855C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
1856faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
1857C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
1858watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
1859making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
1860(note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
1861inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
1862
1863The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
1864more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
1865precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
1866file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
1867employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
1868hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
1869above).
1870
1871C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
1872select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
1873be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
1874memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
1875as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
1876requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
1877invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
1878implementation.
1879
1880The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
1881for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
1882small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
1883optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
1884using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
1885memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
1886design).
1887
1888=head3 Summary
1889
1890=over 4
1891
1892=item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
1893(even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
1894performance with or without AnyEvent.
1895
1896=item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
1897the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
1898adds AnyEvent significant overhead.
1899
1900=item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
1901reasonable memory usage.
1902
1903=back
1904
1905=head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
1906
1907This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
1908creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
1909timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
1910watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
1911watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
1912
1913The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
1914are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
1915fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
1916timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
1917most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
1918
1919In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
1920(1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
1921connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
1922
1923Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
1924distribution.
1925
1926=head3 Explanation of the columns
1927
1928I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
1929each server has a read and write socket end).
1930
1931I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
1932nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
1933
1934I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
1935single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
1936it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
1937a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
1938
1939=head3 Results
1940
1941 name sockets create request
1942 EV 20000 69.01 11.16
1943 Perl 20000 73.32 35.87
1944 IOAsync 20000 157.00 98.14 epoll
1945 IOAsync 20000 159.31 616.06 poll
1946 Event 20000 212.62 257.32
1947 Glib 20000 651.16 1896.30
1948 POE 20000 349.67 12317.24 uses POE::Loop::Event
1949
1950=head3 Discussion
1951
1952This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
1953particular event loop.
1954
1955EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
1956is relatively high, though.
1957
1958Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
1959loops Event and Glib.
1960
1961IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
1962good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
1963
1964Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
1965understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
1966the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
1967uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
1968
1969Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
1970clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
1971
1972POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
1973as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
1974it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
1975
1976=head3 Summary
1977
1978=over 4
1979
1980=item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
1981
1982=item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
1983
1984=back
1985
1986=head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
1987
1988While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
1989large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
1990I/O watchers.
1991
1992In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
1993case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
1994one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
1995well.
1996
1997The columns are identical to the previous table.
1998
1999=head3 Results
2000
2001 name sockets create request
2002 EV 16 20.00 6.54
2003 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
2004 Event 16 81.27 35.86
2005 Glib 16 32.63 15.48
2006 POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
2007
2008=head3 Discussion
2009
2010The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
2011server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
2012in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
2013to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
2014speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
2015them).
2016
2017EV is again fastest.
2018
2019Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
2020loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
2021matter.
2022
2023POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
2024others.
2025
2026=head3 Summary
2027
2028=over 4
2029
2030=item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
2031watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
2032
2033=back
2034
2035=head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
2036
2037Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
2038could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
2039simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
2040shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
2041fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
2042very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
2043baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
2044
2045The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
2046connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
2047creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
2048test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
2049benchmark nevertheless.
2050
2051 name runtime
2052 Lambda/select 0.330 sec
2053 + optimized 0.122 sec
2054 Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
2055 + optimized 0.138 sec
2056 Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
2057 POE/select, components 0.662 sec
2058 POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
2059 POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
2060
2061 AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
2062 AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
2063 +state machine 0.134 sec
2064
2065The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2066benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2067defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2068written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2069AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2070resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2071generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2072connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2073
2074The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2075offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2076Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2077non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2078
2079As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2080hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2081backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2082
2083And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2084slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda by a
2085large margin, even though it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O
2086in a non-blocking way.
2087
2088The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2089F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2090part of the IO::lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2091
2092
2093=head1 SIGNALS
2094
2095AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2096
2097=over 4
2098
2099=item SIGCHLD
2100
2101A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2102emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2103event loops install a similar handler.
2104
2105Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then
2106AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2107
2108=item SIGPIPE
2109
2110A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2111when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2112
2113The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2114on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2115badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2116program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2117some random socket.
2118
2119The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2120that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2121
2122Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2123
2124=back
2125
2126=cut
2127
2128undef $SIG{CHLD}
2129 if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2130
2131$SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2132 unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2133
2134=head1 FORK
2135
2136Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2137because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll>
2138calls. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware.
2139
2140If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2141watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child.
2142
2143
2144=head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2145
2146AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2147$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2148execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2149make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2150will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2151specified in the variable.
2152
2153You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2154before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2155
2156 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2157
2158 use AnyEvent;
2159
2160Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2161be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2162probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2163$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2164
2165Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2166C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2167enabled.
2168
2169
2170=head1 BUGS
2171
2172Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
2173to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
2174and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
2175memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
2176pronounced).
2177
318 2178
319=head1 SEE ALSO 2179=head1 SEE ALSO
320 2180
321Event modules: L<Coro::Event>, L<Coro>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>. 2181Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util>.
322 2182
323Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::Coro>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>. 2183Event modules: L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>, L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>,
2184L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>, L<POE>.
324 2185
325Nontrivial usage example: L<Net::FCP>. 2186Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
2187L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
2188L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
2189L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync>.
326 2190
327=head1 2191Non-blocking file handles, sockets, TCP clients and
2192servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>, L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
2193
2194Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2195
2196Coroutine support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>,
2197L<Coro::Event>,
2198
2199Nontrivial usage examples: L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::XMPP>,
2200L<AnyEvent::HTTP>.
2201
2202
2203=head1 AUTHOR
2204
2205 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
2206 http://home.schmorp.de/
328 2207
329=cut 2208=cut
330 2209
3311 22101
332 2211

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