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Revision 1.373 by root, Thu Aug 25 03:08:48 2011 UTC

1=head1 NAME 1=head1 NAME
2 2
3AnyEvent - ??? 3AnyEvent - the DBI of event loop programming
4
5EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Irssi, rxvt-unicode, IO::Async, Qt,
6FLTK and POE are various supported event loops/environments.
4 7
5=head1 SYNOPSIS 8=head1 SYNOPSIS
6 9
10 use AnyEvent;
11
12 # if you prefer function calls, look at the AE manpage for
13 # an alternative API.
14
15 # file handle or descriptor readable
16 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
17
18 # one-shot or repeating timers
19 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
20 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...);
21
22 print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
23 print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
24
25 # POSIX signal
26 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
27
28 # child process exit
29 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
30 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
31 ...
32 });
33
34 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
35 my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
36
37 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
38 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
39 $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
40 # use a condvar in callback mode:
41 $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
42
43=head1 INTRODUCTION/TUTORIAL
44
45This manpage is mainly a reference manual. If you are interested
46in a tutorial or some gentle introduction, have a look at the
47L<AnyEvent::Intro> manpage.
48
49=head1 SUPPORT
50
51An FAQ document is available as L<AnyEvent::FAQ>.
52
53There also is a mailinglist for discussing all things AnyEvent, and an IRC
54channel, too.
55
56See the AnyEvent project page at the B<Schmorpforge Ta-Sa Software
57Repository>, at L<http://anyevent.schmorp.de>, for more info.
58
59=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
60
61Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
62nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
63
64Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of
65policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>.
66
67First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only
68interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
69pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
70the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
71only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process. AnyEvent
72cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between those event
73loops.
74
75The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
76programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
77religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
78module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
79model you use.
80
81For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
82actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is
83like joining a cult: After you join, you are dependent on them and you
84cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
85that isn't them. What's worse, all the potential users of your
86module are I<also> forced to use the same event loop you use.
87
88AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
89fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
90with the rest: POE + EV? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if your module
91uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it, too. But if
92your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all event models it
93supports (including stuff like IO::Async, as long as those use one of the
94supported event loops. It is easy to add new event loops to AnyEvent, too,
95so it is future-proof).
96
97In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
98model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
99modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
100follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and to the point, by only
101offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
102technically possible.
103
104Of course, AnyEvent comes with a big (and fully optional!) toolbox
105of useful functionality, such as an asynchronous DNS resolver, 100%
106non-blocking connects (even with TLS/SSL, IPv6 and on broken platforms
107such as Windows) and lots of real-world knowledge and workarounds for
108platform bugs and differences.
109
110Now, if you I<do want> lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
111useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
112model, you should I<not> use this module.
113
7=head1 DESCRIPTION 114=head1 DESCRIPTION
8 115
116L<AnyEvent> provides a uniform interface to various event loops. This
117allows module authors to use event loop functionality without forcing
118module users to use a specific event loop implementation (since more
119than one event loop cannot coexist peacefully).
120
121The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
122module.
123
124During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
125to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
126following modules is already loaded: L<EV>, L<AnyEvent::Loop>,
127L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>, L<POE>. The first one
128found is used. If none are detected, the module tries to load the first
129four modules in the order given; but note that if L<EV> is not
130available, the pure-perl L<AnyEvent::Loop> should always work, so
131the other two are not normally tried.
132
133Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
134an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
135that model the default. For example:
136
137 use Tk;
138 use AnyEvent;
139
140 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
141
142The I<likely> means that, if any module loads another event model and
143starts using it, all bets are off - this case should be very rare though,
144as very few modules hardcode event loops without announcing this very
145loudly.
146
147The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called C<AnyEvent::Loop>. Like
148other event modules you can load it explicitly and enjoy the high
149availability of that event loop :)
150
151=head1 WATCHERS
152
153AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that
154stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
155the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
156
157These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
158creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the
159callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model
160is in control).
161
162Note that B<callbacks must not permanently change global variables>
163potentially in use by the event loop (such as C<$_> or C<$[>) and that B<<
164callbacks must not C<die> >>. The former is good programming practice in
165Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
166widely between event loops.
167
168To disable a watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
169variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
170to it).
171
172All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
173
174Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for
175example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways.
176
177One way to achieve that is this pattern:
178
179 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub {
180 # you can use $w here, for example to undef it
181 undef $w;
182 });
183
184Note that C<my $w; $w => combination. This is necessary because in Perl,
185my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are
186declared.
187
188=head2 I/O WATCHERS
189
190 $w = AnyEvent->io (
191 fh => <filehandle_or_fileno>,
192 poll => <"r" or "w">,
193 cb => <callback>,
194 );
195
196You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method
197with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
198
199C<fh> is the Perl I<file handle> (or a naked file descriptor) to watch
200for events (AnyEvent might or might not keep a reference to this file
201handle). Note that only file handles pointing to things for which
202non-blocking operation makes sense are allowed. This includes sockets,
203most character devices, pipes, fifos and so on, but not for example files
204or block devices.
205
206C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which creates a
207watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
208
209C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
210
211Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
212presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
213callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
214
215The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of it.
216You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on the
217underlying file descriptor.
218
219Some event loops issue spurious readiness notifications, so you should
220always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
221handles.
222
223Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
224watcher.
225
226 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
227 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
228 warn "read: $input\n";
229 undef $w;
230 });
231
232=head2 TIME WATCHERS
233
234 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => <seconds>, cb => <callback>);
235
236 $w = AnyEvent->timer (
237 after => <fractional_seconds>,
238 interval => <fractional_seconds>,
239 cb => <callback>,
240 );
241
242You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
243method with the following mandatory arguments:
244
245C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
246supported) the callback should be invoked. C<cb> is the callback to invoke
247in that case.
248
249Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
250presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
251callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
252
253The callback will normally be invoked only once. If you specify another
254parameter, C<interval>, as a strictly positive number (> 0), then the
255callback will be invoked regularly at that interval (in fractional
256seconds) after the first invocation. If C<interval> is specified with a
257false value, then it is treated as if it were not specified at all.
258
259The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
260attempt is made to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval is
261only approximate.
262
263Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
264
265 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
266 warn "timeout\n";
267 });
268
269 # to cancel the timer:
270 undef $w;
271
272Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
273
274 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
275 warn "timeout\n";
276 };
277
278=head3 TIMING ISSUES
279
280There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
281in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
282o'clock").
283
284While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way, they
285use absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your clock
286"jumps", for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards from
287the wrong date of 2014-01-01 to 2008-01-01, a watcher that is supposed to
288fire "after a second" might actually take six years to finally fire.
289
290AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious
291of these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer, based
292on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on wallclock time)
293timers.
294
295AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
296AnyEvent API.
297
298AnyEvent has two additional methods that return the "current time":
299
9=over 4 300=over 4
10 301
302=item AnyEvent->time
303
304This returns the "current wallclock time" as a fractional number of
305seconds since the Epoch (the same thing as C<time> or C<Time::HiRes::time>
306return, and the result is guaranteed to be compatible with those).
307
308It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each call
309will check the system clock, which usually gets updated frequently.
310
311=item AnyEvent->now
312
313This also returns the "current wallclock time", but unlike C<time>, above,
314this value might change only once per event loop iteration, depending on
315the event loop (most return the same time as C<time>, above). This is the
316time that AnyEvent's timers get scheduled against.
317
318I<In almost all cases (in all cases if you don't care), this is the
319function to call when you want to know the current time.>
320
321This function is also often faster then C<< AnyEvent->time >>, and
322thus the preferred method if you want some timestamp (for example,
323L<AnyEvent::Handle> uses this to update its activity timeouts).
324
325The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very exact
326with your timing; you can skip it without a bad conscience.
327
328For a practical example of when these times differ, consider L<Event::Lib>
329and L<EV> and the following set-up:
330
331The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callbacks at
332time=500 (assume no other callbacks delay processing). In your callback,
333you wait a second by executing C<sleep 1> (blocking the process for a
334second) and then (at time=501) you create a relative timer that fires
335after three seconds.
336
337With L<Event::Lib>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> will
338both return C<501>, because that is the current time, and the timer will
339be scheduled to fire at time=504 (C<501> + C<3>).
340
341With L<EV>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> returns C<501> (as that is the current
342time), but C<< AnyEvent->now >> returns C<500>, as that is the time the
343last event processing phase started. With L<EV>, your timer gets scheduled
344to run at time=503 (C<500> + C<3>).
345
346In one sense, L<Event::Lib> is more exact, as it uses the current time
347regardless of any delays introduced by event processing. However, most
348callbacks do not expect large delays in processing, so this causes a
349higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the current time).
350
351In another sense, L<EV> is more exact, as your timer will be scheduled at
352the same time, regardless of how long event processing actually took.
353
354In either case, if you care (and in most cases, you don't), then you
355can get whatever behaviour you want with any event loop, by taking the
356difference between C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> into
357account.
358
359=item AnyEvent->now_update
360
361Some event loops (such as L<EV> or L<AnyEvent::Loop>) cache the current
362time for each loop iteration (see the discussion of L<< AnyEvent->now >>,
363above).
364
365When a callback runs for a long time (or when the process sleeps), then
366this "current" time will differ substantially from the real time, which
367might affect timers and time-outs.
368
369When this is the case, you can call this method, which will update the
370event loop's idea of "current time".
371
372A typical example would be a script in a web server (e.g. C<mod_perl>) -
373when mod_perl executes the script, then the event loop will have the wrong
374idea about the "current time" (being potentially far in the past, when the
375script ran the last time). In that case you should arrange a call to C<<
376AnyEvent->now_update >> each time the web server process wakes up again
377(e.g. at the start of your script, or in a handler).
378
379Note that updating the time I<might> cause some events to be handled.
380
381=back
382
383=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS
384
385 $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => <uppercase_signal_name>, cb => <callback>);
386
387You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal
388I<name> in uppercase and without any C<SIG> prefix, C<cb> is the Perl
389callback to be invoked whenever a signal occurs.
390
391Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
392presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
393callbacks cannot use arguments passed to signal watcher callbacks.
394
395Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
396invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous means
397that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process,
398but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
399
400The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal
401between multiple watchers, and AnyEvent will ensure that signals will not
402interrupt your program at bad times.
403
404This watcher might use C<%SIG> (depending on the event loop used),
405so programs overwriting those signals directly will likely not work
406correctly.
407
408Example: exit on SIGINT
409
410 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
411
412=head3 Restart Behaviour
413
414While restart behaviour is up to the event loop implementation, most will
415not restart syscalls (that includes L<Async::Interrupt> and AnyEvent's
416pure perl implementation).
417
418=head3 Safe/Unsafe Signals
419
420Perl signals can be either "safe" (synchronous to opcode handling) or
421"unsafe" (asynchronous) - the former might get delayed indefinitely, the
422latter might corrupt your memory.
423
424AnyEvent signal handlers are, in addition, synchronous to the event loop,
425i.e. they will not interrupt your running perl program but will only be
426called as part of the normal event handling (just like timer, I/O etc.
427callbacks, too).
428
429=head3 Signal Races, Delays and Workarounds
430
431Many event loops (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt, IO::Async) do not support attaching
432callbacks to signals in a generic way, which is a pity, as you cannot
433do race-free signal handling in perl, requiring C libraries for
434this. AnyEvent will try to do its best, which means in some cases,
435signals will be delayed. The maximum time a signal might be delayed is
436specified in C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY> (default: 10 seconds). This
437variable can be changed only before the first signal watcher is created,
438and should be left alone otherwise. This variable determines how often
439AnyEvent polls for signals (in case a wake-up was missed). Higher values
440will cause fewer spurious wake-ups, which is better for power and CPU
441saving.
442
443All these problems can be avoided by installing the optional
444L<Async::Interrupt> module, which works with most event loops. It will not
445work with inherently broken event loops such as L<Event> or L<Event::Lib>
446(and not with L<POE> currently, as POE does its own workaround with
447one-second latency). For those, you just have to suffer the delays.
448
449=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
450
451 $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => <process id>, cb => <callback>);
452
453You can also watch for a child process exit and catch its exit status.
454
455The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (on some backends,
456using C<0> watches for any child process exit, on others this will
457croak). The watcher will be triggered only when the child process has
458finished and an exit status is available, not on any trace events
459(stopped/continued).
460
461The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
462waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you I<can> rely on child watcher
463callback arguments.
464
465This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>,
466and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
467random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g. inside
468C<system>, is just fine).
469
470There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start them
471I<after> the child process was created, and this means the process could
472have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
473
474Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async do,
475see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event models
476that I<do> handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded before
477the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place). AnyEvent's
478pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless of when you
479start the watcher.
480
481This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first
482thing in an AnyEvent program, you I<have> to create at least one
483watcher before you C<fork> the child (alternatively, you can call
484C<AnyEvent::detect>).
485
486As most event loops do not support waiting for child events, they will be
487emulated by AnyEvent in most cases, in which case the latency and race
488problems mentioned in the description of signal watchers apply.
489
490Example: fork a process and wait for it
491
492 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
493
494 my $pid = fork or exit 5;
495
496 my $w = AnyEvent->child (
497 pid => $pid,
498 cb => sub {
499 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
500 warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
501 $done->send;
502 },
503 );
504
505 # do something else, then wait for process exit
506 $done->recv;
507
508=head2 IDLE WATCHERS
509
510 $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => <callback>);
511
512This will repeatedly invoke the callback after the process becomes idle,
513until either the watcher is destroyed or new events have been detected.
514
515Idle watchers are useful when there is a need to do something, but it
516is not so important (or wise) to do it instantly. The callback will be
517invoked only when there is "nothing better to do", which is usually
518defined as "all outstanding events have been handled and no new events
519have been detected". That means that idle watchers ideally get invoked
520when the event loop has just polled for new events but none have been
521detected. Instead of blocking to wait for more events, the idle watchers
522will be invoked.
523
524Unfortunately, most event loops do not really support idle watchers (only
525EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest, AnyEvent
526will simply call the callback "from time to time".
527
528Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the
529program is otherwise idle:
530
531 my @lines; # read data
532 my $idle_w;
533 my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
534 push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
535
536 # start an idle watcher, if not already done
537 $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
538 # handle only one line, when there are lines left
539 if (my $line = shift @lines) {
540 print "handled when idle: $line";
541 } else {
542 # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
543 undef $idle_w;
544 }
545 });
546 });
547
548=head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
549
550 $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
551
552 $cv->send (<list>);
553 my @res = $cv->recv;
554
555If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
556require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
557will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
558
559AnyEvent is slightly different: it expects somebody else to run the event
560loop and will only block when necessary (usually when told by the user).
561
562The tool to do that is called a "condition variable", so called because
563they represent a condition that must become true.
564
565Now is probably a good time to look at the examples further below.
566
567Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar
568>> method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
569C<cb>, which specifies a callback to be called when the condition variable
570becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
571the results).
572
573After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
574by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
575were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
576->send >> method).
577
578Since condition variables are the most complex part of the AnyEvent API, here are
579some different mental models of what they are - pick the ones you can connect to:
580
581=over 4
582
583=item * Condition variables are like callbacks - you can call them (and pass them instead
584of callbacks). Unlike callbacks however, you can also wait for them to be called.
585
586=item * Condition variables are signals - one side can emit or send them,
587the other side can wait for them, or install a handler that is called when
588the signal fires.
589
590=item * Condition variables are like "Merge Points" - points in your program
591where you merge multiple independent results/control flows into one.
592
593=item * Condition variables represent a transaction - functions that start
594some kind of transaction can return them, leaving the caller the choice
595between waiting in a blocking fashion, or setting a callback.
596
597=item * Condition variables represent future values, or promises to deliver
598some result, long before the result is available.
599
600=back
601
602Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has finished,
603for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests,
604then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
605availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
606called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
607
608You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
609you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
610could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
611button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
612
613Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
614two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
615lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but
616you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks,
617as this asks for trouble.
618
619Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
620used by AnyEvent itself are all named C<_ae_XXX> to make subclassing
621easy (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
622AnyEvent). To subclass, use C<AnyEvent::CondVar> as base class and call
623its C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
624
625There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
626eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
627for the send to occur.
628
629Example: wait for a timer.
630
631 # condition: "wait till the timer is fired"
632 my $timer_fired = AnyEvent->condvar;
633
634 # create the timer - we could wait for, say
635 # a handle becomign ready, or even an
636 # AnyEvent::HTTP request to finish, but
637 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
638 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
639 after => 1,
640 cb => sub { $timer_fired->send },
641 );
642
643 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
644 # calls ->send
645 $timer_fired->recv;
646
647Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that condition
648variables are also callable directly.
649
650 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
651 my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
652 $done->recv;
653
654Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
655callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from
656the main program:
657
658 use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
659
660 ...
661
662 my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
663
664And this is how you would just set a callback to be called whenever the
665results are available:
666
667 $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
668 my @info = $_[0]->recv;
669 });
670
671=head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
672
673These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
674code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
675the producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
676uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
677
678=over 4
679
680=item $cv->send (...)
681
682Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->recv >> and all further
683calls to C<recv> will (eventually) return after this method has been
684called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
685
686If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
687immediately from within send.
688
689Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
690future C<< ->recv >> calls.
691
692Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly (as if
693they were a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as calling
694C<send>.
695
696=item $cv->croak ($error)
697
698Similar to send, but causes all calls to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
699C<Carp::croak> with the given error message/object/scalar.
700
701This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
702user/consumer. Doing it this way instead of calling C<croak> directly
703delays the error detection, but has the overwhelming advantage that it
704diagnoses the error at the place where the result is expected, and not
705deep in some event callback with no connection to the actual code causing
706the problem.
707
708=item $cv->begin ([group callback])
709
710=item $cv->end
711
712These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events into
713one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel might want
714to use a condition variable for the whole process.
715
716Every call to C<< ->begin >> will increment a counter, and every call to
717C<< ->end >> will decrement it. If the counter reaches C<0> in C<< ->end
718>>, the (last) callback passed to C<begin> will be executed, passing the
719condvar as first argument. That callback is I<supposed> to call C<< ->send
720>>, but that is not required. If no group callback was set, C<send> will
721be called without any arguments.
722
723You can think of C<< $cv->send >> giving you an OR condition (one call
724sends), while C<< $cv->begin >> and C<< $cv->end >> giving you an AND
725condition (all C<begin> calls must be C<end>'ed before the condvar sends).
726
727Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for example,
728STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for both streams to
729close before activating a condvar:
730
731 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
732
733 $cv->begin; # first watcher
734 my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
735 defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
736 or $cv->end;
737 });
738
739 $cv->begin; # second watcher
740 my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
741 defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
742 or $cv->end;
743 });
744
745 $cv->recv;
746
747This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle), there is
748one call to C<begin>, so the condvar waits for all calls to C<end> before
749sending.
750
751The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as the
752there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks that are
753begun can potentially be zero:
754
755 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
756
757 my %result;
758 $cv->begin (sub { shift->send (\%result) });
759
760 for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
761 $cv->begin;
762 ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
763 $result{$host} = ...;
764 $cv->end;
765 };
766 }
767
768 $cv->end;
769
770This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
771C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
772order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to C<begin> when it starts
773each ping request and calls C<end> when it has received some result for
774it. Since C<begin> and C<end> only maintain a counter, the order in which
775results arrive is not relevant.
776
777There is an additional bracketing call to C<begin> and C<end> outside the
778loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the callback
779to be called once the counter reaches C<0>, and second, it ensures that
780C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
781doesn't execute once).
782
783This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
784potentially zero) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
785the callback and ensure C<end> is called at least once, and then, for each
786subrequest you start, call C<begin> and for each subrequest you finish,
787call C<end>.
788
789=back
790
791=head3 METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
792
793These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the
794code awaits the condition.
795
796=over 4
797
798=item $cv->recv
799
800Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
801>> methods have been called on C<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
802normally.
803
804You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid but
805will return immediately.
806
807If an error condition has been set by calling C<< ->croak >>, then this
808function will call C<croak>.
809
810In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
811in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
812
813Note that doing a blocking wait in a callback is not supported by any
814event loop, that is, recursive invocation of a blocking C<< ->recv
815>> is not allowed, and the C<recv> call will C<croak> if such a
816condition is detected. This condition can be slightly loosened by using
817L<Coro::AnyEvent>, which allows you to do a blocking C<< ->recv >> from
818any thread that doesn't run the event loop itself.
819
820Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
821(programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
822using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>. Instead, let the
823caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
824condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
825callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
826while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
827
828You can ensure that C<< ->recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
829only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
830time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
831waits otherwise.
832
833=item $bool = $cv->ready
834
835Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether C<send> or
836C<croak> have been called.
837
838=item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
839
840This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
841replaces it before doing so.
842
843The callback will be called when the condition becomes "true", i.e. when
844C<send> or C<croak> are called, with the only argument being the
845condition variable itself. If the condition is already true, the
846callback is called immediately when it is set. Calling C<recv> inside
847the callback or at any later time is guaranteed not to block.
848
849=back
850
851=head1 SUPPORTED EVENT LOOPS/BACKENDS
852
853The available backend classes are (every class has its own manpage):
854
855=over 4
856
857=item Backends that are autoprobed when no other event loop can be found.
858
859EV is the preferred backend when no other event loop seems to be in
860use. If EV is not installed, then AnyEvent will fall back to its own
861pure-perl implementation, which is available everywhere as it comes with
862AnyEvent itself.
863
864 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
865 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl AnyEvent::Loop, fast and portable.
866
867=item Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
868
869These will be used if they are already loaded when the first watcher
870is created, in which case it is assumed that the application is using
871them. This means that AnyEvent will automatically pick the right backend
872when the main program loads an event module before anything starts to
873create watchers. Nothing special needs to be done by the main program.
874
875 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
876 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, slow but very stable.
877 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very broken.
878 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
879 AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, very slow, some limitations.
880 AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi used when running within irssi.
881 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async.
882 AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa based on Cocoa::EventLoop.
883 AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK2 based on FLTK (fltk 2 binding).
884
885=item Backends with special needs.
886
887Qt requires the Qt::Application to be instantiated first, but will
888otherwise be picked up automatically. As long as the main program
889instantiates the application before any AnyEvent watchers are created,
890everything should just work.
891
892 AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt.
893
894=item Event loops that are indirectly supported via other backends.
895
896Some event loops can be supported via other modules:
897
898There is no direct support for WxWidgets (L<Wx>) or L<Prima>.
899
900B<WxWidgets> has no support for watching file handles. However, you can
901use WxWidgets through the POE adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that simply
902polls 20 times per second, which was considered to be too horrible to even
903consider for AnyEvent.
904
905B<Prima> is not supported as nobody seems to be using it, but it has a POE
906backend, so it can be supported through POE.
907
908AnyEvent knows about both L<Prima> and L<Wx>, however, and will try to
909load L<POE> when detecting them, in the hope that POE will pick them up,
910in which case everything will be automatic.
911
912=back
913
914=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
915
916These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
917write AnyEvent extension modules.
918
919=over 4
920
921=item $AnyEvent::MODEL
922
923Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created, before the
924backend has been autodetected.
925
926Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is the
927name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one
928of the C<AnyEvent::Impl::xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the
929case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode> it
930will be C<urxvt::anyevent>).
931
932=item AnyEvent::detect
933
934Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model
935if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would
936have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at
937runtime, and not e.g. during initialisation of your module.
938
939The effect of calling this function is as if a watcher had been created
940(specifically, actions that happen "when the first watcher is created"
941happen when calling detetc as well).
942
943If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
944created, use C<post_detect>.
945
946=item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
947
948Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
949autodetected (or immediately if that has already happened).
950
951The block will be executed I<after> the actual backend has been detected
952(C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> is set), but I<before> any watchers have been
953created, so it is possible to e.g. patch C<@AnyEvent::ISA> or do
954other initialisations - see the sources of L<AnyEvent::Strict> or
955L<AnyEvent::AIO> to see how this is used.
956
957The most common usage is to create some global watchers, without forcing
958event module detection too early, for example, L<AnyEvent::AIO> creates
959and installs the global L<IO::AIO> watcher in a C<post_detect> block to
960avoid autodetecting the event module at load time.
961
962If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
963that automatically removes the callback again when it is destroyed (or
964C<undef> when the hook was immediately executed). See L<AnyEvent::AIO> for
965a case where this is useful.
966
967Example: Create a watcher for the IO::AIO module and store it in
968C<$WATCHER>, but do so only do so after the event loop is initialised.
969
970 our WATCHER;
971
972 my $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect {
973 $WATCHER = AnyEvent->io (fh => IO::AIO::poll_fileno, poll => 'r', cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
974 };
975
976 # the ||= is important in case post_detect immediately runs the block,
977 # as to not clobber the newly-created watcher. assigning both watcher and
978 # post_detect guard to the same variable has the advantage of users being
979 # able to just C<undef $WATCHER> if the watcher causes them grief.
980
981 $WATCHER ||= $guard;
982
983=item @AnyEvent::post_detect
984
985If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
986before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will be called directly
987after the event loop has been chosen.
988
989You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
990if it is defined then the event loop has already been detected, and the
991array will be ignored.
992
993Best use C<AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }> when your application allows
994it, as it takes care of these details.
995
996This variable is mainly useful for modules that can do something useful
997when AnyEvent is used and thus want to know when it is initialised, but do
998not need to even load it by default. This array provides the means to hook
999into AnyEvent passively, without loading it.
1000
1001Example: To load Coro::AnyEvent whenever Coro and AnyEvent are used
1002together, you could put this into Coro (this is the actual code used by
1003Coro to accomplish this):
1004
1005 if (defined $AnyEvent::MODEL) {
1006 # AnyEvent already initialised, so load Coro::AnyEvent
1007 require Coro::AnyEvent;
1008 } else {
1009 # AnyEvent not yet initialised, so make sure to load Coro::AnyEvent
1010 # as soon as it is
1011 push @AnyEvent::post_detect, sub { require Coro::AnyEvent };
1012 }
1013
1014=item AnyEvent::postpone { BLOCK }
1015
1016Arranges for the block to be executed as soon as possible, but not before
1017the call itself returns. In practise, the block will be executed just
1018before the event loop polls for new events, or shortly afterwards.
1019
1020This function never returns anything (to make the C<return postpone { ...
1021}> idiom more useful.
1022
1023To understand the usefulness of this function, consider a function that
1024asynchronously does something for you and returns some transaction
1025object or guard to let you cancel the operation. For example,
1026C<AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect>:
1027
1028 # start a conenction attempt unless one is active
1029 $self->{connect_guard} ||= AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect "www.example.net", 80, sub {
1030 delete $self->{connect_guard};
1031 ...
1032 };
1033
1034Imagine that this function could instantly call the callback, for
1035example, because it detects an obvious error such as a negative port
1036number. Invoking the callback before the function returns causes problems
1037however: the callback will be called and will try to delete the guard
1038object. But since the function hasn't returned yet, there is nothing to
1039delete. When the function eventually returns it will assign the guard
1040object to C<< $self->{connect_guard} >>, where it will likely never be
1041deleted, so the program thinks it is still trying to connect.
1042
1043This is where C<AnyEvent::postpone> should be used. Instead of calling the
1044callback directly on error:
1045
1046 $cb->(undef), return # signal error to callback, BAD!
1047 if $some_error_condition;
1048
1049It should use C<postpone>:
1050
1051 AnyEvent::postpone { $cb->(undef) }, return # signal error to callback, later
1052 if $some_error_condition;
1053
1054=item AnyEvent::log $level, $msg[, @args]
1055
1056Log the given C<$msg> at the given C<$level>.
1057
1058Loads AnyEvent::Log on first use and calls C<AnyEvent::Log::log> -
1059consequently, look at the L<AnyEvent::Log> documentation for details.
1060
1061If you want to sprinkle loads of logging calls around your code, consider
1062creating a logger callback with the C<AnyEvent::Log::logger> function.
1063
1064=back
1065
1066=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
1067
1068As a module author, you should C<use AnyEvent> and call AnyEvent methods
1069freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
1070
1071Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
1072decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
1073by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
1074to load the event module first.
1075
1076Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
1077the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
1078because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
1079events is to stay interactive.
1080
1081It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
1082requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
1083called C<results> that returns the results, it may call C<< ->recv >>
1084freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. Always).
1085
1086=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
1087
1088There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
1089dictate which event model to use.
1090
1091If the program is not event-based, it need not do anything special, even
1092when it depends on a module that uses an AnyEvent. If the program itself
1093uses AnyEvent, but does not care which event loop is used, all it needs
1094to do is C<use AnyEvent>. In either case, AnyEvent will choose the best
1095available loop implementation.
1096
1097If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
1098Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
1099event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
1100speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
1101modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
1102decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
1103might choose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
1104
1105You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
1106C<AnyEvent::Loop> module, which gives you similar behaviour
1107everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
1108
1109=head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
1110
1111Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
1112only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
1113
1114In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
1115
1116 AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
1117
1118This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
1119
1120Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
1121it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
1122variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
1123exit cleanly.
1124
1125
1126=head1 OTHER MODULES
1127
1128The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
1129AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other
1130AnyEvent modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the
1131modules come as part of AnyEvent, the others are available via CPAN (see
1132L<http://search.cpan.org/search?m=module&q=anyevent%3A%3A*> for
1133a longer non-exhaustive list), and the list is heavily biased towards
1134modules of the AnyEvent author himself :)
1135
1136=over 4
1137
1138=item L<AnyEvent::Util>
1139
1140Contains various utility functions that replace often-used blocking
1141functions such as C<inet_aton> with event/callback-based versions.
1142
1143=item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
1144
1145Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
1146addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
1147connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
1148
1149=item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
1150
1151Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
1152supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
1153non-blocking SSL/TLS (via L<AnyEvent::TLS>).
1154
1155=item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
1156
1157Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
1158
1159=item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>, L<AnyEvent::XMPP>, L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IGS>, L<AnyEvent::FCP>
1160
1161Implement event-based interfaces to the protocols of the same name (for
1162the curious, IGS is the International Go Server and FCP is the Freenet
1163Client Protocol).
1164
1165=item L<AnyEvent::Handle::UDP>
1166
1167Here be danger!
1168
1169As Pauli would put it, "Not only is it not right, it's not even wrong!" -
1170there are so many things wrong with AnyEvent::Handle::UDP, most notably
1171its use of a stream-based API with a protocol that isn't streamable, that
1172the only way to improve it is to delete it.
1173
1174It features data corruption (but typically only under load) and general
1175confusion. On top, the author is not only clueless about UDP but also
1176fact-resistant - some gems of his understanding: "connect doesn't work
1177with UDP", "UDP packets are not IP packets", "UDP only has datagrams, not
1178packets", "I don't need to implement proper error checking as UDP doesn't
1179support error checking" and so on - he doesn't even understand what's
1180wrong with his module when it is explained to him.
1181
1182=item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
1183
1184Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process for you,
1185notifying you in an event-based way when the operation is finished.
1186
1187=item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
1188
1189Truly asynchronous (as opposed to non-blocking) I/O, should be in the
1190toolbox of every event programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses
1191L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent together, giving AnyEvent access to event-based
1192file I/O, and much more.
1193
1194=item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
1195
1196A simple embedded webserver.
1197
1198=item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
1199
1200The fastest ping in the west.
1201
1202=item L<Coro>
1203
1204Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>.
1205
1206=back
1207
11=cut 1208=cut
12 1209
13package AnyEvent; 1210package AnyEvent;
14 1211
1212# basically a tuned-down version of common::sense
1213sub common_sense {
1214 # from common:.sense 3.4
1215 ${^WARNING_BITS} ^= ${^WARNING_BITS} ^ "\x3c\x3f\x33\x00\x0f\xf0\x0f\xc0\xf0\xfc\x33\x00";
1216 # use strict vars subs - NO UTF-8, as Util.pm doesn't like this atm. (uts46data.pl)
1217 $^H |= 0x00000600;
1218}
1219
1220BEGIN { AnyEvent::common_sense }
1221
15use Carp; 1222use Carp ();
16 1223
17$VERSION = 0.1; 1224our $VERSION = '6.01';
1225our $MODEL;
18 1226
19no warnings; 1227our @ISA;
20 1228
1229our @REGISTRY;
1230
1231our $VERBOSE;
1232
1233BEGIN {
1234 require "AnyEvent/constants.pl";
1235
1236 eval "sub TAINT (){" . (${^TAINT}*1) . "}";
1237
1238 delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
1239 if ${^TAINT};
1240
1241 $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"} = $ENV{"AE_$_"}
1242 for grep s/^AE_// && !exists $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"}, keys %ENV;
1243
1244 @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV} = ()
1245 if ${^TAINT};
1246
1247 $VERBOSE = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
1248}
1249
1250our $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY = 10;
1251
1252our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
1253
1254{
1255 my $idx;
1256 $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
1257 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
1258 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1259}
1260
1261our @post_detect;
1262
1263sub post_detect(&) {
1264 my ($cb) = @_;
1265
1266 push @post_detect, $cb;
1267
1268 defined wantarray
1269 ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1270 : ()
1271}
1272
1273sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1274 @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1275}
1276
1277our $POSTPONE_W;
1278our @POSTPONE;
1279
1280sub _postpone_exec {
1281 undef $POSTPONE_W;
1282
1283 &{ shift @POSTPONE }
1284 while @POSTPONE;
1285}
1286
1287sub postpone(&) {
1288 push @POSTPONE, shift;
1289
1290 $POSTPONE_W ||= AE::timer (0, 0, \&_postpone_exec);
1291
1292 ()
1293}
1294
1295sub log($$;@) {
1296 # only load the bug bloated module when we actually are about to log something
1297 if ($_[0] <= $VERBOSE) {
1298 require AnyEvent::Log;
1299 # AnyEvent::Log overwrites this function
1300 goto &log;
1301 }
1302}
1303
1304if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG}) {
1305 require AnyEvent::Log; # AnyEvent::Log does the thing for us
1306}
1307
21my @models = ( 1308our @models = (
22 [Coro => Coro::Event::], 1309 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV:: , 1],
23 [Event => Event::], 1310 [AnyEvent::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: , 1],
24 [Glib => Glib::], 1311 # everything below here will not (normally) be autoprobed
25 [Tk => Tk::], 1312 # as the pure perl backend should work everywhere
1313 # and is usually faster
1314 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::, 1],
1315 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib:: , 1], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1316 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1317 [Irssi:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi::], # Irssi has a bogus "Event" package
1318 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1319 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
1320 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
1321 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1322 [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1323 [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # a bitch to autodetect
1324 [Cocoa::EventLoop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa::],
1325 [FLTK:: => AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK2::],
26); 1326);
27 1327
28sub AUTOLOAD { 1328our @isa_hook;
29 $AUTOLOAD =~ s/.*://;
30 1329
31 for (@models) { 1330sub _isa_set {
32 my ($model, $package) = @$_; 1331 my @pkg = ("AnyEvent", (map $_->[0], grep defined, @isa_hook), $MODEL);
33 if (defined ${"$package\::VERSION"}) { 1332
34 $EVENT = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model"; 1333 @{"$pkg[$_-1]::ISA"} = $pkg[$_]
35 eval "require $EVENT"; die if $@; 1334 for 1 .. $#pkg;
36 goto &{"$EVENT\::$AUTOLOAD"}; 1335
1336 grep $_ && $_->[1], @isa_hook
1337 and AE::_reset ();
1338}
1339
1340# used for hooking AnyEvent::Strict and AnyEvent::Debug::Wrap into the class hierarchy
1341sub _isa_hook($$;$) {
1342 my ($i, $pkg, $reset_ae) = @_;
1343
1344 $isa_hook[$i] = $pkg ? [$pkg, $reset_ae] : undef;
1345
1346 _isa_set;
1347}
1348
1349# all autoloaded methods reserve the complete glob, not just the method slot.
1350# due to bugs in perls method cache implementation.
1351our @methods = qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar);
1352
1353sub detect() {
1354 return $MODEL if $MODEL; # some programs keep references to detect
1355
1356 local $!; # for good measure
1357 local $SIG{__DIE__}; # we use eval
1358
1359 # free some memory
1360 *detect = sub () { $MODEL };
1361 # undef &func doesn't correctly update the method cache. grmbl.
1362 # so we delete the whole glob. grmbl.
1363 # otoh, perl doesn't let me undef an active usb, but it lets me free
1364 # a glob with an active sub. hrm. i hope it works, but perl is
1365 # usually buggy in this department. sigh.
1366 delete @{"AnyEvent::"}{@methods};
1367 undef @methods;
1368
1369 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z0-9:]+)$/) {
1370 my $model = $1;
1371 $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model" unless $model =~ s/::$//;
1372 if (eval "require $model") {
1373 AnyEvent::log 7 => "loaded model '$model' (forced by \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}), using it.";
1374 $MODEL = $model;
1375 } else {
1376 AnyEvent::log warn => "unable to load model '$model' (from \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}):\n$@";
37 } 1377 }
38 } 1378 }
39 1379
40 for (@models) { 1380 # check for already loaded models
41 my ($model, $package) = @$_; 1381 unless ($MODEL) {
42 $EVENT = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model"; 1382 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1383 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
1384 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
43 if (eval "require $EVENT") { 1385 if (eval "require $model") {
44 goto &{"$EVENT\::$AUTOLOAD"}; 1386 AnyEvent::log 7 => "autodetected model '$model', using it.";
1387 $MODEL = $model;
1388 last;
1389 }
1390 }
1391 }
1392
1393 unless ($MODEL) {
1394 # try to autoload a model
1395 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1396 my ($package, $model, $autoload) = @$_;
1397 if (
1398 $autoload
1399 and eval "require $package"
1400 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
1401 and eval "require $model"
1402 ) {
1403 AnyEvent::log 7 => "autoloaded model '$model', using it.";
1404 $MODEL = $model;
1405 last;
1406 }
1407 }
1408
1409 $MODEL
1410 or die "AnyEvent: backend autodetection failed - did you properly install AnyEvent?";
45 } 1411 }
46 } 1412 }
47 1413
48 die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any of these: Coro, Event, Glib or Tk."; 1414 # free memory only needed for probing
49} 1415 undef @models;
1416 undef @REGISTRY;
50 1417
511; 1418 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
52 1419
1420 # now nuke some methods that are overridden by the backend.
1421 # SUPER usage is not allowed in these.
1422 for (qw(time signal child idle)) {
1423 undef &{"AnyEvent::Base::$_"}
1424 if defined &{"$MODEL\::$_"};
1425 }
1426
1427 _isa_set;
1428
1429 # we're officially open!
1430
1431 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}) {
1432 require AnyEvent::Strict;
1433 }
1434
1435 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP}) {
1436 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1437 AnyEvent::Debug::wrap ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP});
1438 }
1439
1440 if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL}) {
1441 require AnyEvent::Socket;
1442 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1443
1444 my $shell = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL};
1445 $shell =~ s/\$\$/$$/g;
1446
1447 my ($host, $service) = AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport ($shell);
1448 $AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL = AnyEvent::Debug::shell ($host, $service);
1449 }
1450
1451 # now the anyevent environment is set up as the user told us to, so
1452 # call the actual user code - post detects
1453
1454 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
1455 undef @post_detect;
1456
1457 *post_detect = sub(&) {
1458 shift->();
1459
1460 undef
1461 };
1462
1463 $MODEL
1464}
1465
1466for my $name (@methods) {
1467 *$name = sub {
1468 detect;
1469 # we use goto because
1470 # a) it makes the thunk more transparent
1471 # b) it allows us to delete the thunk later
1472 goto &{ UNIVERSAL::can AnyEvent => "SUPER::$name" }
1473 };
1474}
1475
1476# utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1477# to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1478# allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1479sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1480 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1481
1482 # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1483 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<&") : ($w, ">&");
1484
1485 open my $fh2, $mode, $fh
1486 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1487
1488 # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1489
1490 ($fh2, $rw)
1491}
1492
1493=head1 SIMPLIFIED AE API
1494
1495Starting with version 5.0, AnyEvent officially supports a second, much
1496simpler, API that is designed to reduce the calling, typing and memory
1497overhead by using function call syntax and a fixed number of parameters.
1498
1499See the L<AE> manpage for details.
1500
1501=cut
1502
1503package AE;
1504
1505our $VERSION = $AnyEvent::VERSION;
1506
1507sub _reset() {
1508 eval q{
1509 # fall back to the main API by default - backends and AnyEvent::Base
1510 # implementations can overwrite these.
1511
1512 sub io($$$) {
1513 AnyEvent->io (fh => $_[0], poll => $_[1] ? "w" : "r", cb => $_[2])
1514 }
1515
1516 sub timer($$$) {
1517 AnyEvent->timer (after => $_[0], interval => $_[1], cb => $_[2])
1518 }
1519
1520 sub signal($$) {
1521 AnyEvent->signal (signal => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1522 }
1523
1524 sub child($$) {
1525 AnyEvent->child (pid => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1526 }
1527
1528 sub idle($) {
1529 AnyEvent->idle (cb => $_[0]);
1530 }
1531
1532 sub cv(;&) {
1533 AnyEvent->condvar (@_ ? (cb => $_[0]) : ())
1534 }
1535
1536 sub now() {
1537 AnyEvent->now
1538 }
1539
1540 sub now_update() {
1541 AnyEvent->now_update
1542 }
1543
1544 sub time() {
1545 AnyEvent->time
1546 }
1547
1548 *postpone = \&AnyEvent::postpone;
1549 *log = \&AnyEvent::log;
1550 };
1551 die if $@;
1552}
1553
1554BEGIN { _reset }
1555
1556package AnyEvent::Base;
1557
1558# default implementations for many methods
1559
1560sub time {
1561 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1562 # probe for availability of Time::HiRes
1563 if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1564 AnyEvent::log 8 => "AnyEvent: using Time::HiRes for sub-second timing accuracy."
1565 if $AnyEvent::VERBOSE >= 8;
1566 *time = sub { Time::HiRes::time () };
1567 *AE::time = \& Time::HiRes::time ;
1568 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1569 } else {
1570 AnyEvent::log critical => "using built-in time(), WARNING, no sub-second resolution!";
1571 *time = sub { CORE::time };
1572 *AE::time = sub (){ CORE::time };
1573 }
1574
1575 *now = \&time;
1576 };
1577 die if $@;
1578
1579 &time
1580}
1581
1582*now = \&time;
1583sub now_update { }
1584
1585sub _poll {
1586 Carp::croak "$AnyEvent::MODEL does not support blocking waits. Caught";
1587}
1588
1589# default implementation for ->condvar
1590# in fact, the default should not be overwritten
1591
1592sub condvar {
1593 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1594 *condvar = sub {
1595 bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1596 };
1597
1598 *AE::cv = sub (;&) {
1599 bless { @_ ? (_ae_cb => shift) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1600 };
1601 };
1602 die if $@;
1603
1604 &condvar
1605}
1606
1607# default implementation for ->signal
1608
1609our $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1610
1611sub _have_async_interrupt() {
1612 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT = 1*(!$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT}
1613 && eval "use Async::Interrupt 1.02 (); 1")
1614 unless defined $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1615
1616 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1617}
1618
1619our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1620our (%SIG_ASY, %SIG_ASY_W);
1621our ($SIG_COUNT, $SIG_TW);
1622
1623# install a dummy wakeup watcher to reduce signal catching latency
1624# used by Impls
1625sub _sig_add() {
1626 unless ($SIG_COUNT++) {
1627 # try to align timer on a full-second boundary, if possible
1628 my $NOW = AE::now;
1629
1630 $SIG_TW = AE::timer
1631 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY - ($NOW - int $NOW),
1632 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY,
1633 sub { } # just for the PERL_ASYNC_CHECK
1634 ;
1635 }
1636}
1637
1638sub _sig_del {
1639 undef $SIG_TW
1640 unless --$SIG_COUNT;
1641}
1642
1643our $_sig_name_init; $_sig_name_init = sub {
1644 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1645 undef $_sig_name_init;
1646
1647 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1648 *sig2num = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2num;
1649 *sig2name = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2name;
1650 } else {
1651 require Config;
1652
1653 my %signame2num;
1654 @signame2num{ split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_name} }
1655 = split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_num};
1656
1657 my @signum2name;
1658 @signum2name[values %signame2num] = keys %signame2num;
1659
1660 *sig2num = sub($) {
1661 $_[0] > 0 ? shift : $signame2num{+shift}
1662 };
1663 *sig2name = sub ($) {
1664 $_[0] > 0 ? $signum2name[+shift] : shift
1665 };
1666 }
1667 };
1668 die if $@;
1669};
1670
1671sub sig2num ($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2num }
1672sub sig2name($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2name }
1673
1674sub signal {
1675 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1676 # probe for availability of Async::Interrupt
1677 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1678 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using Async::Interrupt for race-free signal handling."
1679 if $AnyEvent::VERBOSE >= 8;
1680
1681 $SIGPIPE_R = new Async::Interrupt::EventPipe;
1682 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R->fileno, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1683
1684 } else {
1685 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using emulated perl signal handling with latency timer."
1686 if $AnyEvent::VERBOSE >= 8;
1687
1688 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1689 require AnyEvent::Util;
1690
1691 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1692 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R, 1) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1693 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W, 1) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1694 } else {
1695 pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1696 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1697 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1698
1699 # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1700 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1701 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1702 }
1703
1704 $SIGPIPE_R
1705 or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1706
1707 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1708 }
1709
1710 *signal = $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1711 ? sub {
1712 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1713
1714 # async::interrupt
1715 my $signal = sig2num $arg{signal};
1716 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1717
1718 $SIG_ASY{$signal} ||= new Async::Interrupt
1719 cb => sub { undef $SIG_EV{$signal} },
1720 signal => $signal,
1721 pipe => [$SIGPIPE_R->filenos],
1722 pipe_autodrain => 0,
1723 ;
1724
1725 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1726 }
1727 : sub {
1728 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1729
1730 # pure perl
1731 my $signal = sig2name $arg{signal};
1732 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1733
1734 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
1735 local $!;
1736 syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1737 undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
1738 };
1739
1740 # can't do signal processing without introducing races in pure perl,
1741 # so limit the signal latency.
1742 _sig_add;
1743
1744 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1745 }
1746 ;
1747
1748 *AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY = sub {
1749 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1750
1751 _sig_del;
1752
1753 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
1754
1755 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1756 ? delete $SIG_ASY{$signal}
1757 : # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1758 # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1759 # instead of getting the default action.
1760 undef $SIG{$signal}
1761 unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
1762 };
1763
1764 *_signal_exec = sub {
1765 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1766 ? $SIGPIPE_R->drain
1767 : sysread $SIGPIPE_R, (my $dummy), 9;
1768
1769 while (%SIG_EV) {
1770 for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1771 delete $SIG_EV{$_};
1772 &$_ for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
1773 }
1774 }
1775 };
1776 };
1777 die if $@;
1778
1779 &signal
1780}
1781
1782# default implementation for ->child
1783
1784our %PID_CB;
1785our $CHLD_W;
1786our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
1787
1788# used by many Impl's
1789sub _emit_childstatus($$) {
1790 my (undef, $rpid, $rstatus) = @_;
1791
1792 $_->($rpid, $rstatus)
1793 for values %{ $PID_CB{$rpid} || {} },
1794 values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} };
1795}
1796
1797sub child {
1798 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1799 *_sigchld = sub {
1800 my $pid;
1801
1802 AnyEvent->_emit_childstatus ($pid, $?)
1803 while ($pid = waitpid -1, WNOHANG) > 0;
1804 };
1805
1806 *child = sub {
1807 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1808
1809 my $pid = $arg{pid};
1810 my $cb = $arg{cb};
1811
1812 $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb+0} = $cb;
1813
1814 unless ($CHLD_W) {
1815 $CHLD_W = AE::signal CHLD => \&_sigchld;
1816 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
1817 &_sigchld;
1818 }
1819
1820 bless [$pid, $cb+0], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
1821 };
1822
1823 *AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY = sub {
1824 my ($pid, $icb) = @{$_[0]};
1825
1826 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$icb};
1827 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
1828
1829 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
1830 };
1831 };
1832 die if $@;
1833
1834 &child
1835}
1836
1837# idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1838# of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1839# the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1840sub idle {
1841 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1842 *idle = sub {
1843 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1844
1845 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1846
1847 $rcb = sub {
1848 if ($cb) {
1849 $w = AE::time;
1850 &$cb;
1851 $w = AE::time - $w;
1852
1853 # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1854 # within some limits
1855 $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1856 $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1857
1858 $w = AE::timer $w, 0, $rcb;
1859 } else {
1860 # clean up...
1861 undef $w;
1862 undef $rcb;
1863 }
1864 };
1865
1866 $w = AE::timer 0.05, 0, $rcb;
1867
1868 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1869 };
1870
1871 *AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY = sub {
1872 undef $${$_[0]};
1873 };
1874 };
1875 die if $@;
1876
1877 &idle
1878}
1879
1880package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1881
1882our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1883
1884# only to be used for subclassing
1885sub new {
1886 my $class = shift;
1887 bless AnyEvent->condvar (@_), $class
1888}
1889
1890package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1891
1892#use overload
1893# '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1894# fallback => 1;
1895
1896# save 300+ kilobytes by dirtily hardcoding overloading
1897${"AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::OVERLOAD"}{dummy}++; # Register with magic by touching.
1898*{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = sub { }; # "Make it findable via fetchmethod."
1899*{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::(&{}'} = sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } }; # &{}
1900${'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = 1; # fallback
1901
1902our $WAITING;
1903
1904sub _send {
1905 # nop
1906}
1907
1908sub _wait {
1909 AnyEvent->_poll until $_[0]{_ae_sent};
1910}
1911
1912sub send {
1913 my $cv = shift;
1914 $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1915 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1916 $cv->_send;
1917}
1918
1919sub croak {
1920 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1921 $_[0]->send;
1922}
1923
1924sub ready {
1925 $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1926}
1927
1928sub recv {
1929 unless ($_[0]{_ae_sent}) {
1930 $WAITING
1931 and Carp::croak "AnyEvent::CondVar: recursive blocking wait attempted";
1932
1933 local $WAITING = 1;
1934 $_[0]->_wait;
1935 }
1936
1937 $_[0]{_ae_croak}
1938 and Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak};
1939
1940 wantarray
1941 ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} }
1942 : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
1943}
1944
1945sub cb {
1946 my $cv = shift;
1947
1948 @_
1949 and $cv->{_ae_cb} = shift
1950 and $cv->{_ae_sent}
1951 and (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv);
1952
1953 $cv->{_ae_cb}
1954}
1955
1956sub begin {
1957 ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1958 $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1959}
1960
1961sub end {
1962 return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1963 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
1964}
1965
1966# undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
1967*broadcast = \&send;
1968*wait = \&recv;
1969
1970=head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1971
1972In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1973caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
1974the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
1975checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1976development.
1977
1978As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
1979executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
1980also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
1981program.
1982
1983The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
1984within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
1985$Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
1986so on.
1987
1988=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
1989
1990AnyEvent supports a number of environment variables that tune the
1991runtime behaviour. They are usually evaluated when AnyEvent is
1992loaded, initialised, or a submodule that uses them is loaded. Many of
1993them also cause AnyEvent to load additional modules - for example,
1994C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP> causes the L<AnyEvent::Debug> module to be
1995loaded.
1996
1997All the environment variables documented here start with
1998C<PERL_ANYEVENT_>, which is what AnyEvent considers its own
1999namespace. Other modules are encouraged (but by no means required) to use
2000C<PERL_ANYEVENT_SUBMODULE> if they have registered the AnyEvent::Submodule
2001namespace on CPAN, for any submodule. For example, L<AnyEvent::HTTP> could
2002be expected to use C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HTTP_PROXY> (it should not access env
2003variables starting with C<AE_>, see below).
2004
2005All variables can also be set via the C<AE_> prefix, that is, instead
2006of setting C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> you can also set C<AE_VERBOSE>. In
2007case there is a clash btween anyevent and another program that uses
2008C<AE_something> you can set the corresponding C<PERL_ANYEVENT_something>
2009variable to the empty string, as those variables take precedence.
2010
2011When AnyEvent is first loaded, it copies all C<AE_xxx> env variables
2012to their C<PERL_ANYEVENT_xxx> counterpart unless that variable already
2013exists. If taint mode is on, then AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment
2014variables starting with C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> (or replace them
2015with C<undef> or the empty string, if the corresaponding C<AE_> variable
2016is set).
2017
2018The exact algorithm is currently:
2019
2020 1. if taint mode enabled, delete all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables from %ENV
2021 2. copy over AE_xyz to PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz unless the latter alraedy exists
2022 3. if taint mode enabled, set all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables to undef.
2023
2024This ensures that child processes will not see the C<AE_> variables.
2025
2026The following environment variables are currently known to AnyEvent:
2027
2028=over 4
2029
2030=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
2031
2032By default, AnyEvent will be completely silent except in fatal
2033conditions. You can set this environment variable to make AnyEvent more
2034talkative. If you want to do more than just set the global logging level
2035you should have a look at C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>, which allows much more
2036complex specifications.
2037
2038When set to C<5> or higher, causes AnyEvent to warn about unexpected
2039conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified by
2040C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>.
2041
2042When set to C<7> or higher, cause AnyEvent to report to STDERR which event
2043model it chooses.
2044
2045When set to C<8> or higher, then AnyEvent will report extra information on
2046which optional modules it loads and how it implements certain features.
2047
2048=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>
2049
2050Accepts rather complex logging specifications. For example, you could log
2051all C<debug> messages of some module to stderr, warnings and above to
2052stderr, and errors and above to syslog, with:
2053
2054 PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG=Some::Module=debug,+log:filter=warn,+%syslog:%syslog=error,syslog
2055
2056For the rather extensive details, see L<AnyEvent::Log>.
2057
2058Note that specifying this environment variable causes the L<AnyEvent::Log>
2059module to be loaded, while C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> does not, so only
2060using the latter saves a few hundred kB of memory until the first message
2061is being logged.
2062
2063=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
2064
2065AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
2066argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
2067will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
2068check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
2069it will croak.
2070
2071In other words, enables "strict" mode.
2072
2073Unlike C<use strict> (or its modern cousin, C<< use L<common::sense>
2074>>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in production. Keeping
2075C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while developing programs
2076can be very useful, however.
2077
2078=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL>
2079
2080If this env variable is set, then its contents will be interpreted by
2081C<AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport> (after replacing every occurance of
2082C<$$> by the process pid) and an C<AnyEvent::Debug::shell> is bound on
2083that port. The shell object is saved in C<$AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL>.
2084
2085This takes place when the first watcher is created.
2086
2087For example, to bind a debug shell on a unix domain socket in
2088F<< /tmp/debug<pid>.sock >>, you could use this:
2089
2090 PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL=/tmp/debug\$\$.sock perlprog
2091
2092Note that creating sockets in F</tmp> is very unsafe on multiuser
2093systems.
2094
2095=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP>
2096
2097Can be set to C<0>, C<1> or C<2> and enables wrapping of all watchers for
2098debugging purposes. See C<AnyEvent::Debug::wrap> for details.
2099
2100=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
2101
2102This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
2103auto detection and -probing kicks in.
2104
2105It normally is a string consisting entirely of ASCII letters (e.g. C<EV>
2106or C<IOAsync>). The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended and the
2107resulting module name is loaded and - if the load was successful - used as
2108event model backend. If it fails to load then AnyEvent will proceed with
2109auto detection and -probing.
2110
2111If the string ends with C<::> instead (e.g. C<AnyEvent::Impl::EV::>) then
2112nothing gets prepended and the module name is used as-is (hint: C<::> at
2113the end of a string designates a module name and quotes it appropriately).
2114
2115For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Loop::Perl>) you
2116could start your program like this:
2117
2118 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
2119
2120=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
2121
2122Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
2123for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
2124of auto probing).
2125
2126Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
2127current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
2128used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
2129list.
2130
2131This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
2132against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
2133small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
2134
2135Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
2136but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
2137- only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
2138addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
2139IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
2140
2141=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HOSTS>
2142
2143This variable, if specified, overrides the F</etc/hosts> file used by
2144L<AnyEvent::Socket>C<::resolve_sockaddr>, i.e. hosts aliases will be read
2145from that file instead.
2146
2147=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
2148
2149Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension for
2150DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, especially
2151when DNSSEC is involved, but some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS
2152packets, which is why it is off by default.
2153
2154Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
2155EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
2156
2157=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
2158
2159The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
2160will create in parallel.
2161
2162=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
2163
2164The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
2165resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
2166sent to the DNS server.
2167
2168=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
2169
2170The absolute path to a F<resolv.conf>-style file to use instead of
2171F</etc/resolv.conf> (or the OS-specific configuration) in the default
2172resolver, or the empty string to select the default configuration.
2173
2174=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
2175
2176When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
2177L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
2178variables are nonempty, they will be used to specify CA certificate
2179locations instead of a system-dependent default.
2180
2181=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_GUARD> and C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT>
2182
2183When these are set to C<1>, then the respective modules are not
2184loaded. Mostly good for testing AnyEvent itself.
2185
2186=back
2187
2188=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
2189
2190This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
2191a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
2192provide AnyEvent compatibility.
2193
2194If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
2195supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
2196pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of
2197the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
2198C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading
2199AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
2200
2201Example:
2202
2203 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
2204
2205This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::>
2206package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is already loaded.
2207
2208When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
2209will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to C<use> the
2210C<urxvt::anyevent> module.
2211
2212The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
2213L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> (Source code)
2214and so on for actual examples. Use C<perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to
2215see the sources.
2216
2217If you don't provide C<signal> and C<child> watchers than AnyEvent will
2218provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
2219
2220The above example isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt)
2221terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
2222in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter
2223inside I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the
2224I<rxvt-unicode> distribution.
2225
2226I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
2227condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
2228C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
2229not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
2230
2231=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
2232
2233The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
2234to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
2235program when the user enters quit:
2236
2237 use AnyEvent;
2238
2239 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
2240
2241 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
2242 fh => \*STDIN,
2243 poll => 'r',
2244 cb => sub {
2245 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
2246 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
2247 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
2248 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
2249 },
2250 );
2251
2252 my $time_watcher = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, interval => 1, cb => sub {
2253 warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' at most every second
2254 });
2255
2256 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
2257
2258=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
2259
2260Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
2261API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
2262
2263 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); # blocks
2264
2265 my $transaction = $fcp->txn_client_get ($url); # does not block
2266 $transaction->cb ( sub { ... } ); # set optional result callback
2267 my $data = $transaction->result; # possibly blocks
2268
2269The C<client_get> method works like C<LWP::Simple::get>: it requests the
2270given URL and waits till the data has arrived. It is defined to be:
2271
2272 sub client_get { $_[0]->txn_client_get ($_[1])->result }
2273
2274And in fact is automatically generated. This is the blocking API of
2275L<Net::FCP>, and it works as simple as in any other, similar, module.
2276
2277More complicated is C<txn_client_get>: It only creates a transaction
2278(completion, result, ...) object and initiates the transaction.
2279
2280 my $txn = bless { }, Net::FCP::Txn::;
2281
2282It also creates a condition variable that is used to signal the completion
2283of the request:
2284
2285 $txn->{finished} = AnyAvent->condvar;
2286
2287It then creates a socket in non-blocking mode.
2288
2289 socket $txn->{fh}, ...;
2290 fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK;
2291 connect $txn->{fh}, ...
2292 and !$!{EWOULDBLOCK}
2293 and !$!{EINPROGRESS}
2294 and Carp::croak "unable to connect: $!\n";
2295
2296Then it creates a write-watcher which gets called whenever an error occurs
2297or the connection succeeds:
2298
2299 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'w', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_w });
2300
2301And returns this transaction object. The C<fh_ready_w> callback gets
2302called as soon as the event loop detects that the socket is ready for
2303writing.
2304
2305The C<fh_ready_w> method makes the socket blocking again, writes the
2306request data and replaces the watcher by a read watcher (waiting for reply
2307data). The actual code is more complicated, but that doesn't matter for
2308this example:
2309
2310 fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, 0;
2311 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
2312 or die "connection or write error";
2313 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
2314
2315Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
2316result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
2317
2318 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
2319
2320 if (end-of-file or data complete) {
2321 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
2322 $txn->{finished}->send;
2323 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
2324 }
2325
2326The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
2327request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
2328data:
2329
2330 $txn->{finished}->recv;
2331 return $txn->{result};
2332
2333The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
2334that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
2335whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
2336and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
2337problems get reported to the code that tries to use the result, not in a
2338random callback.
2339
2340All of this enables the following usage styles:
2341
23421. Blocking:
2343
2344 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
2345
23462. Blocking, but running in parallel:
2347
2348 my @datas = map $_->result,
2349 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
2350 @urls;
2351
2352Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
2353anything about events.
2354
23553a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
2356
2357 use EV;
2358
2359 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
2360 my $txn = shift;
2361 my $data = $txn->result;
2362 ...
2363 });
2364
2365 EV::loop;
2366
23673b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
2368
2369 use AnyEvent;
2370
2371 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
2372
2373 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
2374 ...
2375 $quit->send;
2376 });
2377
2378 $quit->recv;
2379
2380
2381=head1 BENCHMARKS
2382
2383To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
2384over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
2385of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
2386
2387=head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
2388
2389Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
2390through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
2391timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
2392which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
2393
2394Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
2395distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2396for the EV and Perl backends only.
2397
2398=head3 Explanation of the columns
2399
2400I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
2401different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
2402loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
2403and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
2404would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
2405of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
2406
2407I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
2408RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
2409and Perl-based overheads.
2410
2411I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
2412takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
2413all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
2414and memory usage is not included in the figures.
2415
2416I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
2417callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
2418invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
2419signal the end of this phase.
2420
2421I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
2422watcher.
2423
2424=head3 Results
2425
2426 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
2427 EV/EV 100000 223 0.47 0.43 0.27 EV native interface
2428 EV/Any 100000 223 0.48 0.42 0.26 EV + AnyEvent watchers
2429 Coro::EV/Any 100000 223 0.47 0.42 0.26 coroutines + Coro::Signal
2430 Perl/Any 100000 431 2.70 0.74 0.92 pure perl implementation
2431 Event/Event 16000 516 31.16 31.84 0.82 Event native interface
2432 Event/Any 16000 1203 42.61 34.79 1.80 Event + AnyEvent watchers
2433 IOAsync/Any 16000 1911 41.92 27.45 16.81 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
2434 IOAsync/Any 16000 1726 40.69 26.37 15.25 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
2435 Glib/Any 16000 1118 89.00 12.57 51.17 quadratic behaviour
2436 Tk/Any 2000 1346 20.96 10.75 8.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
2437 POE/Any 2000 6951 108.97 795.32 14.24 via POE::Loop::Event
2438 POE/Any 2000 6648 94.79 774.40 575.51 via POE::Loop::Select
2439
2440=head3 Discussion
2441
2442The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
2443well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
2444can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
2445file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
2446the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
2447boost.
2448
2449Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
2450overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
2451the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
2452higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
2453
2454To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
2455benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
2456EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
2457cycles with POE.
2458
2459C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
2460maximal/minimal, respectively. When using the L<AE> API there is zero
2461overhead (when going through the AnyEvent API create is about 5-6 times
2462slower, with other times being equal, so still uses far less memory than
2463any other event loop and is still faster than Event natively).
2464
2465The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
2466constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
2467interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
2468adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
2469performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
2470them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
2471
2472The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
2473cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
2474
2475C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
2476when using its pure perl backend.
2477
2478C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
2479faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
2480C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
2481watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
2482making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
2483(note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
2484inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
2485
2486The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
2487more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
2488precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
2489file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
2490employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
2491hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
2492above).
2493
2494C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
2495select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
2496be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
2497memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
2498as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
2499requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
2500invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
2501implementation.
2502
2503The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
2504for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
2505small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
2506optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
2507using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
2508memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
2509design).
2510
2511=head3 Summary
2512
2513=over 4
2514
2515=item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
2516(even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
2517performance with or without AnyEvent.
2518
2519=item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
2520the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
2521does AnyEvent add significant overhead.
2522
2523=item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
2524reasonable memory usage.
2525
2526=back
2527
2528=head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
2529
2530This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
2531creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
2532timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
2533watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
2534watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
2535
2536The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
2537are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
2538fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
2539timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
2540most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
2541
2542In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
2543(1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
2544connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
2545
2546Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
2547distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2548for the EV and Perl backends only.
2549
2550=head3 Explanation of the columns
2551
2552I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
2553each server has a read and write socket end).
2554
2555I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
2556nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
2557
2558I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
2559single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
2560it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
2561a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
2562
2563=head3 Results
2564
2565 name sockets create request
2566 EV 20000 62.66 7.99
2567 Perl 20000 68.32 32.64
2568 IOAsync 20000 174.06 101.15 epoll
2569 IOAsync 20000 174.67 610.84 poll
2570 Event 20000 202.69 242.91
2571 Glib 20000 557.01 1689.52
2572 POE 20000 341.54 12086.32 uses POE::Loop::Event
2573
2574=head3 Discussion
2575
2576This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
2577particular event loop.
2578
2579EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
2580is relatively high, though.
2581
2582Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
2583loops Event and Glib.
2584
2585IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
2586good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
2587
2588Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
2589understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
2590the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
2591uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
2592
2593Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
2594clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
2595
2596POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
2597as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
2598it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
2599
2600=head3 Summary
2601
2602=over 4
2603
2604=item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
2605
2606=item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
2607
2608=back
2609
2610=head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
2611
2612While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
2613large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
2614I/O watchers.
2615
2616In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
2617case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
2618one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
2619well.
2620
2621The columns are identical to the previous table.
2622
2623=head3 Results
2624
2625 name sockets create request
2626 EV 16 20.00 6.54
2627 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
2628 Event 16 81.27 35.86
2629 Glib 16 32.63 15.48
2630 POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
2631
2632=head3 Discussion
2633
2634The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
2635server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
2636in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
2637to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
2638speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
2639them).
2640
2641EV is again fastest.
2642
2643Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
2644loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
2645matter.
2646
2647POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
2648others.
2649
2650=head3 Summary
2651
2652=over 4
2653
2654=item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
2655watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
2656
2657=back
2658
2659=head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
2660
2661Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
2662could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
2663simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
2664shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
2665fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
2666very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
2667baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
2668
2669The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
2670connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
2671creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
2672test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
2673benchmark nevertheless.
2674
2675 name runtime
2676 Lambda/select 0.330 sec
2677 + optimized 0.122 sec
2678 Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
2679 + optimized 0.138 sec
2680 Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
2681 POE/select, components 0.662 sec
2682 POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
2683 POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
2684
2685 AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
2686 AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
2687 +state machine 0.134 sec
2688
2689The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2690benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2691defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2692written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2693AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2694resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2695generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2696connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2697
2698The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2699offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2700Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2701non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2702
2703As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2704hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2705backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2706
2707And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2708slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda
2709higher level ("unoptimised") abstractions by a large margin, even though
2710it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O in a non-blocking way.
2711
2712The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2713F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2714part of the IO::Lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2715
2716
2717=head1 SIGNALS
2718
2719AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2720
2721=over 4
2722
2723=item SIGCHLD
2724
2725A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2726emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2727event loops install a similar handler.
2728
2729Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then
2730AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2731
2732=item SIGPIPE
2733
2734A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2735when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2736
2737The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2738on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2739badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2740program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2741some random socket.
2742
2743The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2744that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2745
2746Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2747
2748=back
2749
2750=cut
2751
2752undef $SIG{CHLD}
2753 if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2754
2755$SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2756 unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2757
2758=head1 RECOMMENDED/OPTIONAL MODULES
2759
2760One of AnyEvent's main goals is to be 100% Pure-Perl(tm): only perl (and
2761its built-in modules) are required to use it.
2762
2763That does not mean that AnyEvent won't take advantage of some additional
2764modules if they are installed.
2765
2766This section explains which additional modules will be used, and how they
2767affect AnyEvent's operation.
2768
2769=over 4
2770
2771=item L<Async::Interrupt>
2772
2773This slightly arcane module is used to implement fast signal handling: To
2774my knowledge, there is no way to do completely race-free and quick
2775signal handling in pure perl. To ensure that signals still get
2776delivered, AnyEvent will start an interval timer to wake up perl (and
2777catch the signals) with some delay (default is 10 seconds, look for
2778C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>).
2779
2780If this module is available, then it will be used to implement signal
2781catching, which means that signals will not be delayed, and the event loop
2782will not be interrupted regularly, which is more efficient (and good for
2783battery life on laptops).
2784
2785This affects not just the pure-perl event loop, but also other event loops
2786that have no signal handling on their own (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt).
2787
2788Some event loops (POE, Event, Event::Lib) offer signal watchers natively,
2789and either employ their own workarounds (POE) or use AnyEvent's workaround
2790(using C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>). Installing L<Async::Interrupt>
2791does nothing for those backends.
2792
2793=item L<EV>
2794
2795This module isn't really "optional", as it is simply one of the backend
2796event loops that AnyEvent can use. However, it is simply the best event
2797loop available in terms of features, speed and stability: It supports
2798the AnyEvent API optimally, implements all the watcher types in XS, does
2799automatic timer adjustments even when no monotonic clock is available,
2800can take avdantage of advanced kernel interfaces such as C<epoll> and
2801C<kqueue>, and is the fastest backend I<by far>. You can even embed
2802L<Glib>/L<Gtk2> in it (or vice versa, see L<EV::Glib> and L<Glib::EV>).
2803
2804If you only use backends that rely on another event loop (e.g. C<Tk>),
2805then this module will do nothing for you.
2806
2807=item L<Guard>
2808
2809The guard module, when used, will be used to implement
2810C<AnyEvent::Util::guard>. This speeds up guards considerably (and uses a
2811lot less memory), but otherwise doesn't affect guard operation much. It is
2812purely used for performance.
2813
2814=item L<JSON> and L<JSON::XS>
2815
2816One of these modules is required when you want to read or write JSON data
2817via L<AnyEvent::Handle>. L<JSON> is also written in pure-perl, but can take
2818advantage of the ultra-high-speed L<JSON::XS> module when it is installed.
2819
2820=item L<Net::SSLeay>
2821
2822Implementing TLS/SSL in Perl is certainly interesting, but not very
2823worthwhile: If this module is installed, then L<AnyEvent::Handle> (with
2824the help of L<AnyEvent::TLS>), gains the ability to do TLS/SSL.
2825
2826=item L<Time::HiRes>
2827
2828This module is part of perl since release 5.008. It will be used when the
2829chosen event library does not come with a timing source of its own. The
2830pure-perl event loop (L<AnyEvent::Loop>) will additionally load it to
2831try to use a monotonic clock for timing stability.
2832
2833=back
2834
2835
2836=head1 FORK
2837
2838Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2839because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll> calls
2840- higher performance APIs such as BSD's kqueue or the dreaded Linux epoll
2841are usually badly thought-out hacks that are incompatible with fork in
2842one way or another. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware and ensures that you
2843continue event-processing in both parent and child (or both, if you know
2844what you are doing).
2845
2846This means that, in general, you cannot fork and do event processing in
2847the child if the event library was initialised before the fork (which
2848usually happens when the first AnyEvent watcher is created, or the library
2849is loaded).
2850
2851If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2852watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child OR you must do
2853something completely out of the scope of AnyEvent.
2854
2855The problem of doing event processing in the parent I<and> the child
2856is much more complicated: even for backends that I<are> fork-aware or
2857fork-safe, their behaviour is not usually what you want: fork clones all
2858watchers, that means all timers, I/O watchers etc. are active in both
2859parent and child, which is almost never what you want. USing C<exec>
2860to start worker children from some kind of manage rprocess is usually
2861preferred, because it is much easier and cleaner, at the expense of having
2862to have another binary.
2863
2864
2865=head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2866
2867AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2868$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2869execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2870make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2871will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2872specified in the variable.
2873
2874You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2875before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2876
2877 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2878
2879 use AnyEvent;
2880
2881Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2882be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2883probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2884$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2885
2886Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2887C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2888enabled.
2889
2890
2891=head1 BUGS
2892
2893Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
2894to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
2895and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
2896memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
2897pronounced).
2898
2899
2900=head1 SEE ALSO
2901
2902Tutorial/Introduction: L<AnyEvent::Intro>.
2903
2904FAQ: L<AnyEvent::FAQ>.
2905
2906Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util> (misc. grab-bag), L<AnyEvent::Log>
2907(simply logging).
2908
2909Development/Debugging: L<AnyEvent::Strict> (stricter checking),
2910L<AnyEvent::Debug> (interactive shell, watcher tracing).
2911
2912Supported event modules: L<AnyEvent::Loop>, L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>,
2913L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>,
2914L<Qt>, L<POE>, L<FLTK>.
2915
2916Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
2917L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
2918L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
2919L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync>, L<Anyevent::Impl::Irssi>,
2920L<AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK>.
2921
2922Non-blocking handles, pipes, stream sockets, TCP clients and
2923servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>, L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
2924
2925Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2926
2927Thread support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>, L<Coro::Event>.
2928
2929Nontrivial usage examples: L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>,
2930L<AnyEvent::HTTP>.
2931
2932
2933=head1 AUTHOR
2934
2935 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
2936 http://home.schmorp.de/
2937
2938=cut
2939
29401
2941

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