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1=head1 NAME 1=head1 NAME
2 2
3AnyEvent - provide framework for multiple event loops 3AnyEvent - provide framework for multiple event loops
4 4
5Event, Coro, Glib, Tk - various supported event loops 5EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Qt and POE are various supported
6event loops.
6 7
7=head1 SYNOPSIS 8=head1 SYNOPSIS
8 9
9use AnyEvent; 10 use AnyEvent;
10 11
12 # file descriptor readable
11 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (fh => ..., poll => "[rw]+", cb => sub { 13 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
12 my ($poll_got) = @_; 14
15 # one-shot or repeating timers
16 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
17 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...
18
19 print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
20 print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
21
22 # POSIX signal
23 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
24
25 # child process exit
26 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
27 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
13 ... 28 ...
14 }); 29 });
15 my $w = AnyEvent->io (after => $seconds, cb => sub {
16 ...
17 });
18 30
19 # watchers get canceled whenever $w is destroyed 31 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
20 # only one watcher per $fh and $poll type is allowed 32 my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
21 # (i.e. on a socket you cna have one r + one w or one rw
22 # watcher, not any more.
23 # timers can only be used once
24 33
25 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # kind of main loop replacement 34 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
26 # can only be used once 35 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
27 $w->wait; # enters main loop till $condvar gets ->send 36 $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
28 $w->broadcast; # wake up waiting and future wait's 37 # use a condvar in callback mode:
38 $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
39
40=head1 INTRODUCTION/TUTORIAL
41
42This manpage is mainly a reference manual. If you are interested
43in a tutorial or some gentle introduction, have a look at the
44L<AnyEvent::Intro> manpage.
45
46=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
47
48Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
49nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
50
51Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of
52policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>.
53
54First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only
55interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
56pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
57the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
58only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process. AnyEvent
59cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between those event
60loops.
61
62The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
63programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
64religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
65module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
66model you use.
67
68For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
69actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is
70like joining a cult: After you joined, you are dependent on them and you
71cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
72that isn't them. What's worse, all the potential users of your
73module are I<also> forced to use the same event loop you use.
74
75AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
76fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
77with the rest: POE + IO::Async? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if
78your module uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it,
79too. But if your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all
80event models it supports (including stuff like IO::Async, as long as those
81use one of the supported event loops. It is trivial to add new event loops
82to AnyEvent, too, so it is future-proof).
83
84In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
85model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
86modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
87follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and up to the point, by only
88offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
89technically possible.
90
91Of course, AnyEvent comes with a big (and fully optional!) toolbox
92of useful functionality, such as an asynchronous DNS resolver, 100%
93non-blocking connects (even with TLS/SSL, IPv6 and on broken platforms
94such as Windows) and lots of real-world knowledge and workarounds for
95platform bugs and differences.
96
97Now, if you I<do want> lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
98useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
99model, you should I<not> use this module.
29 100
30=head1 DESCRIPTION 101=head1 DESCRIPTION
31 102
32L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This 103L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This
33allows module authors to utilizy an event loop without forcing module 104allows module authors to utilise an event loop without forcing module
34users to use the same event loop (as only a single event loop can coexist 105users to use the same event loop (as only a single event loop can coexist
35peacefully at any one time). 106peacefully at any one time).
36 107
37The interface itself is vaguely similar but not identical to the Event 108The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
38module. 109module.
39 110
40On the first call of any method, the module tries to detect the currently 111During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
41loaded event loop by probing wether any of the following modules is 112to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
42loaded: L<Coro::Event>, L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>. The first one found is 113following modules is already loaded: L<EV>,
43used. If none is found, the module tries to load these modules in the 114L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>,
44order given. The first one that could be successfully loaded will be 115L<POE>. The first one found is used. If none are found, the module tries
45used. If still none could be found, it will issue an error. 116to load these modules (excluding Tk, Event::Lib, Qt and POE as the pure perl
117adaptor should always succeed) in the order given. The first one that can
118be successfully loaded will be used. If, after this, still none could be
119found, AnyEvent will fall back to a pure-perl event loop, which is not
120very efficient, but should work everywhere.
121
122Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
123an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
124that model the default. For example:
125
126 use Tk;
127 use AnyEvent;
128
129 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
130
131The I<likely> means that, if any module loads another event model and
132starts using it, all bets are off. Maybe you should tell their authors to
133use AnyEvent so their modules work together with others seamlessly...
134
135The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called
136C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>. Like other event modules you can load it
137explicitly and enjoy the high availability of that event loop :)
138
139=head1 WATCHERS
140
141AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that
142stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
143the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
144
145These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
146creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the
147callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model
148is in control).
149
150Note that B<callbacks must not permanently change global variables>
151potentially in use by the event loop (such as C<$_> or C<$[>) and that B<<
152callbacks must not C<die> >>. The former is good programming practise in
153Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
154widely between event loops.
155
156To disable the watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
157variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
158to it).
159
160All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
161
162Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for
163example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways.
164
165An any way to achieve that is this pattern:
166
167 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub {
168 # you can use $w here, for example to undef it
169 undef $w;
170 });
171
172Note that C<my $w; $w => combination. This is necessary because in Perl,
173my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are
174declared.
175
176=head2 I/O WATCHERS
177
178You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method
179with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
180
181C<fh> is the Perl I<file handle> (or a naked file descriptor) to watch
182for events (AnyEvent might or might not keep a reference to this file
183handle). Note that only file handles pointing to things for which
184non-blocking operation makes sense are allowed. This includes sockets,
185most character devices, pipes, fifos and so on, but not for example files
186or block devices.
187
188C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which creates a
189watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
190
191C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
192
193Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
194presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
195callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
196
197The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of it.
198You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on the
199underlying file descriptor.
200
201Some event loops issue spurious readyness notifications, so you should
202always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
203handles.
204
205Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
206watcher.
207
208 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
209 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
210 warn "read: $input\n";
211 undef $w;
212 });
213
214=head2 TIME WATCHERS
215
216You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
217method with the following mandatory arguments:
218
219C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
220supported) the callback should be invoked. C<cb> is the callback to invoke
221in that case.
222
223Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
224presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
225callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
226
227The callback will normally be invoked once only. If you specify another
228parameter, C<interval>, as a strictly positive number (> 0), then the
229callback will be invoked regularly at that interval (in fractional
230seconds) after the first invocation. If C<interval> is specified with a
231false value, then it is treated as if it were missing.
232
233The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
234attempt is done to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval is
235only approximate.
236
237Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
238
239 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
240 warn "timeout\n";
241 });
242
243 # to cancel the timer:
244 undef $w;
245
246Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
247
248 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
249 warn "timeout\n";
250 };
251
252=head3 TIMING ISSUES
253
254There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
255in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
256o'clock").
257
258While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way, they
259use absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your clock
260"jumps", for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards from
261the wrong date of 2014-01-01 to 2008-01-01, a watcher that is supposed to
262fire "after" a second might actually take six years to finally fire.
263
264AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious
265about these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer, based
266on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on wallclock time)
267timers.
268
269AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
270AnyEvent API.
271
272AnyEvent has two additional methods that return the "current time":
46 273
47=over 4 274=over 4
48 275
276=item AnyEvent->time
277
278This returns the "current wallclock time" as a fractional number of
279seconds since the Epoch (the same thing as C<time> or C<Time::HiRes::time>
280return, and the result is guaranteed to be compatible with those).
281
282It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each call
283will check the system clock, which usually gets updated frequently.
284
285=item AnyEvent->now
286
287This also returns the "current wallclock time", but unlike C<time>, above,
288this value might change only once per event loop iteration, depending on
289the event loop (most return the same time as C<time>, above). This is the
290time that AnyEvent's timers get scheduled against.
291
292I<In almost all cases (in all cases if you don't care), this is the
293function to call when you want to know the current time.>
294
295This function is also often faster then C<< AnyEvent->time >>, and
296thus the preferred method if you want some timestamp (for example,
297L<AnyEvent::Handle> uses this to update it's activity timeouts).
298
299The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very exact
300with your timing, you can skip it without bad conscience.
301
302For a practical example of when these times differ, consider L<Event::Lib>
303and L<EV> and the following set-up:
304
305The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callback at
306time=500 (assume no other callbacks delay processing). In your callback,
307you wait a second by executing C<sleep 1> (blocking the process for a
308second) and then (at time=501) you create a relative timer that fires
309after three seconds.
310
311With L<Event::Lib>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> will
312both return C<501>, because that is the current time, and the timer will
313be scheduled to fire at time=504 (C<501> + C<3>).
314
315With L<EV>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> returns C<501> (as that is the current
316time), but C<< AnyEvent->now >> returns C<500>, as that is the time the
317last event processing phase started. With L<EV>, your timer gets scheduled
318to run at time=503 (C<500> + C<3>).
319
320In one sense, L<Event::Lib> is more exact, as it uses the current time
321regardless of any delays introduced by event processing. However, most
322callbacks do not expect large delays in processing, so this causes a
323higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the current time).
324
325In another sense, L<EV> is more exact, as your timer will be scheduled at
326the same time, regardless of how long event processing actually took.
327
328In either case, if you care (and in most cases, you don't), then you
329can get whatever behaviour you want with any event loop, by taking the
330difference between C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> into
331account.
332
333=item AnyEvent->now_update
334
335Some event loops (such as L<EV> or L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) cache
336the current time for each loop iteration (see the discussion of L<<
337AnyEvent->now >>, above).
338
339When a callback runs for a long time (or when the process sleeps), then
340this "current" time will differ substantially from the real time, which
341might affect timers and time-outs.
342
343When this is the case, you can call this method, which will update the
344event loop's idea of "current time".
345
346Note that updating the time I<might> cause some events to be handled.
347
348=back
349
350=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS
351
352You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal
353I<name> in uppercase and without any C<SIG> prefix, C<cb> is the Perl
354callback to be invoked whenever a signal occurs.
355
356Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
357presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
358callbacks cannot use arguments passed to signal watcher callbacks.
359
360Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
361invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous means
362that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process,
363but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
364
365The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal
366between multiple watchers.
367
368This watcher might use C<%SIG>, so programs overwriting those signals
369directly will likely not work correctly.
370
371Example: exit on SIGINT
372
373 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
374
375=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
376
377You can also watch on a child process exit and catch its exit status.
378
379The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (if set to C<0>, it
380watches for any child process exit). The watcher will triggered only when
381the child process has finished and an exit status is available, not on
382any trace events (stopped/continued).
383
384The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
385waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you I<can> rely on child watcher
386callback arguments.
387
388This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>,
389and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
390random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g. inside
391C<system>, is just fine).
392
393There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start them
394I<after> the child process was created, and this means the process could
395have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
396
397Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async do,
398see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event models
399that I<do> handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded before
400the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place). AnyEvent's
401pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless of when you
402start the watcher.
403
404This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first
405thing in an AnyEvent program, you I<have> to create at least one
406watcher before you C<fork> the child (alternatively, you can call
407C<AnyEvent::detect>).
408
409Example: fork a process and wait for it
410
411 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
412
413 my $pid = fork or exit 5;
414
415 my $w = AnyEvent->child (
416 pid => $pid,
417 cb => sub {
418 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
419 warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
420 $done->send;
421 },
422 );
423
424 # do something else, then wait for process exit
425 $done->recv;
426
427=head2 IDLE WATCHERS
428
429Sometimes there is a need to do something, but it is not so important
430to do it instantly, but only when there is nothing better to do. This
431"nothing better to do" is usually defined to be "no other events need
432attention by the event loop".
433
434Idle watchers ideally get invoked when the event loop has nothing
435better to do, just before it would block the process to wait for new
436events. Instead of blocking, the idle watcher is invoked.
437
438Most event loops unfortunately do not really support idle watchers (only
439EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest, AnyEvent
440will simply call the callback "from time to time".
441
442Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the
443program is otherwise idle:
444
445 my @lines; # read data
446 my $idle_w;
447 my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
448 push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
449
450 # start an idle watcher, if not already done
451 $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
452 # handle only one line, when there are lines left
453 if (my $line = shift @lines) {
454 print "handled when idle: $line";
455 } else {
456 # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
457 undef $idle_w;
458 }
459 });
460 });
461
462=head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
463
464If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
465require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
466will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
467
468AnyEvent is slightly different: it expects somebody else to run the event
469loop and will only block when necessary (usually when told by the user).
470
471The instrument to do that is called a "condition variable", so called
472because they represent a condition that must become true.
473
474Now is probably a good time to look at the examples further below.
475
476Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar
477>> method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
478C<cb>, which specifies a callback to be called when the condition variable
479becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
480the results).
481
482After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
483by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
484were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
485->send >> method).
486
487Condition variables are similar to callbacks, except that you can
488optionally wait for them. They can also be called merge points - points
489in time where multiple outstanding events have been processed. And yet
490another way to call them is transactions - each condition variable can be
491used to represent a transaction, which finishes at some point and delivers
492a result.
493
494Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has finished,
495for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests,
496then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
497availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
498called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
499
500You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
501you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
502could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
503button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
504
505Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
506two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
507lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but
508you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks,
509as this asks for trouble.
510
511Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
512used by AnyEvent itself are all named C<_ae_XXX> to make subclassing
513easy (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
514AnyEvent). To subclass, use C<AnyEvent::CondVar> as base class and call
515it's C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
516
517There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
518eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
519for the send to occur.
520
521Example: wait for a timer.
522
523 # wait till the result is ready
524 my $result_ready = AnyEvent->condvar;
525
526 # do something such as adding a timer
527 # or socket watcher the calls $result_ready->send
528 # when the "result" is ready.
529 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
530 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
531 after => 1,
532 cb => sub { $result_ready->send },
533 );
534
535 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
536 # calls -<send
537 $result_ready->recv;
538
539Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that condition
540variables are also callable directly.
541
542 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
543 my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
544 $done->recv;
545
546Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
547callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from
548the main program:
549
550 use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
551
552 ...
553
554 my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
555
556And this is how you would just set a callback to be called whenever the
557results are available:
558
559 $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
560 my @info = $_[0]->recv;
561 });
562
563=head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
564
565These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
566code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
567the producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
568uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
569
570=over 4
571
572=item $cv->send (...)
573
574Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->recv >> and all further
575calls to C<recv> will (eventually) return after this method has been
576called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
577
578If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
579immediately from within send.
580
581Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
582future C<< ->recv >> calls.
583
584Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly (as if
585they were a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as calling
586C<send>.
587
588=item $cv->croak ($error)
589
590Similar to send, but causes all call's to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
591C<Carp::croak> with the given error message/object/scalar.
592
593This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
594user/consumer. Doing it this way instead of calling C<croak> directly
595delays the error detetcion, but has the overwhelmign advantage that it
596diagnoses the error at the place where the result is expected, and not
597deep in some event clalback without connection to the actual code causing
598the problem.
599
600=item $cv->begin ([group callback])
601
602=item $cv->end
603
604These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events into
605one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel might want
606to use a condition variable for the whole process.
607
608Every call to C<< ->begin >> will increment a counter, and every call to
609C<< ->end >> will decrement it. If the counter reaches C<0> in C<< ->end
610>>, the (last) callback passed to C<begin> will be executed. That callback
611is I<supposed> to call C<< ->send >>, but that is not required. If no
612callback was set, C<send> will be called without any arguments.
613
614You can think of C<< $cv->send >> giving you an OR condition (one call
615sends), while C<< $cv->begin >> and C<< $cv->end >> giving you an AND
616condition (all C<begin> calls must be C<end>'ed before the condvar sends).
617
618Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for example,
619STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for both streams to
620close before activating a condvar:
621
622 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
623
624 $cv->begin; # first watcher
625 my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
626 defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
627 or $cv->end;
628 });
629
630 $cv->begin; # second watcher
631 my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
632 defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
633 or $cv->end;
634 });
635
636 $cv->recv;
637
638This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle), there is
639one call to C<begin>, so the condvar waits for all calls to C<end> before
640sending.
641
642The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as the
643there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks that are
644begung can potentially be zero:
645
646 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
647
648 my %result;
649 $cv->begin (sub { $cv->send (\%result) });
650
651 for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
652 $cv->begin;
653 ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
654 $result{$host} = ...;
655 $cv->end;
656 };
657 }
658
659 $cv->end;
660
661This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
662C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
663order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to C<begin> when it starts
664each ping request and calls C<end> when it has received some result for
665it. Since C<begin> and C<end> only maintain a counter, the order in which
666results arrive is not relevant.
667
668There is an additional bracketing call to C<begin> and C<end> outside the
669loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the callback
670to be called once the counter reaches C<0>, and second, it ensures that
671C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
672doesn't execute once).
673
674This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
675potentially none) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
676the callback and ensure C<end> is called at least once, and then, for each
677subrequest you start, call C<begin> and for each subrequest you finish,
678call C<end>.
679
680=back
681
682=head3 METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
683
684These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the
685code awaits the condition.
686
687=over 4
688
689=item $cv->recv
690
691Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
692>> methods have been called on c<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
693normally.
694
695You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid but
696will return immediately.
697
698If an error condition has been set by calling C<< ->croak >>, then this
699function will call C<croak>.
700
701In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
702in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
703
704Note that doing a blocking wait in a callback is not supported by any
705event loop, that is, recursive invocation of a blocking C<< ->recv
706>> is not allowed, and the C<recv> call will C<croak> if such a
707condition is detected. This condition can be slightly loosened by using
708L<Coro::AnyEvent>, which allows you to do a blocking C<< ->recv >> from
709any thread that doesn't run the event loop itself.
710
711Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
712(programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
713using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>. Instead, let the
714caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
715condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
716callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
717while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
718
719You can ensure that C<< -recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
720only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
721time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
722waits otherwise.
723
724=item $bool = $cv->ready
725
726Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether C<send> or
727C<croak> have been called.
728
729=item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
730
731This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
732replaces it before doing so.
733
734The callback will be called when the condition becomes "true", i.e. when
735C<send> or C<croak> are called, with the only argument being the condition
736variable itself. Calling C<recv> inside the callback or at any later time
737is guaranteed not to block.
738
739=back
740
741=head1 SUPPORTED EVENT LOOPS/BACKENDS
742
743The available backend classes are (every class has its own manpage):
744
745=over 4
746
747=item Backends that are autoprobed when no other event loop can be found.
748
749EV is the preferred backend when no other event loop seems to be in
750use. If EV is not installed, then AnyEvent will try Event, and, failing
751that, will fall back to its own pure-perl implementation, which is
752available everywhere as it comes with AnyEvent itself.
753
754 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
755 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
756 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl implementation, fast and portable.
757
758=item Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
759
760These will be used when they are currently loaded when the first watcher
761is created, in which case it is assumed that the application is using
762them. This means that AnyEvent will automatically pick the right backend
763when the main program loads an event module before anything starts to
764create watchers. Nothing special needs to be done by the main program.
765
766 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, slow but very stable.
767 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very broken.
768 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
769 AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, very slow, some limitations.
770
771=item Backends with special needs.
772
773Qt requires the Qt::Application to be instantiated first, but will
774otherwise be picked up automatically. As long as the main program
775instantiates the application before any AnyEvent watchers are created,
776everything should just work.
777
778 AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt.
779
780Support for IO::Async can only be partial, as it is too broken and
781architecturally limited to even support the AnyEvent API. It also
782is the only event loop that needs the loop to be set explicitly, so
783it can only be used by a main program knowing about AnyEvent. See
784L<AnyEvent::Impl::Async> for the gory details.
785
786 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async, cannot be autoprobed.
787
788=item Event loops that are indirectly supported via other backends.
789
790Some event loops can be supported via other modules:
791
792There is no direct support for WxWidgets (L<Wx>) or L<Prima>.
793
794B<WxWidgets> has no support for watching file handles. However, you can
795use WxWidgets through the POE adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that simply
796polls 20 times per second, which was considered to be too horrible to even
797consider for AnyEvent.
798
799B<Prima> is not supported as nobody seems to be using it, but it has a POE
800backend, so it can be supported through POE.
801
802AnyEvent knows about both L<Prima> and L<Wx>, however, and will try to
803load L<POE> when detecting them, in the hope that POE will pick them up,
804in which case everything will be automatic.
805
806=back
807
808=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
809
810These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
811write AnyEvent extension modules.
812
813=over 4
814
815=item $AnyEvent::MODEL
816
817Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created, before the
818backend has been autodetected.
819
820Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is the
821name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one
822of the C<AnyEvent::Impl:xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the
823case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode> it
824will be C<urxvt::anyevent>).
825
826=item AnyEvent::detect
827
828Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model
829if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would
830have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at
831runtime, and not e.g. while initialising of your module.
832
833If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
834created, use C<post_detect>.
835
836=item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
837
838Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
839autodetected (or immediately if this has already happened).
840
841The block will be executed I<after> the actual backend has been detected
842(C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> is set), but I<before> any watchers have been
843created, so it is possible to e.g. patch C<@AnyEvent::ISA> or do
844other initialisations - see the sources of L<AnyEvent::Strict> or
845L<AnyEvent::AIO> to see how this is used.
846
847The most common usage is to create some global watchers, without forcing
848event module detection too early, for example, L<AnyEvent::AIO> creates
849and installs the global L<IO::AIO> watcher in a C<post_detect> block to
850avoid autodetecting the event module at load time.
851
852If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
853that automatically removes the callback again when it is destroyed. See
854L<Coro::BDB> for a case where this is useful.
855
856=item @AnyEvent::post_detect
857
858If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
859before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will called directly after
860the event loop has been chosen.
861
862You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
863if it is defined then the event loop has already been detected, and the
864array will be ignored.
865
866Best use C<AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }> when your application allows
867it,as it takes care of these details.
868
869This variable is mainly useful for modules that can do something useful
870when AnyEvent is used and thus want to know when it is initialised, but do
871not need to even load it by default. This array provides the means to hook
872into AnyEvent passively, without loading it.
873
874=back
875
876=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
877
878As a module author, you should C<use AnyEvent> and call AnyEvent methods
879freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
880
881Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
882decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
883by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
884to load the event module first.
885
886Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
887the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
888because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
889events is to stay interactive.
890
891It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
892requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
893called C<results> that returns the results, it should call C<< ->recv >>
894freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. always).
895
896=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
897
898There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
899dictate which event model to use.
900
901If it doesn't care, it can just "use AnyEvent" and use it itself, or not
902do anything special (it does not need to be event-based) and let AnyEvent
903decide which implementation to chose if some module relies on it.
904
905If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
906Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
907event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
908speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
909modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
910decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
911might chose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
912
913You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
914C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl> module, which gives you similar behaviour
915everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
916
917=head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
918
919Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
920only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
921
922In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
923
924 AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
925
926This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
927
928Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
929it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
930variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
931exit cleanly.
932
933
934=head1 OTHER MODULES
935
936The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
937AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other AnyEvent
938modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the modules
939come with AnyEvent, most are available via CPAN.
940
941=over 4
942
943=item L<AnyEvent::Util>
944
945Contains various utility functions that replace often-used but blocking
946functions such as C<inet_aton> by event-/callback-based versions.
947
948=item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
949
950Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
951addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
952connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
953
954=item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
955
956Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
957supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
958non-blocking SSL/TLS (via L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
959
960=item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
961
962Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
963
964=item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>
965
966A simple-to-use HTTP library that is capable of making a lot of concurrent
967HTTP requests.
968
969=item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
970
971Provides a simple web application server framework.
972
973=item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
974
975The fastest ping in the west.
976
977=item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
978
979Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process.
980
981=item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
982
983Truly asynchronous I/O, should be in the toolbox of every event
984programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent
985together.
986
987=item L<AnyEvent::BDB>
988
989Truly asynchronous Berkeley DB access. AnyEvent::BDB transparently fuses
990L<BDB> and AnyEvent together.
991
992=item L<AnyEvent::GPSD>
993
994A non-blocking interface to gpsd, a daemon delivering GPS information.
995
996=item L<AnyEvent::IRC>
997
998AnyEvent based IRC client module family (replacing the older Net::IRC3).
999
1000=item L<AnyEvent::XMPP>
1001
1002AnyEvent based XMPP (Jabber protocol) module family (replacing the older
1003Net::XMPP2>.
1004
1005=item L<AnyEvent::IGS>
1006
1007A non-blocking interface to the Internet Go Server protocol (used by
1008L<App::IGS>).
1009
1010=item L<Net::FCP>
1011
1012AnyEvent-based implementation of the Freenet Client Protocol, birthplace
1013of AnyEvent.
1014
1015=item L<Event::ExecFlow>
1016
1017High level API for event-based execution flow control.
1018
1019=item L<Coro>
1020
1021Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>.
1022
1023=back
1024
49=cut 1025=cut
50 1026
51package AnyEvent; 1027package AnyEvent;
52 1028
53no warnings; 1029no warnings;
54use strict 'vars'; 1030use strict qw(vars subs);
1031
55use Carp; 1032use Carp ();
56 1033
57our $VERSION = 0.2; 1034our $VERSION = 4.83;
58our $MODEL; 1035our $MODEL;
59 1036
60our $AUTOLOAD; 1037our $AUTOLOAD;
61our @ISA; 1038our @ISA;
62 1039
1040our @REGISTRY;
1041
1042our $WIN32;
1043
1044BEGIN {
1045 eval "sub WIN32(){ " . (($^O =~ /mswin32/i)*1) ." }";
1046 eval "sub TAINT(){ " . (${^TAINT}*1) . " }";
1047
1048 delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
1049 if ${^TAINT};
1050}
1051
1052our $verbose = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
1053
1054our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
1055
1056{
1057 my $idx;
1058 $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
1059 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
1060 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1061}
1062
63my @models = ( 1063my @models = (
64 [Coro => Coro::Event::], 1064 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV::],
65 [Event => Event::], 1065 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::],
66 [Glib => Glib::], 1066 [AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl::],
67 [Tk => Tk::], 1067 # everything below here will not be autoprobed
1068 # as the pureperl backend should work everywhere
1069 # and is usually faster
1070 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib::], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1071 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1072 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1073 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
1074 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
1075 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1076 [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1077 # IO::Async is just too broken - we would need workarounds for its
1078 # byzantine signal and broken child handling, among others.
1079 # IO::Async is rather hard to detect, as it doesn't have any
1080 # obvious default class.
1081# [IO::Async:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1082# [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1083# [IO::Async::Notifier:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
68); 1084);
69 1085
70our %method = map +($_ => 1), qw(io timer condvar broadcast wait cancel DESTROY); 1086our %method = map +($_ => 1),
1087 qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar one_event DESTROY);
71 1088
72sub AUTOLOAD { 1089our @post_detect;
73 $AUTOLOAD =~ s/.*://;
74 1090
75 $method{$AUTOLOAD} 1091sub post_detect(&) {
76 or croak "$AUTOLOAD: not a valid method for AnyEvent objects"; 1092 my ($cb) = @_;
77 1093
1094 if ($MODEL) {
1095 $cb->();
1096
1097 1
1098 } else {
1099 push @post_detect, $cb;
1100
1101 defined wantarray
1102 ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1103 : ()
1104 }
1105}
1106
1107sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1108 @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1109}
1110
1111sub detect() {
78 unless ($MODEL) { 1112 unless ($MODEL) {
79 # check for already loaded models 1113 no strict 'refs';
80 for (@models) { 1114 local $SIG{__DIE__};
81 my ($model, $package) = @$_; 1115
82 if (scalar keys %{ *{"$package\::"} }) { 1116 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z]+)$/) {
83 eval "require AnyEvent::Impl::$model"; 1117 my $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$1";
84 last if $MODEL; 1118 if (eval "require $model") {
1119 $MODEL = $model;
1120 warn "AnyEvent: loaded model '$model' (forced by \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}), using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
1121 } else {
1122 warn "AnyEvent: unable to load model '$model' (from \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}):\n$@" if $verbose;
85 } 1123 }
86 } 1124 }
87 1125
1126 # check for already loaded models
88 unless ($MODEL) { 1127 unless ($MODEL) {
89 # try to load a model
90
91 for (@models) { 1128 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
92 my ($model, $package) = @$_; 1129 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
93 eval "require AnyEvent::Impl::$model"; 1130 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
94 last if $MODEL; 1131 if (eval "require $model") {
1132 $MODEL = $model;
1133 warn "AnyEvent: autodetected model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
1134 last;
1135 }
1136 }
95 } 1137 }
96 1138
1139 unless ($MODEL) {
1140 # try to load a model
1141
1142 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1143 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
1144 if (eval "require $package"
1145 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
1146 and eval "require $model") {
1147 $MODEL = $model;
1148 warn "AnyEvent: autoprobed model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
1149 last;
1150 }
1151 }
1152
97 $MODEL 1153 $MODEL
98 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: Coro, Event, Glib or Tk."; 1154 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: EV, Event or Glib.\n";
1155 }
1156 }
1157
1158 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
1159
1160 unshift @ISA, $MODEL;
1161
1162 require AnyEvent::Strict if $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT};
1163
1164 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
1165 }
1166
1167 $MODEL
1168}
1169
1170sub AUTOLOAD {
1171 (my $func = $AUTOLOAD) =~ s/.*://;
1172
1173 $method{$func}
1174 or Carp::croak "$func: not a valid method for AnyEvent objects";
1175
1176 detect unless $MODEL;
1177
1178 my $class = shift;
1179 $class->$func (@_);
1180}
1181
1182# utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1183# to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1184# allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1185sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1186 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1187
1188 # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1189 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<&") : ($w, ">&");
1190
1191 open my $fh2, $mode, $fh
1192 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1193
1194 # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1195
1196 ($fh2, $rw)
1197}
1198
1199package AnyEvent::Base;
1200
1201# default implementations for many methods
1202
1203BEGIN {
1204 if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1205 *_time = \&Time::HiRes::time;
1206 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1207 } else {
1208 *_time = sub { time }; # epic fail
1209 }
1210}
1211
1212sub time { _time }
1213sub now { _time }
1214sub now_update { }
1215
1216# default implementation for ->condvar
1217
1218sub condvar {
1219 bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1220}
1221
1222# default implementation for ->signal
1223
1224our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1225
1226sub _signal_exec {
1227 sysread $SIGPIPE_R, my $dummy, 4;
1228
1229 while (%SIG_EV) {
1230 for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1231 delete $SIG_EV{$_};
1232 $_->() for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
99 } 1233 }
100 } 1234 }
1235}
101 1236
102 @ISA = $MODEL; 1237sub signal {
1238 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
103 1239
1240 unless ($SIGPIPE_R) {
1241 require Fcntl;
1242
1243 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1244 require AnyEvent::Util;
1245
1246 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1247 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1248 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1249 } else {
1250 pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1251 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, &Fcntl::F_SETFL, &Fcntl::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1252 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, &Fcntl::F_SETFL, &Fcntl::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1253
1254 # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1255 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, &Fcntl::F_SETFD, &Fcntl::FD_CLOEXEC;
1256 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, &Fcntl::F_SETFD, &Fcntl::FD_CLOEXEC;
1257 }
1258
1259 $SIGPIPE_R
1260 or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1261
1262 $SIG_IO = AnyEvent->io (fh => $SIGPIPE_R, poll => "r", cb => \&_signal_exec);
1263 }
1264
1265 my $signal = uc $arg{signal}
1266 or Carp::croak "required option 'signal' is missing";
1267
1268 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1269 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
1270 local $!;
1271 syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1272 undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
1273 };
1274
1275 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1276}
1277
1278sub AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY {
1279 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1280
1281 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
1282
1283 # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1284 # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1285 # instead of getting the default action.
1286 undef $SIG{$signal} unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
1287}
1288
1289# default implementation for ->child
1290
1291our %PID_CB;
1292our $CHLD_W;
1293our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
1294our $WNOHANG;
1295
1296sub _sigchld {
1297 while (0 < (my $pid = waitpid -1, $WNOHANG)) {
1298 $_->($pid, $?) for (values %{ $PID_CB{$pid} || {} }),
1299 (values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} });
1300 }
1301}
1302
1303sub child {
1304 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1305
1306 defined (my $pid = $arg{pid} + 0)
1307 or Carp::croak "required option 'pid' is missing";
1308
1309 $PID_CB{$pid}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1310
1311 $WNOHANG ||= eval { local $SIG{__DIE__}; require POSIX; &POSIX::WNOHANG } || 1;
1312
1313 unless ($CHLD_W) {
1314 $CHLD_W = AnyEvent->signal (signal => 'CHLD', cb => \&_sigchld);
1315 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
1316 &_sigchld;
1317 }
1318
1319 bless [$pid, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
1320}
1321
1322sub AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY {
1323 my ($pid, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1324
1325 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb};
1326 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
1327
1328 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
1329}
1330
1331# idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1332# of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1333# the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1334sub idle {
1335 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1336
1337 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1338
1339 $rcb = sub {
1340 if ($cb) {
1341 $w = _time;
1342 &$cb;
1343 $w = _time - $w;
1344
1345 # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1346 # within some limits
1347 $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1348 $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1349
1350 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $w, cb => $rcb);
1351 } else {
1352 # clean up...
1353 undef $w;
1354 undef $rcb;
1355 }
1356 };
1357
1358 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.05, cb => $rcb);
1359
1360 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1361}
1362
1363sub AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY {
1364 undef $${$_[0]};
1365}
1366
1367package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1368
1369our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1370
1371package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1372
1373use overload
1374 '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1375 fallback => 1;
1376
1377our $WAITING;
1378
1379sub _send {
1380 # nop
1381}
1382
1383sub send {
104 my $class = shift; 1384 my $cv = shift;
105 $class->$AUTOLOAD (@_); 1385 $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1386 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1387 $cv->_send;
106} 1388}
1389
1390sub croak {
1391 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1392 $_[0]->send;
1393}
1394
1395sub ready {
1396 $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1397}
1398
1399sub _wait {
1400 $WAITING
1401 and !$_[0]{_ae_sent}
1402 and Carp::croak "AnyEvent::CondVar: recursive blocking wait detected";
1403
1404 local $WAITING = 1;
1405 AnyEvent->one_event while !$_[0]{_ae_sent};
1406}
1407
1408sub recv {
1409 $_[0]->_wait;
1410
1411 Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak} if $_[0]{_ae_croak};
1412 wantarray ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} } : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
1413}
1414
1415sub cb {
1416 $_[0]{_ae_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1417 $_[0]{_ae_cb}
1418}
1419
1420sub begin {
1421 ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1422 $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1423}
1424
1425sub end {
1426 return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1427 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
1428}
1429
1430# undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
1431*broadcast = \&send;
1432*wait = \&_wait;
1433
1434=head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1435
1436In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1437caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
1438the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
1439checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1440development.
1441
1442As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
1443executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
1444also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
1445program.
1446
1447The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
1448within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
1449$Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
1450so on.
1451
1452=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
1453
1454The following environment variables are used by this module or its
1455submodules.
1456
1457Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
1458C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
1459enabled.
1460
1461=over 4
1462
1463=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
1464
1465By default, AnyEvent will be completely silent except in fatal
1466conditions. You can set this environment variable to make AnyEvent more
1467talkative.
1468
1469When set to C<1> or higher, causes AnyEvent to warn about unexpected
1470conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified by
1471C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>.
1472
1473When set to C<2> or higher, cause AnyEvent to report to STDERR which event
1474model it chooses.
1475
1476=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
1477
1478AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
1479argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
1480will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
1481check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
1482it will croak.
1483
1484In other words, enables "strict" mode.
1485
1486Unlike C<use strict>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in
1487production. Keeping C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while
1488developing programs can be very useful, however.
1489
1490=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
1491
1492This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
1493auto detection and -probing kicks in. It must be a string consisting
1494entirely of ASCII letters. The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended
1495and the resulting module name is loaded and if the load was successful,
1496used as event model. If it fails to load AnyEvent will proceed with
1497auto detection and -probing.
1498
1499This functionality might change in future versions.
1500
1501For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) you
1502could start your program like this:
1503
1504 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
1505
1506=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
1507
1508Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
1509for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
1510of auto probing).
1511
1512Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
1513current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
1514used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
1515list.
1516
1517This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
1518against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
1519small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
1520
1521Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
1522but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
1523- only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
1524addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
1525IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
1526
1527=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
1528
1529Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension
1530for DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, but
1531some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS packets, which is why it is off by
1532default.
1533
1534Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
1535EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
1536
1537=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
1538
1539The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
1540will create in parallel.
1541
1542=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
1543
1544The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
1545resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
1546sent to the DNS server.
1547
1548=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
1549
1550The file to use instead of F</etc/resolv.conf> (or OS-specific
1551configuration) in the default resolver. When set to the empty string, no
1552default config will be used.
1553
1554=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
1555
1556When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
1557L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
1558variables exist, they will be used to specify CA certificate locations
1559instead of a system-dependent default.
107 1560
108=back 1561=back
109 1562
1563=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
1564
1565This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
1566a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
1567provide AnyEvent compatibility.
1568
1569If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
1570supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
1571pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of
1572the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
1573C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading
1574AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
1575
1576Example:
1577
1578 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
1579
1580This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::>
1581package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is already loaded.
1582
1583When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
1584will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to C<use> the
1585C<urxvt::anyevent> module.
1586
1587The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
1588L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> (Source code)
1589and so on for actual examples. Use C<perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to
1590see the sources.
1591
1592If you don't provide C<signal> and C<child> watchers than AnyEvent will
1593provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
1594
1595The above example isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt)
1596terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
1597in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter
1598inside I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the
1599I<rxvt-unicode> distribution.
1600
1601I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
1602condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
1603C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
1604not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
1605
110=head1 EXAMPLE 1606=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
111 1607
112The following program uses an io watcher to read data from stdin, a timer 1608The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
113to display a message once per second, and a condvar to exit the program 1609to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
114when the user enters quit: 1610program when the user enters quit:
115 1611
116 use AnyEvent; 1612 use AnyEvent;
117 1613
118 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar; 1614 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
119 1615
120 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub { 1616 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
1617 fh => \*STDIN,
1618 poll => 'r',
1619 cb => sub {
121 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r> 1620 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
122 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line 1621 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
123 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read 1622 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
124 $cv->broadcast if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i 1623 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
1624 },
125 }); 1625 );
126 1626
127 my $time_watcher; # can only be used once 1627 my $time_watcher; # can only be used once
128 1628
129 sub new_timer { 1629 sub new_timer {
130 $timer = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => sub { 1630 $timer = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => sub {
133 }); 1633 });
134 } 1634 }
135 1635
136 new_timer; # create first timer 1636 new_timer; # create first timer
137 1637
138 $cv->wait; # wait until user enters /^q/i 1638 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
1639
1640=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
1641
1642Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
1643API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
1644
1645 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); # blocks
1646
1647 my $transaction = $fcp->txn_client_get ($url); # does not block
1648 $transaction->cb ( sub { ... } ); # set optional result callback
1649 my $data = $transaction->result; # possibly blocks
1650
1651The C<client_get> method works like C<LWP::Simple::get>: it requests the
1652given URL and waits till the data has arrived. It is defined to be:
1653
1654 sub client_get { $_[0]->txn_client_get ($_[1])->result }
1655
1656And in fact is automatically generated. This is the blocking API of
1657L<Net::FCP>, and it works as simple as in any other, similar, module.
1658
1659More complicated is C<txn_client_get>: It only creates a transaction
1660(completion, result, ...) object and initiates the transaction.
1661
1662 my $txn = bless { }, Net::FCP::Txn::;
1663
1664It also creates a condition variable that is used to signal the completion
1665of the request:
1666
1667 $txn->{finished} = AnyAvent->condvar;
1668
1669It then creates a socket in non-blocking mode.
1670
1671 socket $txn->{fh}, ...;
1672 fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK;
1673 connect $txn->{fh}, ...
1674 and !$!{EWOULDBLOCK}
1675 and !$!{EINPROGRESS}
1676 and Carp::croak "unable to connect: $!\n";
1677
1678Then it creates a write-watcher which gets called whenever an error occurs
1679or the connection succeeds:
1680
1681 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'w', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_w });
1682
1683And returns this transaction object. The C<fh_ready_w> callback gets
1684called as soon as the event loop detects that the socket is ready for
1685writing.
1686
1687The C<fh_ready_w> method makes the socket blocking again, writes the
1688request data and replaces the watcher by a read watcher (waiting for reply
1689data). The actual code is more complicated, but that doesn't matter for
1690this example:
1691
1692 fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, 0;
1693 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
1694 or die "connection or write error";
1695 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
1696
1697Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
1698result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
1699
1700 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
1701
1702 if (end-of-file or data complete) {
1703 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
1704 $txn->{finished}->send;
1705 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
1706 }
1707
1708The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
1709request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
1710data:
1711
1712 $txn->{finished}->recv;
1713 return $txn->{result};
1714
1715The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
1716that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
1717whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
1718and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
1719problems get reported tot he code that tries to use the result, not in a
1720random callback.
1721
1722All of this enables the following usage styles:
1723
17241. Blocking:
1725
1726 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
1727
17282. Blocking, but running in parallel:
1729
1730 my @datas = map $_->result,
1731 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
1732 @urls;
1733
1734Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
1735anything about events.
1736
17373a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
1738
1739 use EV;
1740
1741 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
1742 my $txn = shift;
1743 my $data = $txn->result;
1744 ...
1745 });
1746
1747 EV::loop;
1748
17493b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
1750
1751 use AnyEvent;
1752
1753 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
1754
1755 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
1756 ...
1757 $quit->send;
1758 });
1759
1760 $quit->recv;
1761
1762
1763=head1 BENCHMARKS
1764
1765To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
1766over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
1767of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
1768
1769=head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
1770
1771Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
1772through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
1773timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
1774which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
1775
1776Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
1777distribution.
1778
1779=head3 Explanation of the columns
1780
1781I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
1782different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
1783loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
1784and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
1785would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
1786of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
1787
1788I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
1789RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
1790and Perl-based overheads.
1791
1792I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
1793takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
1794all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
1795and memory usage is not included in the figures.
1796
1797I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
1798callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
1799invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
1800signal the end of this phase.
1801
1802I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
1803watcher.
1804
1805=head3 Results
1806
1807 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
1808 EV/EV 400000 224 0.47 0.35 0.27 EV native interface
1809 EV/Any 100000 224 2.88 0.34 0.27 EV + AnyEvent watchers
1810 CoroEV/Any 100000 224 2.85 0.35 0.28 coroutines + Coro::Signal
1811 Perl/Any 100000 452 4.13 0.73 0.95 pure perl implementation
1812 Event/Event 16000 517 32.20 31.80 0.81 Event native interface
1813 Event/Any 16000 590 35.85 31.55 1.06 Event + AnyEvent watchers
1814 IOAsync/Any 16000 989 38.10 32.77 11.13 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
1815 IOAsync/Any 16000 990 37.59 29.50 10.61 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
1816 Glib/Any 16000 1357 102.33 12.31 51.00 quadratic behaviour
1817 Tk/Any 2000 1860 27.20 66.31 14.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
1818 POE/Event 2000 6328 109.99 751.67 14.02 via POE::Loop::Event
1819 POE/Select 2000 6027 94.54 809.13 579.80 via POE::Loop::Select
1820
1821=head3 Discussion
1822
1823The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
1824well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
1825can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
1826file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
1827the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
1828boost.
1829
1830Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
1831overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
1832the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
1833higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
1834
1835To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
1836benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
1837EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
1838cycles with POE.
1839
1840C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
1841maximal/minimal, respectively. Even when going through AnyEvent, it uses
1842far less memory than any other event loop and is still faster than Event
1843natively.
1844
1845The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
1846constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
1847interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
1848adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
1849performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
1850them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
1851
1852The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
1853cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
1854
1855C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
1856when using its pure perl backend.
1857
1858C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
1859faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
1860C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
1861watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
1862making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
1863(note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
1864inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
1865
1866The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
1867more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
1868precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
1869file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
1870employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
1871hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
1872above).
1873
1874C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
1875select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
1876be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
1877memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
1878as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
1879requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
1880invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
1881implementation.
1882
1883The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
1884for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
1885small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
1886optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
1887using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
1888memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
1889design).
1890
1891=head3 Summary
1892
1893=over 4
1894
1895=item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
1896(even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
1897performance with or without AnyEvent.
1898
1899=item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
1900the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
1901adds AnyEvent significant overhead.
1902
1903=item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
1904reasonable memory usage.
1905
1906=back
1907
1908=head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
1909
1910This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
1911creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
1912timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
1913watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
1914watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
1915
1916The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
1917are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
1918fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
1919timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
1920most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
1921
1922In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
1923(1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
1924connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
1925
1926Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
1927distribution.
1928
1929=head3 Explanation of the columns
1930
1931I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
1932each server has a read and write socket end).
1933
1934I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
1935nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
1936
1937I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
1938single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
1939it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
1940a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
1941
1942=head3 Results
1943
1944 name sockets create request
1945 EV 20000 69.01 11.16
1946 Perl 20000 73.32 35.87
1947 IOAsync 20000 157.00 98.14 epoll
1948 IOAsync 20000 159.31 616.06 poll
1949 Event 20000 212.62 257.32
1950 Glib 20000 651.16 1896.30
1951 POE 20000 349.67 12317.24 uses POE::Loop::Event
1952
1953=head3 Discussion
1954
1955This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
1956particular event loop.
1957
1958EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
1959is relatively high, though.
1960
1961Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
1962loops Event and Glib.
1963
1964IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
1965good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
1966
1967Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
1968understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
1969the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
1970uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
1971
1972Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
1973clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
1974
1975POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
1976as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
1977it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
1978
1979=head3 Summary
1980
1981=over 4
1982
1983=item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
1984
1985=item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
1986
1987=back
1988
1989=head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
1990
1991While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
1992large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
1993I/O watchers.
1994
1995In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
1996case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
1997one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
1998well.
1999
2000The columns are identical to the previous table.
2001
2002=head3 Results
2003
2004 name sockets create request
2005 EV 16 20.00 6.54
2006 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
2007 Event 16 81.27 35.86
2008 Glib 16 32.63 15.48
2009 POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
2010
2011=head3 Discussion
2012
2013The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
2014server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
2015in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
2016to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
2017speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
2018them).
2019
2020EV is again fastest.
2021
2022Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
2023loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
2024matter.
2025
2026POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
2027others.
2028
2029=head3 Summary
2030
2031=over 4
2032
2033=item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
2034watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
2035
2036=back
2037
2038=head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
2039
2040Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
2041could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
2042simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
2043shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
2044fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
2045very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
2046baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
2047
2048The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
2049connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
2050creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
2051test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
2052benchmark nevertheless.
2053
2054 name runtime
2055 Lambda/select 0.330 sec
2056 + optimized 0.122 sec
2057 Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
2058 + optimized 0.138 sec
2059 Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
2060 POE/select, components 0.662 sec
2061 POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
2062 POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
2063
2064 AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
2065 AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
2066 +state machine 0.134 sec
2067
2068The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2069benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2070defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2071written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2072AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2073resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2074generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2075connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2076
2077The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2078offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2079Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2080non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2081
2082As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2083hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2084backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2085
2086And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2087slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda by a
2088large margin, even though it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O
2089in a non-blocking way.
2090
2091The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2092F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2093part of the IO::lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2094
2095
2096=head1 SIGNALS
2097
2098AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2099
2100=over 4
2101
2102=item SIGCHLD
2103
2104A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2105emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2106event loops install a similar handler.
2107
2108Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then
2109AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2110
2111=item SIGPIPE
2112
2113A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2114when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2115
2116The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2117on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2118badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2119program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2120some random socket.
2121
2122The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2123that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2124
2125Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2126
2127=back
2128
2129=cut
2130
2131undef $SIG{CHLD}
2132 if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2133
2134$SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2135 unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2136
2137=head1 FORK
2138
2139Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2140because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll>
2141calls. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware.
2142
2143If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2144watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child.
2145
2146
2147=head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2148
2149AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2150$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2151execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2152make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2153will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2154specified in the variable.
2155
2156You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2157before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2158
2159 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2160
2161 use AnyEvent;
2162
2163Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2164be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2165probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2166$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2167
2168Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2169C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2170enabled.
2171
2172
2173=head1 BUGS
2174
2175Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
2176to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
2177and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
2178memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
2179pronounced).
2180
139 2181
140=head1 SEE ALSO 2182=head1 SEE ALSO
141 2183
142L<Coro::Event>, L<Coro>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>, 2184Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util>.
143L<AnyEvent::Impl::Coro>, 2185
144L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>, 2186Event modules: L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>, L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>,
145L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, 2187L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>, L<POE>.
2188
2189Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
2190L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
2191L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
2192L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync>.
2193
2194Non-blocking file handles, sockets, TCP clients and
2195servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>, L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
2196
2197Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2198
2199Coroutine support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>,
2200L<Coro::Event>,
2201
2202Nontrivial usage examples: L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::XMPP>,
146L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>. 2203L<AnyEvent::HTTP>.
147 2204
148=head1 2205
2206=head1 AUTHOR
2207
2208 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
2209 http://home.schmorp.de/
149 2210
150=cut 2211=cut
151 2212
1521 22131
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