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1=head1 NAME 1=head1 NAME
2 2
3AnyEvent - provide framework for multiple event loops 3AnyEvent - the DBI of event loop programming
4 4
5Event, Coro, Glib, Tk, Perl - various supported event loops 5EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Irssi, rxvt-unicode, IO::Async, Qt,
6FLTK and POE are various supported event loops/environments.
6 7
7=head1 SYNOPSIS 8=head1 SYNOPSIS
8 9
9 use AnyEvent; 10 use AnyEvent;
10 11
12 # if you prefer function calls, look at the AE manpage for
13 # an alternative API.
14
15 # file handle or descriptor readable
11 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r|w", cb => sub { 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) = @_;
12 ... 31 ...
13 }); 32 });
14 33
15 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { 34 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
16 ... 35 my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
17 });
18 36
19 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores wether a condition was flagged 37 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
38 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
20 $w->wait; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->broadcast 39 $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
21 $w->broadcast; # wake up current and all future wait's 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.
22 58
23=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT) 59=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
24 60
25Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen 61Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
26nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent? 62nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
27 63
28Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of 64Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of
29policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>. 65policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>.
30 66
31First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only 67First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only
32interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use in a 68interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
33pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike, 69pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
34the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality, and AnyEvent 70the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
35helps hiding the differences. 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.
36 74
37The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event 75The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
38programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a 76programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
39religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your 77religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
40module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event 78module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
41model you use. 79model you use.
42 80
43For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is actually doing all I/O 81For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
44I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is like joining a 82actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is
45cult: After you joined, you are dependent on them and you cannot use 83like joining a cult: After you join, you are dependent on them and you
46anything else, as it is simply incompatible to everything that isn't 84cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
47itself. 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.
48 87
49AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works fine. AnyEvent + Tk 88AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
50works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together with the rest: POE 89fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
51+ IO::Async? no go. Tk + Event? no go. If your module uses one of 90with the rest: POE + EV? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if your module
52those, every user of your module has to use it, too. If your module 91uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it, too. But if
53uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all event models it supports 92your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all event models it
54(including stuff like POE and IO::Async). 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).
55 96
56In addition of being free of having to use I<the one and only true event 97In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
57model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar 98model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
58modules, you get an enourmous amount of code and strict rules you have 99modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
59to follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and to the point by only 100follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and to the point, by only
60offering the functionality that is useful, in as thin as a wrapper as 101offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
61technically possible. 102technically possible.
62 103
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
63Of course, if you want lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat 110Now, if you I<do want> lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
64useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event 111useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
65model, you should I<not> use this module. 112model, you should I<not> use this module.
66 113
67
68=head1 DESCRIPTION 114=head1 DESCRIPTION
69 115
70L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This 116L<AnyEvent> provides a uniform interface to various event loops. This
71allows module authors to utilise an event loop without forcing module 117allows module authors to use event loop functionality without forcing
72users to use the same event loop (as only a single event loop can coexist 118module users to use a specific event loop implementation (since more
73peacefully at any one time). 119than one event loop cannot coexist peacefully).
74 120
75The interface itself is vaguely similar but not identical to the Event 121The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
76module. 122module.
77 123
78On the first call of any method, the module tries to detect the currently 124During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
79loaded event loop by probing wether any of the following modules is 125to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
80loaded: L<Coro::Event>, L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>. The first one found is 126following modules is already loaded: L<EV>, L<AnyEvent::Loop>,
81used. If none is found, the module tries to load these modules in the 127L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>, L<POE>. The first one
82order given. The first one that could be successfully loaded will be 128found is used. If none are detected, the module tries to load the first
83used. If still none could be found, AnyEvent will fall back to a pure-perl 129four modules in the order given; but note that if L<EV> is not
84event loop, which is also not very efficient. 130available, the pure-perl L<AnyEvent::Loop> should always work, so
131the other two are not normally tried.
85 132
86Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading 133Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
87an Event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make 134an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
88that model the default. For example: 135that model the default. For example:
89 136
90 use Tk; 137 use Tk;
91 use AnyEvent; 138 use AnyEvent;
92 139
93 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk 140 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
94 141
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
95The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called 147The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called C<AnyEvent::Loop>. Like
96C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>. Like other event modules you can load it 148other event modules you can load it explicitly and enjoy the high
97explicitly. 149availability of that event loop :)
98 150
99=head1 WATCHERS 151=head1 WATCHERS
100 152
101AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that 153AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that
102stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as 154stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
103the callback to call, the filehandle to watch, etc. 155the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
104 156
105These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After 157These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
106creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke 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
107the callback. To disable the watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by 168To disable a watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
108setting the variable that stores it to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all 169variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
109references to it). 170to it).
110 171
111All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class. 172All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
112 173
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
113=head2 IO WATCHERS 188=head2 I/O WATCHERS
114 189
190 $w = AnyEvent->io (
191 fh => <filehandle_or_fileno>,
192 poll => <"r" or "w">,
193 cb => <callback>,
194 );
195
115You can create I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method with 196You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method
116the following mandatory arguments: 197with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
117 198
118C<fh> the Perl I<filehandle> (not filedescriptor) to watch for 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
119events. C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, that creates 206C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which creates a
120a watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events. C<cb> the callback 207watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
121to invoke everytime the filehandle becomes ready.
122 208
123Only one io watcher per C<fh> and C<poll> combination is allowed (i.e. on 209C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
124a socket you can have one r + one w, not any more (limitation comes from
125Tk - if you are sure you are not using Tk this limitation is gone).
126 210
127Filehandles will be kept alive, so as long as the watcher exists, the 211Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
128filehandle exists, too. 212presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
213callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
129 214
130Example: 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.
131 218
219Some event loops issue spurious readiness notifications, so you should
220always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
221handles.
222
132 # wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the watcher 223Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
224watcher.
225
133 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub { 226 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
134 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); 227 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
135 warn "read: $input\n"; 228 warn "read: $input\n";
136 undef $w; 229 undef $w;
137 }); 230 });
138 231
139=head2 TIME WATCHERS 232=head2 TIME WATCHERS
140 233
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
141You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >> 242You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
142method with the following mandatory arguments: 243method with the following mandatory arguments:
143 244
144C<after> after how many seconds (fractions are supported) should the timer 245C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
145activate. C<cb> the callback to invoke. 246supported) the callback should be invoked. C<cb> is the callback to invoke
247in that case.
146 248
147The timer callback will be invoked at most once: if you want a repeating 249Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
148timer you have to create a new watcher (this is a limitation by both Tk 250presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
149and Glib). 251callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
150 252
151Example: 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.
152 258
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
153 # fire an event after 7.7 seconds 263Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
264
154 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub { 265 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
155 warn "timeout\n"; 266 warn "timeout\n";
156 }); 267 });
157 268
158 # to cancel the timer: 269 # to cancel the timer:
159 undef $w; 270 undef $w;
160 271
161=head2 CONDITION WATCHERS 272Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
162 273
163Condition watchers can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar >> 274 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
164method without any arguments. 275 warn "timeout\n";
276 };
165 277
166A condition watcher watches for a condition - precisely that the C<< 278=head3 TIMING ISSUES
167->broadcast >> method has been called.
168 279
169Note that condition watchers recurse into the event loop - if you have 280There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
170two watchers that call C<< ->wait >> in a round-robbin fashion, you 281in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
171lose. Therefore, condition watchers are good to export to your caller, but 282o'clock").
172you should avoid making a blocking wait, at least in callbacks, as this
173usually asks for trouble.
174 283
175The watcher has only two methods: 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":
176 299
177=over 4 300=over 4
178 301
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 $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
411
412=head3 Restart Behaviour
413
414While restart behaviour is up to the event loop implementation, most will
415not restart syscalls (that includes L<Async::Interrupt> and AnyEvent's
416pure perl implementation).
417
418=head3 Safe/Unsafe Signals
419
420Perl signals can be either "safe" (synchronous to opcode handling)
421or "unsafe" (asynchronous) - the former might delay signal delivery
422indefinitely, the latter might corrupt your memory.
423
424AnyEvent signal handlers are, in addition, synchronous to the event loop,
425i.e. they will not interrupt your running perl program but will only be
426called as part of the normal event handling (just like timer, I/O etc.
427callbacks, too).
428
429=head3 Signal Races, Delays and Workarounds
430
431Many event loops (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt, IO::Async) do not support
432attaching callbacks to signals in a generic way, which is a pity,
433as you cannot do race-free signal handling in perl, requiring
434C libraries for this. AnyEvent will try to do its best, which
435means in some cases, signals will be delayed. The maximum time
436a signal might be delayed is 10 seconds by default, but can
437be overriden via C<$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY}> or
438C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY> - see the L<ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES>
439section for details.
440
441All these problems can be avoided by installing the optional
442L<Async::Interrupt> module, which works with most event loops. It will not
443work with inherently broken event loops such as L<Event> or L<Event::Lib>
444(and not with L<POE> currently). For those, you just have to suffer the
445delays.
446
447=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
448
449 $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => <process id>, cb => <callback>);
450
451You can also watch for a child process exit and catch its exit status.
452
453The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (on some backends,
454using C<0> watches for any child process exit, on others this will
455croak). The watcher will be triggered only when the child process has
456finished and an exit status is available, not on any trace events
457(stopped/continued).
458
459The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
460waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you I<can> rely on child watcher
461callback arguments.
462
463This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>,
464and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
465random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g. inside
466C<system>, is just fine).
467
468There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start them
469I<after> the child process was created, and this means the process could
470have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
471
472Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async do,
473see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event models
474that I<do> handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded before
475the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place). AnyEvent's
476pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless of when you
477start the watcher.
478
479This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first
480thing in an AnyEvent program, you I<have> to create at least one
481watcher before you C<fork> the child (alternatively, you can call
482C<AnyEvent::detect>).
483
484As most event loops do not support waiting for child events, they will be
485emulated by AnyEvent in most cases, in which case the latency and race
486problems mentioned in the description of signal watchers apply.
487
488Example: fork a process and wait for it
489
490 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
491
492 my $pid = fork or exit 5;
493
494 my $w = AnyEvent->child (
495 pid => $pid,
496 cb => sub {
497 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
498 warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
499 $done->send;
500 },
501 );
502
503 # do something else, then wait for process exit
504 $done->recv;
505
506=head2 IDLE WATCHERS
507
508 $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => <callback>);
509
510This will repeatedly invoke the callback after the process becomes idle,
511until either the watcher is destroyed or new events have been detected.
512
513Idle watchers are useful when there is a need to do something, but it
514is not so important (or wise) to do it instantly. The callback will be
515invoked only when there is "nothing better to do", which is usually
516defined as "all outstanding events have been handled and no new events
517have been detected". That means that idle watchers ideally get invoked
518when the event loop has just polled for new events but none have been
519detected. Instead of blocking to wait for more events, the idle watchers
520will be invoked.
521
522Unfortunately, most event loops do not really support idle watchers (only
523EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest, AnyEvent
524will simply call the callback "from time to time".
525
526Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the
527program is otherwise idle:
528
529 my @lines; # read data
530 my $idle_w;
531 my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
532 push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
533
534 # start an idle watcher, if not already done
535 $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
536 # handle only one line, when there are lines left
537 if (my $line = shift @lines) {
538 print "handled when idle: $line";
539 } else {
540 # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
541 undef $idle_w;
542 }
543 });
544 });
545
546=head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
547
548 $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
549
550 $cv->send (<list>);
551 my @res = $cv->recv;
552
553If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
554require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
555will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
556
557AnyEvent is slightly different: it expects somebody else to run the event
558loop and will only block when necessary (usually when told by the user).
559
560The tool to do that is called a "condition variable", so called because
561they represent a condition that must become true.
562
563Now is probably a good time to look at the examples further below.
564
565Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar
566>> method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
567C<cb>, which specifies a callback to be called when the condition variable
568becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
569the results).
570
571After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
572by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
573were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
574->send >> method).
575
576Since condition variables are the most complex part of the AnyEvent API, here are
577some different mental models of what they are - pick the ones you can connect to:
578
579=over 4
580
581=item * Condition variables are like callbacks - you can call them (and pass them instead
582of callbacks). Unlike callbacks however, you can also wait for them to be called.
583
584=item * Condition variables are signals - one side can emit or send them,
585the other side can wait for them, or install a handler that is called when
586the signal fires.
587
588=item * Condition variables are like "Merge Points" - points in your program
589where you merge multiple independent results/control flows into one.
590
591=item * Condition variables represent a transaction - functions that start
592some kind of transaction can return them, leaving the caller the choice
593between waiting in a blocking fashion, or setting a callback.
594
595=item * Condition variables represent future values, or promises to deliver
596some result, long before the result is available.
597
598=back
599
600Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has finished,
601for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests,
602then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
603availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
604called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
605
606You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
607you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
608could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
609button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
610
611Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
612two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
613lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but
614you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks,
615as this asks for trouble.
616
617Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
618used by AnyEvent itself are all named C<_ae_XXX> to make subclassing
619easy (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
620AnyEvent). To subclass, use C<AnyEvent::CondVar> as base class and call
621its C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
622
623There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
624eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
625for the send to occur.
626
627Example: wait for a timer.
628
629 # condition: "wait till the timer is fired"
630 my $timer_fired = AnyEvent->condvar;
631
632 # create the timer - we could wait for, say
633 # a handle becomign ready, or even an
634 # AnyEvent::HTTP request to finish, but
635 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
636 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
637 after => 1,
638 cb => sub { $timer_fired->send },
639 );
640
641 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
642 # calls ->send
643 $timer_fired->recv;
644
645Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that condition
646variables are also callable directly.
647
648 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
649 my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
650 $done->recv;
651
652Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
653callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from
654the main program:
655
656 use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
657
658 ...
659
660 my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
661
662And this is how you would just set a callback to be called whenever the
663results are available:
664
665 $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
666 my @info = $_[0]->recv;
667 });
668
669=head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
670
671These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
672code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
673the producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
674uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
675
676=over 4
677
678=item $cv->send (...)
679
680Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->recv >> and all further
681calls to C<recv> will (eventually) return after this method has been
682called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
683
684If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
685immediately from within send.
686
687Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
688future C<< ->recv >> calls.
689
690Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly (as if
691they were a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as calling
692C<send>.
693
694=item $cv->croak ($error)
695
696Similar to send, but causes all calls to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
697C<Carp::croak> with the given error message/object/scalar.
698
699This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
700user/consumer. Doing it this way instead of calling C<croak> directly
701delays the error detection, but has the overwhelming advantage that it
702diagnoses the error at the place where the result is expected, and not
703deep in some event callback with no connection to the actual code causing
704the problem.
705
706=item $cv->begin ([group callback])
707
179=item $cv->wait 708=item $cv->end
180 709
181Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->broadcast >> method has been 710These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events into
182called on c<$cv>, while servicing other watchers normally. 711one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel might want
712to use a condition variable for the whole process.
183 713
714Every call to C<< ->begin >> will increment a counter, and every call to
715C<< ->end >> will decrement it. If the counter reaches C<0> in C<< ->end
716>>, the (last) callback passed to C<begin> will be executed, passing the
717condvar as first argument. That callback is I<supposed> to call C<< ->send
718>>, but that is not required. If no group callback was set, C<send> will
719be called without any arguments.
720
721You can think of C<< $cv->send >> giving you an OR condition (one call
722sends), while C<< $cv->begin >> and C<< $cv->end >> giving you an AND
723condition (all C<begin> calls must be C<end>'ed before the condvar sends).
724
725Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for example,
726STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for both streams to
727close before activating a condvar:
728
729 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
730
731 $cv->begin; # first watcher
732 my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
733 defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
734 or $cv->end;
735 });
736
737 $cv->begin; # second watcher
738 my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
739 defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
740 or $cv->end;
741 });
742
743 $cv->recv;
744
745This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle), there is
746one call to C<begin>, so the condvar waits for all calls to C<end> before
747sending.
748
749The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as the
750there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks that are
751begun can potentially be zero:
752
753 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
754
755 my %result;
756 $cv->begin (sub { shift->send (\%result) });
757
758 for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
759 $cv->begin;
760 ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
761 $result{$host} = ...;
762 $cv->end;
763 };
764 }
765
766 $cv->end;
767
768 ...
769
770 my $results = $cv->recv;
771
772This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
773C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
774order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to C<begin> when it starts
775each ping request and calls C<end> when it has received some result for
776it. Since C<begin> and C<end> only maintain a counter, the order in which
777results arrive is not relevant.
778
779There is an additional bracketing call to C<begin> and C<end> outside the
780loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the callback
781to be called once the counter reaches C<0>, and second, it ensures that
782C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
783doesn't execute once).
784
785This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
786potentially zero) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
787the callback and ensure C<end> is called at least once, and then, for each
788subrequest you start, call C<begin> and for each subrequest you finish,
789call C<end>.
790
791=back
792
793=head3 METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
794
795These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the
796code awaits the condition.
797
798=over 4
799
800=item $cv->recv
801
802Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
803>> methods have been called on C<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
804normally.
805
184You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls will return 806You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid but
185immediately. 807will return immediately.
808
809If an error condition has been set by calling C<< ->croak >>, then this
810function will call C<croak>.
811
812In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
813in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
814
815Note that doing a blocking wait in a callback is not supported by any
816event loop, that is, recursive invocation of a blocking C<< ->recv >> is
817not allowed and the C<recv> call will C<croak> if such a condition is
818detected. This requirement can be dropped by relying on L<Coro::AnyEvent>
819, which allows you to do a blocking C<< ->recv >> from any thread
820that doesn't run the event loop itself. L<Coro::AnyEvent> is loaded
821automatically when L<Coro> is used with L<AnyEvent>, so code does not need
822to do anything special to take advantage of that: any code that would
823normally block your program because it calls C<recv>, be executed in an
824C<async> thread instead without blocking other threads.
186 825
187Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case 826Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
188(programs might want to do that so they stay interactive), so I<if you 827(programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
189are using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>, but let the 828using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>. Instead, let the
190caller decide wether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling 829caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
191condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting 830condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
192callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block, 831callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
193while still suppporting blocking waits if the caller so desires). 832while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
194 833
195Another reason I<never> to C<< ->wait >> in a module is that you cannot 834You can ensure that C<< ->recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
196sensibly have two C<< ->wait >>'s in parallel, as that would require 835only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
197multiple interpreters or coroutines/threads, none of which C<AnyEvent> 836time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
198can supply (the coroutine-aware backends C<Coro::EV> and C<Coro::Event> 837waits otherwise.
199explicitly support concurrent C<< ->wait >>'s from different coroutines,
200however).
201 838
202=item $cv->broadcast 839=item $bool = $cv->ready
203 840
204Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->wait >> and all further 841Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether C<send> or
205calls to C<wait> will return after this method has been called. If nobody 842C<croak> have been called.
206is waiting the broadcast will be remembered..
207 843
208Example: 844=item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
209 845
210 # wait till the result is ready 846This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
211 my $result_ready = AnyEvent->condvar; 847replaces it before doing so.
212 848
213 # do something such as adding a timer 849The callback will be called when the condition becomes "true", i.e. when
214 # or socket watcher the calls $result_ready->broadcast 850C<send> or C<croak> are called, with the only argument being the
215 # when the "result" is ready. 851condition variable itself. If the condition is already true, the
216 852callback is called immediately when it is set. Calling C<recv> inside
217 $result_ready->wait; 853the callback or at any later time is guaranteed not to block.
218 854
219=back 855=back
220 856
221=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS 857=head1 SUPPORTED EVENT LOOPS/BACKENDS
222 858
223You can listen for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal 859The available backend classes are (every class has its own manpage):
224I<name> without any C<SIG> prefix. Multiple signals events can be clumped
225together into one callback invocation, and callback invocation might or
226might not be asynchronous.
227
228These watchers might use C<%SIG>, so programs overwriting those signals
229directly will likely not work correctly.
230
231Example: exit on SIGINT
232
233 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
234
235=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
236
237You can also listen for the status of a child process specified by the
238C<pid> argument (or any child if the pid argument is 0). The watcher will
239trigger as often as status change for the child are received. This works
240by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>. The callback will be called with
241the pid and exit status (as returned by waitpid).
242
243Example: wait for pid 1333
244
245 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => 1333, cb => sub { warn "exit status $?" });
246
247=head1 GLOBALS
248 860
249=over 4 861=over 4
250 862
863=item Backends that are autoprobed when no other event loop can be found.
864
865EV is the preferred backend when no other event loop seems to be in
866use. If EV is not installed, then AnyEvent will fall back to its own
867pure-perl implementation, which is available everywhere as it comes with
868AnyEvent itself.
869
870 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
871 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl AnyEvent::Loop, fast and portable.
872
873=item Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
874
875These will be used if they are already loaded when the first watcher
876is created, in which case it is assumed that the application is using
877them. This means that AnyEvent will automatically pick the right backend
878when the main program loads an event module before anything starts to
879create watchers. Nothing special needs to be done by the main program.
880
881 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
882 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, slow but very stable.
883 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very broken.
884 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
885 AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, very slow, some limitations.
886 AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi used when running within irssi.
887 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async.
888 AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa based on Cocoa::EventLoop.
889 AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK based on FLTK (fltk 2 binding).
890
891=item Backends with special needs.
892
893Qt requires the Qt::Application to be instantiated first, but will
894otherwise be picked up automatically. As long as the main program
895instantiates the application before any AnyEvent watchers are created,
896everything should just work.
897
898 AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt.
899
900=item Event loops that are indirectly supported via other backends.
901
902Some event loops can be supported via other modules:
903
904There is no direct support for WxWidgets (L<Wx>) or L<Prima>.
905
906B<WxWidgets> has no support for watching file handles. However, you can
907use WxWidgets through the POE adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that simply
908polls 20 times per second, which was considered to be too horrible to even
909consider for AnyEvent.
910
911B<Prima> is not supported as nobody seems to be using it, but it has a POE
912backend, so it can be supported through POE.
913
914AnyEvent knows about both L<Prima> and L<Wx>, however, and will try to
915load L<POE> when detecting them, in the hope that POE will pick them up,
916in which case everything will be automatic.
917
918=back
919
920=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
921
922These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
923write AnyEvent extension modules.
924
925=over 4
926
251=item $AnyEvent::MODEL 927=item $AnyEvent::MODEL
252 928
253Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created. Then it 929Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created, before the
930backend has been autodetected.
931
254contains the event model that is being used, which is the name of the 932Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is the
255Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one of the 933name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one
256C<AnyEvent::Impl:xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the case 934of the C<AnyEvent::Impl::xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the
257AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode>). 935case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode> it
258 936will be C<urxvt::anyevent>).
259The known classes so far are:
260
261 AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEV based on Coro::EV, best choice.
262 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (an interface to libev, also best choice).
263 AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEvent based on Coro::Event, second best choice.
264 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, also second best choice :)
265 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, third-best choice.
266 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very bad choice.
267 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl implementation, inefficient but portable.
268 937
269=item AnyEvent::detect 938=item AnyEvent::detect
270 939
271Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model if 940Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model
272necessary. You should only call this function right before you would have 941if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would
273created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, very late at runtime. 942have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at
943runtime, and not e.g. during initialisation of your module.
944
945The effect of calling this function is as if a watcher had been created
946(specifically, actions that happen "when the first watcher is created"
947happen when calling detetc as well).
948
949If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
950created, use C<post_detect>.
951
952=item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
953
954Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
955autodetected (or immediately if that has already happened).
956
957The block will be executed I<after> the actual backend has been detected
958(C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> is set), but I<before> any watchers have been
959created, so it is possible to e.g. patch C<@AnyEvent::ISA> or do
960other initialisations - see the sources of L<AnyEvent::Strict> or
961L<AnyEvent::AIO> to see how this is used.
962
963The most common usage is to create some global watchers, without forcing
964event module detection too early, for example, L<AnyEvent::AIO> creates
965and installs the global L<IO::AIO> watcher in a C<post_detect> block to
966avoid autodetecting the event module at load time.
967
968If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
969that automatically removes the callback again when it is destroyed (or
970C<undef> when the hook was immediately executed). See L<AnyEvent::AIO> for
971a case where this is useful.
972
973Example: Create a watcher for the IO::AIO module and store it in
974C<$WATCHER>, but do so only do so after the event loop is initialised.
975
976 our WATCHER;
977
978 my $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect {
979 $WATCHER = AnyEvent->io (fh => IO::AIO::poll_fileno, poll => 'r', cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
980 };
981
982 # the ||= is important in case post_detect immediately runs the block,
983 # as to not clobber the newly-created watcher. assigning both watcher and
984 # post_detect guard to the same variable has the advantage of users being
985 # able to just C<undef $WATCHER> if the watcher causes them grief.
986
987 $WATCHER ||= $guard;
988
989=item @AnyEvent::post_detect
990
991If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
992before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will be called directly
993after the event loop has been chosen.
994
995You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
996if it is defined then the event loop has already been detected, and the
997array will be ignored.
998
999Best use C<AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }> when your application allows
1000it, as it takes care of these details.
1001
1002This variable is mainly useful for modules that can do something useful
1003when AnyEvent is used and thus want to know when it is initialised, but do
1004not need to even load it by default. This array provides the means to hook
1005into AnyEvent passively, without loading it.
1006
1007Example: To load Coro::AnyEvent whenever Coro and AnyEvent are used
1008together, you could put this into Coro (this is the actual code used by
1009Coro to accomplish this):
1010
1011 if (defined $AnyEvent::MODEL) {
1012 # AnyEvent already initialised, so load Coro::AnyEvent
1013 require Coro::AnyEvent;
1014 } else {
1015 # AnyEvent not yet initialised, so make sure to load Coro::AnyEvent
1016 # as soon as it is
1017 push @AnyEvent::post_detect, sub { require Coro::AnyEvent };
1018 }
1019
1020=item AnyEvent::postpone { BLOCK }
1021
1022Arranges for the block to be executed as soon as possible, but not before
1023the call itself returns. In practise, the block will be executed just
1024before the event loop polls for new events, or shortly afterwards.
1025
1026This function never returns anything (to make the C<return postpone { ...
1027}> idiom more useful.
1028
1029To understand the usefulness of this function, consider a function that
1030asynchronously does something for you and returns some transaction
1031object or guard to let you cancel the operation. For example,
1032C<AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect>:
1033
1034 # start a conenction attempt unless one is active
1035 $self->{connect_guard} ||= AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect "www.example.net", 80, sub {
1036 delete $self->{connect_guard};
1037 ...
1038 };
1039
1040Imagine that this function could instantly call the callback, for
1041example, because it detects an obvious error such as a negative port
1042number. Invoking the callback before the function returns causes problems
1043however: the callback will be called and will try to delete the guard
1044object. But since the function hasn't returned yet, there is nothing to
1045delete. When the function eventually returns it will assign the guard
1046object to C<< $self->{connect_guard} >>, where it will likely never be
1047deleted, so the program thinks it is still trying to connect.
1048
1049This is where C<AnyEvent::postpone> should be used. Instead of calling the
1050callback directly on error:
1051
1052 $cb->(undef), return # signal error to callback, BAD!
1053 if $some_error_condition;
1054
1055It should use C<postpone>:
1056
1057 AnyEvent::postpone { $cb->(undef) }, return # signal error to callback, later
1058 if $some_error_condition;
1059
1060=item AnyEvent::log $level, $msg[, @args]
1061
1062Log the given C<$msg> at the given C<$level>.
1063
1064If L<AnyEvent::Log> is not loaded then this function makes a simple test
1065to see whether the message will be logged. If the test succeeds it will
1066load AnyEvent::Log and call C<AnyEvent::Log::log> - consequently, look at
1067the L<AnyEvent::Log> documentation for details.
1068
1069If the test fails it will simply return. Right now this happens when a
1070numerical loglevel is used and it is larger than the level specified via
1071C<$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}>.
1072
1073If you want to sprinkle loads of logging calls around your code, consider
1074creating a logger callback with the C<AnyEvent::Log::logger> function,
1075which can reduce typing, codesize and can reduce the logging overhead
1076enourmously.
274 1077
275=back 1078=back
276 1079
277=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE 1080=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
278 1081
279As a module author, you should "use AnyEvent" and call AnyEvent methods 1082As a module author, you should C<use AnyEvent> and call AnyEvent methods
280freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it. 1083freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
281 1084
282Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - Anyevent will 1085Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
283decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so 1086decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
284by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module 1087by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
285to load the event module first. 1088to load the event module first.
286 1089
1090Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
1091the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
1092because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
1093events is to stay interactive.
1094
1095It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
1096requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
1097called C<results> that returns the results, it may call C<< ->recv >>
1098freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. Always).
1099
287=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM 1100=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
288 1101
289There will always be a single main program - the only place that should 1102There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
290dictate which event model to use. 1103dictate which event model to use.
291 1104
292If it doesn't care, it can just "use AnyEvent" and use it itself, or not 1105If the program is not event-based, it need not do anything special, even
293do anything special and let AnyEvent decide which implementation to chose. 1106when it depends on a module that uses an AnyEvent. If the program itself
1107uses AnyEvent, but does not care which event loop is used, all it needs
1108to do is C<use AnyEvent>. In either case, AnyEvent will choose the best
1109available loop implementation.
294 1110
295If the main program relies on a specific event model (for example, in Gtk2 1111If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
296programs you have to rely on either Glib or Glib::Event), you should load 1112Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
297it before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it, generally, as early 1113event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
298as possible. The reason is that modules might create watchers when they 1114speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
299are loaded, and AnyEvent will decide on the event model to use as soon as 1115modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
300it creates watchers, and it might chose the wrong one unless you load the 1116decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
301correct one yourself. 1117might choose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
302 1118
303You can chose to use a rather inefficient pure-perl implementation by 1119You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
304loading the C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl> module, but letting AnyEvent chose is 1120C<AnyEvent::Loop> module, which gives you similar behaviour
305generally better. 1121everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
1122
1123=head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
1124
1125Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
1126only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
1127
1128In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
1129
1130 AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
1131
1132This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
1133
1134Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
1135it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
1136variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
1137exit cleanly.
1138
1139
1140=head1 OTHER MODULES
1141
1142The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
1143AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other
1144AnyEvent modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the
1145modules come as part of AnyEvent, the others are available via CPAN (see
1146L<http://search.cpan.org/search?m=module&q=anyevent%3A%3A*> for
1147a longer non-exhaustive list), and the list is heavily biased towards
1148modules of the AnyEvent author himself :)
1149
1150=over 4
1151
1152=item L<AnyEvent::Util>
1153
1154Contains various utility functions that replace often-used blocking
1155functions such as C<inet_aton> with event/callback-based versions.
1156
1157=item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
1158
1159Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
1160addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
1161connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
1162
1163=item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
1164
1165Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
1166supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
1167non-blocking SSL/TLS (via L<AnyEvent::TLS>).
1168
1169=item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
1170
1171Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
1172
1173=item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>, L<AnyEvent::XMPP>, L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IGS>, L<AnyEvent::FCP>
1174
1175Implement event-based interfaces to the protocols of the same name (for
1176the curious, IGS is the International Go Server and FCP is the Freenet
1177Client Protocol).
1178
1179=item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
1180
1181Truly asynchronous (as opposed to non-blocking) I/O, should be in the
1182toolbox of every event programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses
1183L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent together, giving AnyEvent access to event-based
1184file I/O, and much more.
1185
1186=item L<AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify>
1187
1188AnyEvent is good for non-blocking stuff, but it can't detect file or
1189path changes (e.g. "watch this directory for new files", "watch this
1190file for changes"). The L<AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify> module promises to
1191do just that in a portbale fashion, supporting inotify on GNU/Linux and
1192some weird, without doubt broken, stuff on OS X to monitor files. It can
1193fall back to blocking scans at regular intervals transparently on other
1194platforms, so it's about as portable as it gets.
1195
1196(I haven't used it myself, but I haven't heard anybody complaining about
1197it yet).
1198
1199=item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
1200
1201Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process for you,
1202notifying you in an event-based way when the operation is finished.
1203
1204=item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
1205
1206A simple embedded webserver.
1207
1208=item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
1209
1210The fastest ping in the west.
1211
1212=item L<Coro>
1213
1214Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>, which allows you
1215to simply invert the flow control - don't call us, we will call you:
1216
1217 async {
1218 Coro::AnyEvent::sleep 5; # creates a 5s timer and waits for it
1219 print "5 seconds later!\n";
1220
1221 Coro::AnyEvent::readable *STDIN; # uses an I/O watcher
1222 my $line = <STDIN>; # works for ttys
1223
1224 AnyEvent::HTTP::http_get "url", Coro::rouse_cb;
1225 my ($body, $hdr) = Coro::rouse_wait;
1226 };
1227
1228=back
306 1229
307=cut 1230=cut
308 1231
309package AnyEvent; 1232package AnyEvent;
310 1233
311no warnings; 1234# basically a tuned-down version of common::sense
312use strict; 1235sub common_sense {
1236 # from common:.sense 3.5
1237 local $^W;
1238 ${^WARNING_BITS} ^= ${^WARNING_BITS} ^ "\x3c\x3f\x33\x00\x0f\xf0\x0f\xc0\xf0\xfc\x33\x00";
1239 # use strict vars subs - NO UTF-8, as Util.pm doesn't like this atm. (uts46data.pl)
1240 $^H |= 0x00000600;
1241}
313 1242
1243BEGIN { AnyEvent::common_sense }
1244
314use Carp; 1245use Carp ();
315 1246
316our $VERSION = '3.0'; 1247our $VERSION = '7.04';
317our $MODEL; 1248our $MODEL;
318
319our $AUTOLOAD;
320our @ISA; 1249our @ISA;
321
322our $verbose = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
323
324our @REGISTRY; 1250our @REGISTRY;
1251our $VERBOSE;
1252our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
1253our $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY} || 10; # executes after the BEGIN block below (tainting!)
325 1254
1255BEGIN {
1256 require "AnyEvent/constants.pl";
1257
1258 eval "sub TAINT (){" . (${^TAINT}*1) . "}";
1259
1260 delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
1261 if ${^TAINT};
1262
1263 $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"} = $ENV{"AE_$_"}
1264 for grep s/^AE_// && !exists $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"}, keys %ENV;
1265
1266 @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV} = ()
1267 if ${^TAINT};
1268
1269 # $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_xxx} now valid
1270
1271 $VERBOSE = length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE} ? $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1 : 4;
1272
1273 my $idx;
1274 $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
1275 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
1276 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1277}
1278
1279our @post_detect;
1280
1281sub post_detect(&) {
1282 my ($cb) = @_;
1283
1284 push @post_detect, $cb;
1285
1286 defined wantarray
1287 ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1288 : ()
1289}
1290
1291sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1292 @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1293}
1294
1295our $POSTPONE_W;
1296our @POSTPONE;
1297
1298sub _postpone_exec {
1299 undef $POSTPONE_W;
1300
1301 &{ shift @POSTPONE }
1302 while @POSTPONE;
1303}
1304
1305sub postpone(&) {
1306 push @POSTPONE, shift;
1307
1308 $POSTPONE_W ||= AE::timer (0, 0, \&_postpone_exec);
1309
1310 ()
1311}
1312
1313sub log($$;@) {
1314 # only load the big bloated module when we actually are about to log something
1315 if ($_[0] <= ($VERBOSE || 1)) { # also catches non-numeric levels(!) and fatal
1316 local ($!, $@);
1317 require AnyEvent::Log; # among other things, sets $VERBOSE to 9
1318 # AnyEvent::Log overwrites this function
1319 goto &log;
1320 }
1321
1322 0 # not logged
1323}
1324
1325sub _logger($;$) {
1326 my ($level, $renabled) = @_;
1327
1328 $$renabled = $level <= $VERBOSE;
1329
1330 my $logger = [(caller)[0], $level, $renabled];
1331
1332 $AnyEvent::Log::LOGGER{$logger+0} = $logger;
1333
1334# return unless defined wantarray;
1335#
1336# require AnyEvent::Util;
1337# my $guard = AnyEvent::Util::guard (sub {
1338# # "clean up"
1339# delete $LOGGER{$logger+0};
1340# });
1341#
1342# sub {
1343# return 0 unless $$renabled;
1344#
1345# $guard if 0; # keep guard alive, but don't cause runtime overhead
1346# require AnyEvent::Log unless $AnyEvent::Log::VERSION;
1347# package AnyEvent::Log;
1348# _log ($logger->[0], $level, @_) # logger->[0] has been converted at load time
1349# }
1350}
1351
1352if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG}) {
1353 require AnyEvent::Log; # AnyEvent::Log does the thing for us
1354}
1355
326my @models = ( 1356our @models = (
327 [Coro::EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEV::],
328 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV::], 1357 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV::],
329 [Coro::Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEvent::], 1358 [AnyEvent::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl::],
1359 # everything below here will not (normally) be autoprobed
1360 # as the pure perl backend should work everywhere
1361 # and is usually faster
1362 [Irssi:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi::], # Irssi has a bogus "Event" package, so msut be near the top
330 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::], 1363 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::], # slow, stable
331 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib::], 1364 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib::], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1365 # everything below here should not be autoloaded
1366 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1367 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1368 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
1369 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
332 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], 1370 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
333 [AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl::], 1371 [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1372 [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # a bitch to autodetect
1373 [Cocoa::EventLoop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa::],
1374 [FLTK:: => AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK::],
334); 1375);
335 1376
336our %method = map +($_ => 1), qw(io timer condvar broadcast wait signal one_event DESTROY); 1377our @isa_hook;
1378
1379sub _isa_set {
1380 my @pkg = ("AnyEvent", (map $_->[0], grep defined, @isa_hook), $MODEL);
1381
1382 @{"$pkg[$_-1]::ISA"} = $pkg[$_]
1383 for 1 .. $#pkg;
1384
1385 grep $_ && $_->[1], @isa_hook
1386 and AE::_reset ();
1387}
1388
1389# used for hooking AnyEvent::Strict and AnyEvent::Debug::Wrap into the class hierarchy
1390sub _isa_hook($$;$) {
1391 my ($i, $pkg, $reset_ae) = @_;
1392
1393 $isa_hook[$i] = $pkg ? [$pkg, $reset_ae] : undef;
1394
1395 _isa_set;
1396}
1397
1398# all autoloaded methods reserve the complete glob, not just the method slot.
1399# due to bugs in perls method cache implementation.
1400our @methods = qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar);
337 1401
338sub detect() { 1402sub detect() {
1403 return $MODEL if $MODEL; # some programs keep references to detect
1404
1405 # IO::Async::Loop::AnyEvent is extremely evil, refuse to work with it
1406 # the author knows about the problems and what it does to AnyEvent as a whole
1407 # (and the ability of others to use AnyEvent), but simply wants to abuse AnyEvent
1408 # anyway.
1409 AnyEvent::log fatal => "IO::Async::Loop::AnyEvent detected - that module is broken by\n"
1410 . "design, abuses internals and breaks AnyEvent - will not continue."
1411 if exists $INC{"IO/Async/Loop/AnyEvent.pm"};
1412
1413 local $!; # for good measure
1414 local $SIG{__DIE__}; # we use eval
1415
1416 # free some memory
1417 *detect = sub () { $MODEL };
1418 # undef &func doesn't correctly update the method cache. grmbl.
1419 # so we delete the whole glob. grmbl.
1420 # otoh, perl doesn't let me undef an active usb, but it lets me free
1421 # a glob with an active sub. hrm. i hope it works, but perl is
1422 # usually buggy in this department. sigh.
1423 delete @{"AnyEvent::"}{@methods};
1424 undef @methods;
1425
1426 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z0-9:]+)$/) {
1427 my $model = $1;
1428 $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model" unless $model =~ s/::$//;
1429 if (eval "require $model") {
1430 AnyEvent::log 7 => "Loaded model '$model' (forced by \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}), using it.";
1431 $MODEL = $model;
1432 } else {
1433 AnyEvent::log 4 => "Unable to load model '$model' (from \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}):\n$@";
1434 }
1435 }
1436
1437 # check for already loaded models
339 unless ($MODEL) { 1438 unless ($MODEL) {
340 no strict 'refs';
341
342 # check for already loaded models
343 for (@REGISTRY, @models) { 1439 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
344 my ($package, $model) = @$_; 1440 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
345 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) { 1441 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
346 if (eval "require $model") { 1442 if (eval "require $model") {
1443 AnyEvent::log 7 => "Autodetected model '$model', using it.";
347 $MODEL = $model; 1444 $MODEL = $model;
348 warn "AnyEvent: found model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1; 1445 last;
1446 } else {
1447 AnyEvent::log 8 => "Detected event loop $package, but cannot load '$model', skipping: $@";
1448 }
1449 }
1450 }
1451
1452 unless ($MODEL) {
1453 # try to autoload a model
1454 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1455 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
1456 if (
1457 eval "require $package"
1458 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
1459 and eval "require $model"
1460 ) {
1461 AnyEvent::log 7 => "Autoloaded model '$model', using it.";
1462 $MODEL = $model;
349 last; 1463 last;
350 } 1464 }
351 } 1465 }
1466
1467 $MODEL
1468 or AnyEvent::log fatal => "Backend autodetection failed - did you properly install AnyEvent?";
352 } 1469 }
1470 }
353 1471
354 unless ($MODEL) { 1472 # free memory only needed for probing
355 # try to load a model 1473 undef @models;
1474 undef @REGISTRY;
356 1475
357 for (@REGISTRY, @models) { 1476 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
358 my ($package, $model) = @$_; 1477
359 if (eval "require $package" 1478 # now nuke some methods that are overridden by the backend.
360 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0 1479 # SUPER usage is not allowed in these.
361 and eval "require $model") { 1480 for (qw(time signal child idle)) {
362 $MODEL = $model; 1481 undef &{"AnyEvent::Base::$_"}
363 warn "AnyEvent: autoprobed and loaded model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1; 1482 if defined &{"$MODEL\::$_"};
1483 }
1484
1485 _isa_set;
1486
1487 # we're officially open!
1488
1489 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}) {
1490 require AnyEvent::Strict;
1491 }
1492
1493 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP}) {
1494 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1495 AnyEvent::Debug::wrap ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP});
1496 }
1497
1498 if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL}) {
1499 require AnyEvent::Socket;
1500 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1501
1502 my $shell = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL};
1503 $shell =~ s/\$\$/$$/g;
1504
1505 my ($host, $service) = AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport ($shell);
1506 $AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL = AnyEvent::Debug::shell ($host, $service);
1507 }
1508
1509 # now the anyevent environment is set up as the user told us to, so
1510 # call the actual user code - post detects
1511
1512 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
1513 undef @post_detect;
1514
1515 *post_detect = sub(&) {
1516 shift->();
1517
1518 undef
1519 };
1520
1521 $MODEL
1522}
1523
1524for my $name (@methods) {
1525 *$name = sub {
1526 detect;
1527 # we use goto because
1528 # a) it makes the thunk more transparent
1529 # b) it allows us to delete the thunk later
1530 goto &{ UNIVERSAL::can AnyEvent => "SUPER::$name" }
1531 };
1532}
1533
1534# utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1535# to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1536# allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1537sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1538 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1539
1540 # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1541 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<&") : ($w, ">&");
1542
1543 open my $fh2, $mode, $fh
1544 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1545
1546 # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1547
1548 ($fh2, $rw)
1549}
1550
1551=head1 SIMPLIFIED AE API
1552
1553Starting with version 5.0, AnyEvent officially supports a second, much
1554simpler, API that is designed to reduce the calling, typing and memory
1555overhead by using function call syntax and a fixed number of parameters.
1556
1557See the L<AE> manpage for details.
1558
1559=cut
1560
1561package AE;
1562
1563our $VERSION = $AnyEvent::VERSION;
1564
1565sub _reset() {
1566 eval q{
1567 # fall back to the main API by default - backends and AnyEvent::Base
1568 # implementations can overwrite these.
1569
1570 sub io($$$) {
1571 AnyEvent->io (fh => $_[0], poll => $_[1] ? "w" : "r", cb => $_[2])
1572 }
1573
1574 sub timer($$$) {
1575 AnyEvent->timer (after => $_[0], interval => $_[1], cb => $_[2])
1576 }
1577
1578 sub signal($$) {
1579 AnyEvent->signal (signal => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1580 }
1581
1582 sub child($$) {
1583 AnyEvent->child (pid => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1584 }
1585
1586 sub idle($) {
1587 AnyEvent->idle (cb => $_[0]);
1588 }
1589
1590 sub cv(;&) {
1591 AnyEvent->condvar (@_ ? (cb => $_[0]) : ())
1592 }
1593
1594 sub now() {
1595 AnyEvent->now
1596 }
1597
1598 sub now_update() {
1599 AnyEvent->now_update
1600 }
1601
1602 sub time() {
1603 AnyEvent->time
1604 }
1605
1606 *postpone = \&AnyEvent::postpone;
1607 *log = \&AnyEvent::log;
1608 };
1609 die if $@;
1610}
1611
1612BEGIN { _reset }
1613
1614package AnyEvent::Base;
1615
1616# default implementations for many methods
1617
1618sub time {
1619 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1620 # probe for availability of Time::HiRes
1621 if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1622 *time = sub { Time::HiRes::time () };
1623 *AE::time = \& Time::HiRes::time ;
1624 *now = \&time;
1625 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using Time::HiRes for sub-second timing accuracy.";
1626 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1627 } else {
1628 *time = sub { CORE::time };
1629 *AE::time = sub (){ CORE::time };
1630 *now = \&time;
1631 AnyEvent::log 3 => "Using built-in time(), no sub-second resolution!";
1632 }
1633 };
1634 die if $@;
1635
1636 &time
1637}
1638
1639*now = \&time;
1640sub now_update { }
1641
1642sub _poll {
1643 Carp::croak "$AnyEvent::MODEL does not support blocking waits. Caught";
1644}
1645
1646# default implementation for ->condvar
1647# in fact, the default should not be overwritten
1648
1649sub condvar {
1650 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1651 *condvar = sub {
1652 bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1653 };
1654
1655 *AE::cv = sub (;&) {
1656 bless { @_ ? (_ae_cb => shift) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1657 };
1658 };
1659 die if $@;
1660
1661 &condvar
1662}
1663
1664# default implementation for ->signal
1665
1666our $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1667
1668sub _have_async_interrupt() {
1669 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT = 1*(!$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT}
1670 && eval "use Async::Interrupt 1.02 (); 1")
1671 unless defined $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1672
1673 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1674}
1675
1676our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1677our (%SIG_ASY, %SIG_ASY_W);
1678our ($SIG_COUNT, $SIG_TW);
1679
1680# install a dummy wakeup watcher to reduce signal catching latency
1681# used by Impls
1682sub _sig_add() {
1683 unless ($SIG_COUNT++) {
1684 # try to align timer on a full-second boundary, if possible
1685 my $NOW = AE::now;
1686
1687 $SIG_TW = AE::timer
1688 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY - ($NOW - int $NOW),
1689 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY,
1690 sub { } # just for the PERL_ASYNC_CHECK
1691 ;
1692 }
1693}
1694
1695sub _sig_del {
1696 undef $SIG_TW
1697 unless --$SIG_COUNT;
1698}
1699
1700our $_sig_name_init; $_sig_name_init = sub {
1701 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1702 undef $_sig_name_init;
1703
1704 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1705 *sig2num = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2num;
1706 *sig2name = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2name;
1707 } else {
1708 require Config;
1709
1710 my %signame2num;
1711 @signame2num{ split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_name} }
1712 = split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_num};
1713
1714 my @signum2name;
1715 @signum2name[values %signame2num] = keys %signame2num;
1716
1717 *sig2num = sub($) {
1718 $_[0] > 0 ? shift : $signame2num{+shift}
1719 };
1720 *sig2name = sub ($) {
1721 $_[0] > 0 ? $signum2name[+shift] : shift
1722 };
1723 }
1724 };
1725 die if $@;
1726};
1727
1728sub sig2num ($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2num }
1729sub sig2name($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2name }
1730
1731sub signal {
1732 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1733 # probe for availability of Async::Interrupt
1734 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1735 AnyEvent::log 8 => "Using Async::Interrupt for race-free signal handling.";
1736
1737 $SIGPIPE_R = new Async::Interrupt::EventPipe;
1738 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R->fileno, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1739
1740 } else {
1741 AnyEvent::log 8 => "Using emulated perl signal handling with latency timer.";
1742
1743 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1744 require AnyEvent::Util;
1745
1746 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1747 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R, 1) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1748 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W, 1) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1749 } else {
1750 pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1751 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1752 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1753
1754 # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1755 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1756 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1757 }
1758
1759 $SIGPIPE_R
1760 or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1761
1762 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1763 }
1764
1765 *signal = $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1766 ? sub {
1767 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1768
1769 # async::interrupt
1770 my $signal = sig2num $arg{signal};
1771 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1772
1773 $SIG_ASY{$signal} ||= new Async::Interrupt
1774 cb => sub { undef $SIG_EV{$signal} },
1775 signal => $signal,
1776 pipe => [$SIGPIPE_R->filenos],
1777 pipe_autodrain => 0,
364 last; 1778 ;
1779
1780 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1781 }
1782 : sub {
1783 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1784
1785 # pure perl
1786 my $signal = sig2name $arg{signal};
1787 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1788
1789 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
1790 local $!;
1791 syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1792 undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
1793 };
1794
1795 # can't do signal processing without introducing races in pure perl,
1796 # so limit the signal latency.
1797 _sig_add;
1798
1799 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1800 }
1801 ;
1802
1803 *AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY = sub {
1804 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1805
1806 _sig_del;
1807
1808 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
1809
1810 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1811 ? delete $SIG_ASY{$signal}
1812 : # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1813 # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1814 # instead of getting the default action.
1815 undef $SIG{$signal}
1816 unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
1817 };
1818
1819 *_signal_exec = sub {
1820 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1821 ? $SIGPIPE_R->drain
1822 : sysread $SIGPIPE_R, (my $dummy), 9;
1823
1824 while (%SIG_EV) {
1825 for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1826 delete $SIG_EV{$_};
1827 &$_ for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
365 } 1828 }
366 } 1829 }
367
368 $MODEL
369 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: EV (or Coro+EV), Event (or Coro+Event), Glib or Tk.";
370 } 1830 };
371
372 unshift @ISA, $MODEL;
373 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
374 }
375
376 $MODEL
377}
378
379sub AUTOLOAD {
380 (my $func = $AUTOLOAD) =~ s/.*://;
381
382 $method{$func}
383 or croak "$func: not a valid method for AnyEvent objects";
384
385 detect unless $MODEL;
386
387 my $class = shift;
388 $class->$func (@_);
389}
390
391package AnyEvent::Base;
392
393# default implementation for ->condvar, ->wait, ->broadcast
394
395sub condvar {
396 bless \my $flag, "AnyEvent::Base::CondVar"
397}
398
399sub AnyEvent::Base::CondVar::broadcast {
400 ${$_[0]}++;
401}
402
403sub AnyEvent::Base::CondVar::wait {
404 AnyEvent->one_event while !${$_[0]};
405}
406
407# default implementation for ->signal
408
409our %SIG_CB;
410
411sub signal {
412 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
413
414 my $signal = uc $arg{signal}
415 or Carp::croak "required option 'signal' is missing";
416
417 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
418 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
419 $_->() for values %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} || {} };
420 }; 1831 };
1832 die if $@;
421 1833
422 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::Signal" 1834 &signal
423}
424
425sub AnyEvent::Base::Signal::DESTROY {
426 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
427
428 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
429
430 $SIG{$signal} = 'DEFAULT' unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
431} 1835}
432 1836
433# default implementation for ->child 1837# default implementation for ->child
434 1838
435our %PID_CB; 1839our %PID_CB;
436our $CHLD_W; 1840our $CHLD_W;
437our $CHLD_DELAY_W; 1841our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
438our $PID_IDLE;
439our $WNOHANG;
440 1842
441sub _child_wait { 1843# used by many Impl's
442 while (0 < (my $pid = waitpid -1, $WNOHANG)) { 1844sub _emit_childstatus($$) {
1845 my (undef, $rpid, $rstatus) = @_;
1846
1847 $_->($rpid, $rstatus)
443 $_->($pid, $?) for (values %{ $PID_CB{$pid} || {} }), 1848 for values %{ $PID_CB{$rpid} || {} },
444 (values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} }); 1849 values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} };
1850}
1851
1852sub child {
1853 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1854 *_sigchld = sub {
1855 my $pid;
1856
1857 AnyEvent->_emit_childstatus ($pid, $?)
1858 while ($pid = waitpid -1, WNOHANG) > 0;
1859 };
1860
1861 *child = sub {
1862 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1863
1864 my $pid = $arg{pid};
1865 my $cb = $arg{cb};
1866
1867 $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb+0} = $cb;
1868
1869 unless ($CHLD_W) {
1870 $CHLD_W = AE::signal CHLD => \&_sigchld;
1871 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
1872 &_sigchld;
1873 }
1874
1875 bless [$pid, $cb+0], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
1876 };
1877
1878 *AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY = sub {
1879 my ($pid, $icb) = @{$_[0]};
1880
1881 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$icb};
1882 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
1883
1884 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
1885 };
1886 };
1887 die if $@;
1888
1889 &child
1890}
1891
1892# idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1893# of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1894# the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1895sub idle {
1896 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1897 *idle = sub {
1898 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1899
1900 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1901
1902 $rcb = sub {
1903 if ($cb) {
1904 $w = AE::time;
1905 &$cb;
1906 $w = AE::time - $w;
1907
1908 # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1909 # within some limits
1910 $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1911 $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1912
1913 $w = AE::timer $w, 0, $rcb;
1914 } else {
1915 # clean up...
1916 undef $w;
1917 undef $rcb;
1918 }
1919 };
1920
1921 $w = AE::timer 0.05, 0, $rcb;
1922
1923 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1924 };
1925
1926 *AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY = sub {
1927 undef $${$_[0]};
1928 };
1929 };
1930 die if $@;
1931
1932 &idle
1933}
1934
1935package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1936
1937our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1938
1939# only to be used for subclassing
1940sub new {
1941 my $class = shift;
1942 bless AnyEvent->condvar (@_), $class
1943}
1944
1945package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1946
1947#use overload
1948# '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1949# fallback => 1;
1950
1951# save 300+ kilobytes by dirtily hardcoding overloading
1952${"AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::OVERLOAD"}{dummy}++; # Register with magic by touching.
1953*{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = sub { }; # "Make it findable via fetchmethod."
1954*{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::(&{}'} = sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } }; # &{}
1955${'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = 1; # fallback
1956
1957our $WAITING;
1958
1959sub _send {
1960 # nop
1961}
1962
1963sub _wait {
1964 AnyEvent->_poll until $_[0]{_ae_sent};
1965}
1966
1967sub send {
1968 my $cv = shift;
1969 $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1970 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1971 $cv->_send;
1972}
1973
1974sub croak {
1975 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1976 $_[0]->send;
1977}
1978
1979sub ready {
1980 $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1981}
1982
1983sub recv {
1984 unless ($_[0]{_ae_sent}) {
1985 $WAITING
1986 and Carp::croak "AnyEvent::CondVar: recursive blocking wait attempted";
1987
1988 local $WAITING = 1;
1989 $_[0]->_wait;
445 } 1990 }
446 1991
447 undef $PID_IDLE; 1992 $_[0]{_ae_croak}
448} 1993 and Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak};
449 1994
450sub _sigchld { 1995 wantarray
451 # make sure we deliver these changes "synchronous" with the event loop. 1996 ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} }
452 $CHLD_DELAY_W ||= AnyEvent->timer (after => 0, cb => sub { 1997 : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
453 undef $CHLD_DELAY_W;
454 &_child_wait;
455 });
456} 1998}
457 1999
458sub child { 2000sub cb {
459 my (undef, %arg) = @_; 2001 my $cv = shift;
460 2002
461 defined (my $pid = $arg{pid} + 0) 2003 @_
462 or Carp::croak "required option 'pid' is missing"; 2004 and $cv->{_ae_cb} = shift
2005 and $cv->{_ae_sent}
2006 and (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv);
463 2007
464 $PID_CB{$pid}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb}; 2008 $cv->{_ae_cb}
465
466 unless ($WNOHANG) {
467 $WNOHANG = eval { require POSIX; &POSIX::WNOHANG } || 1;
468 }
469
470 unless ($CHLD_W) {
471 $CHLD_W = AnyEvent->signal (signal => 'CHLD', cb => \&_sigchld);
472 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
473 &_sigchld;
474 }
475
476 bless [$pid, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::Child"
477} 2009}
478 2010
479sub AnyEvent::Base::Child::DESTROY { 2011sub begin {
480 my ($pid, $cb) = @{$_[0]}; 2012 ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
481 2013 $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
482 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb};
483 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
484
485 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
486} 2014}
2015
2016sub end {
2017 return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
2018 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
2019}
2020
2021# undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
2022*broadcast = \&send;
2023*wait = \&recv;
2024
2025=head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
2026
2027In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
2028caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
2029the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
2030checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
2031development.
2032
2033As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
2034executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
2035also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
2036program.
2037
2038The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
2039within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
2040$Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
2041so on.
2042
2043=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
2044
2045AnyEvent supports a number of environment variables that tune the
2046runtime behaviour. They are usually evaluated when AnyEvent is
2047loaded, initialised, or a submodule that uses them is loaded. Many of
2048them also cause AnyEvent to load additional modules - for example,
2049C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP> causes the L<AnyEvent::Debug> module to be
2050loaded.
2051
2052All the environment variables documented here start with
2053C<PERL_ANYEVENT_>, which is what AnyEvent considers its own
2054namespace. Other modules are encouraged (but by no means required) to use
2055C<PERL_ANYEVENT_SUBMODULE> if they have registered the AnyEvent::Submodule
2056namespace on CPAN, for any submodule. For example, L<AnyEvent::HTTP> could
2057be expected to use C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HTTP_PROXY> (it should not access env
2058variables starting with C<AE_>, see below).
2059
2060All variables can also be set via the C<AE_> prefix, that is, instead
2061of setting C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> you can also set C<AE_VERBOSE>. In
2062case there is a clash btween anyevent and another program that uses
2063C<AE_something> you can set the corresponding C<PERL_ANYEVENT_something>
2064variable to the empty string, as those variables take precedence.
2065
2066When AnyEvent is first loaded, it copies all C<AE_xxx> env variables
2067to their C<PERL_ANYEVENT_xxx> counterpart unless that variable already
2068exists. If taint mode is on, then AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment
2069variables starting with C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> (or replace them
2070with C<undef> or the empty string, if the corresaponding C<AE_> variable
2071is set).
2072
2073The exact algorithm is currently:
2074
2075 1. if taint mode enabled, delete all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables from %ENV
2076 2. copy over AE_xyz to PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz unless the latter alraedy exists
2077 3. if taint mode enabled, set all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables to undef.
2078
2079This ensures that child processes will not see the C<AE_> variables.
2080
2081The following environment variables are currently known to AnyEvent:
2082
2083=over 4
2084
2085=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
2086
2087By default, AnyEvent will log messages with loglevel C<4> (C<error>) or
2088higher (see L<AnyEvent::Log>). You can set this environment variable to a
2089numerical loglevel to make AnyEvent more (or less) talkative.
2090
2091If you want to do more than just set the global logging level
2092you should have a look at C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>, which allows much more
2093complex specifications.
2094
2095When set to C<0> (C<off>), then no messages whatsoever will be logged with
2096everything else at defaults.
2097
2098When set to C<5> or higher (C<warn>), AnyEvent warns about unexpected
2099conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified by
2100C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>, or a guard callback throwing an exception - this
2101is the minimum recommended level for use during development.
2102
2103When set to C<7> or higher (info), AnyEvent reports which event model it
2104chooses.
2105
2106When set to C<8> or higher (debug), then AnyEvent will report extra
2107information on which optional modules it loads and how it implements
2108certain features.
2109
2110=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>
2111
2112Accepts rather complex logging specifications. For example, you could log
2113all C<debug> messages of some module to stderr, warnings and above to
2114stderr, and errors and above to syslog, with:
2115
2116 PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG=Some::Module=debug,+log:filter=warn,+%syslog:%syslog=error,syslog
2117
2118For the rather extensive details, see L<AnyEvent::Log>.
2119
2120This variable is evaluated when AnyEvent (or L<AnyEvent::Log>) is loaded,
2121so will take effect even before AnyEvent has initialised itself.
2122
2123Note that specifying this environment variable causes the L<AnyEvent::Log>
2124module to be loaded, while C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> does not, so only
2125using the latter saves a few hundred kB of memory unless a module
2126explicitly needs the extra features of AnyEvent::Log.
2127
2128=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
2129
2130AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
2131argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
2132will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
2133check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
2134it will croak.
2135
2136In other words, enables "strict" mode.
2137
2138Unlike C<use strict> (or its modern cousin, C<< use L<common::sense>
2139>>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in production. Keeping
2140C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while developing programs
2141can be very useful, however.
2142
2143=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL>
2144
2145If this env variable is nonempty, then its contents will be interpreted by
2146C<AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport> and C<AnyEvent::Debug::shell> (after
2147replacing every occurance of C<$$> by the process pid). The shell object
2148is saved in C<$AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL>.
2149
2150This happens when the first watcher is created.
2151
2152For example, to bind a debug shell on a unix domain socket in
2153F<< /tmp/debug<pid>.sock >>, you could use this:
2154
2155 PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL=/tmp/debug\$\$.sock perlprog
2156 # connect with e.g.: socat readline /tmp/debug123.sock
2157
2158Or to bind to tcp port 4545 on localhost:
2159
2160 PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL=127.0.0.1:4545 perlprog
2161 # connect with e.g.: telnet localhost 4545
2162
2163Note that creating sockets in F</tmp> or on localhost is very unsafe on
2164multiuser systems.
2165
2166=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP>
2167
2168Can be set to C<0>, C<1> or C<2> and enables wrapping of all watchers for
2169debugging purposes. See C<AnyEvent::Debug::wrap> for details.
2170
2171=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
2172
2173This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
2174auto detection and -probing kicks in.
2175
2176It normally is a string consisting entirely of ASCII letters (e.g. C<EV>
2177or C<IOAsync>). The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended and the
2178resulting module name is loaded and - if the load was successful - used as
2179event model backend. If it fails to load then AnyEvent will proceed with
2180auto detection and -probing.
2181
2182If the string ends with C<::> instead (e.g. C<AnyEvent::Impl::EV::>) then
2183nothing gets prepended and the module name is used as-is (hint: C<::> at
2184the end of a string designates a module name and quotes it appropriately).
2185
2186For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Loop::Perl>) you
2187could start your program like this:
2188
2189 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
2190
2191=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_IO_MODEL>
2192
2193The current file I/O model - see L<AnyEvent::IO> for more info.
2194
2195At the moment, only C<Perl> (small, pure-perl, synchronous) and
2196C<IOAIO> (truly asynchronous) are supported. The default is C<IOAIO> if
2197L<AnyEvent::AIO> can be loaded, otherwise it is C<Perl>.
2198
2199=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
2200
2201Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
2202for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
2203of auto probing).
2204
2205Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
2206current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
2207used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
2208list.
2209
2210This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
2211against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
2212small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
2213
2214Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
2215but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
2216- only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
2217addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
2218IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
2219
2220=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HOSTS>
2221
2222This variable, if specified, overrides the F</etc/hosts> file used by
2223L<AnyEvent::Socket>C<::resolve_sockaddr>, i.e. hosts aliases will be read
2224from that file instead.
2225
2226=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
2227
2228Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension for
2229DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, especially
2230when DNSSEC is involved, but some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS
2231packets, which is why it is off by default.
2232
2233Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
2234EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
2235
2236=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
2237
2238The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
2239will create in parallel.
2240
2241=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
2242
2243The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
2244resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
2245sent to the DNS server.
2246
2247=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>
2248
2249Perl has inherently racy signal handling (you can basically choose between
2250losing signals and memory corruption) - pure perl event loops (including
2251C<AnyEvent::Loop>, when C<Async::Interrupt> isn't available) therefore
2252have to poll regularly to avoid losing signals.
2253
2254Some event loops are racy, but don't poll regularly, and some event loops
2255are written in C but are still racy. For those event loops, AnyEvent
2256installs a timer that regularly wakes up the event loop.
2257
2258By default, the interval for this timer is C<10> seconds, but you can
2259override this delay with this environment variable (or by setting
2260the C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY> variable before creating signal
2261watchers).
2262
2263Lower values increase CPU (and energy) usage, higher values can introduce
2264long delays when reaping children or waiting for signals.
2265
2266The L<AnyEvent::Async> module, if available, will be used to avoid this
2267polling (with most event loops).
2268
2269=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
2270
2271The absolute path to a F<resolv.conf>-style file to use instead of
2272F</etc/resolv.conf> (or the OS-specific configuration) in the default
2273resolver, or the empty string to select the default configuration.
2274
2275=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
2276
2277When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
2278L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
2279variables are nonempty, they will be used to specify CA certificate
2280locations instead of a system-dependent default.
2281
2282=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_GUARD> and C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT>
2283
2284When these are set to C<1>, then the respective modules are not
2285loaded. Mostly good for testing AnyEvent itself.
2286
2287=back
487 2288
488=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE 2289=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
2290
2291This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
2292a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
2293provide AnyEvent compatibility.
489 2294
490If you need to support another event library which isn't directly 2295If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
491supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by 2296supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
492pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of 2297pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of
493the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto 2298the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
494C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading 2299C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading
495AnyEvent. 2300AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
496 2301
497Example: 2302Example:
498 2303
499 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::]; 2304 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
500 2305
501This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::> 2306This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::>
502package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is loaded. When 2307package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is already loaded.
2308
503AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it will 2309When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
504first check for the presence of urxvt. 2310will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to C<use> the
2311C<urxvt::anyevent> module.
505 2312
506The class should provide implementations for all watcher types (see 2313The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
507L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> 2314L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> (Source code)
508(Source code) and so on for actual examples, use C<perldoc -m 2315and so on for actual examples. Use C<perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to
509AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to see the sources). 2316see the sources.
510 2317
2318If you don't provide C<signal> and C<child> watchers than AnyEvent will
2319provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
2320
511The above isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt) 2321The above example isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt)
512uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included in AnyEvent 2322terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
513because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter inside 2323in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter
514I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the 2324inside I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the
515I<rxvt-unicode> distribution. 2325I<rxvt-unicode> distribution.
516 2326
517I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to 2327I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
518condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will 2328condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
519C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must 2329C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
520not be in an interactive application, so it makes sense. 2330not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
521 2331
522=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
523
524The following environment variables are used by this module:
525
526C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> when set to C<2> or higher, reports which event
527model gets used.
528
529=head1 EXAMPLE 2332=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
530 2333
531The following program uses an io watcher to read data from stdin, a timer 2334The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
532to display a message once per second, and a condvar to exit the program 2335to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
533when the user enters quit: 2336program when the user enters quit:
534 2337
535 use AnyEvent; 2338 use AnyEvent;
536 2339
537 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar; 2340 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
538 2341
539 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub { 2342 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
2343 fh => \*STDIN,
2344 poll => 'r',
2345 cb => sub {
540 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r> 2346 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
541 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line 2347 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
542 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read 2348 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
543 $cv->broadcast if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i 2349 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
2350 },
2351 );
2352
2353 my $time_watcher = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, interval => 1, cb => sub {
2354 warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' at most every second
544 }); 2355 });
545 2356
546 my $time_watcher; # can only be used once
547
548 sub new_timer {
549 $timer = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => sub {
550 warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' about every second
551 &new_timer; # and restart the time
552 });
553 }
554
555 new_timer; # create first timer
556
557 $cv->wait; # wait until user enters /^q/i 2357 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
558 2358
559=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE 2359=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
560 2360
561Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following 2361Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
562API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http: 2362API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
612 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request} 2412 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
613 or die "connection or write error"; 2413 or die "connection or write error";
614 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r }); 2414 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
615 2415
616Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the 2416Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
617result and signals any possible waiters that the request ahs finished: 2417result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
618 2418
619 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf}; 2419 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
620 2420
621 if (end-of-file or data complete) { 2421 if (end-of-file or data complete) {
622 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf}; 2422 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
623 $txn->{finished}->broadcast; 2423 $txn->{finished}->send;
624 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback 2424 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
625 } 2425 }
626 2426
627The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the 2427The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
628request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the 2428request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
629data: 2429data:
630 2430
631 $txn->{finished}->wait; 2431 $txn->{finished}->recv;
632 return $txn->{result}; 2432 return $txn->{result};
633 2433
634The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions) 2434The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
635that occured during request processing. The C<result> method detects 2435that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
636wether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object) 2436whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
637and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other 2437and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
638problems get reported tot he code that tries to use the result, not in a 2438problems get reported to the code that tries to use the result, not in a
639random callback. 2439random callback.
640 2440
641All of this enables the following usage styles: 2441All of this enables the following usage styles:
642 2442
6431. Blocking: 24431. Blocking:
644 2444
645 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); 2445 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
646 2446
6472. Blocking, but parallelizing: 24472. Blocking, but running in parallel:
648 2448
649 my @datas = map $_->result, 2449 my @datas = map $_->result,
650 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_), 2450 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
651 @urls; 2451 @urls;
652 2452
653Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know 2453Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
654anything about events. 2454anything about events.
655 2455
6563a. Event-based in a main program, using any support Event module: 24563a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
657 2457
658 use Event; 2458 use EV;
659 2459
660 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub { 2460 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
661 my $txn = shift; 2461 my $txn = shift;
662 my $data = $txn->result; 2462 my $data = $txn->result;
663 ... 2463 ...
664 }); 2464 });
665 2465
666 Event::loop; 2466 EV::loop;
667 2467
6683b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too: 24683b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
669 2469
670 use AnyEvent; 2470 use AnyEvent;
671 2471
672 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar; 2472 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
673 2473
674 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub { 2474 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
675 ... 2475 ...
676 $quit->broadcast; 2476 $quit->send;
677 }); 2477 });
678 2478
679 $quit->wait; 2479 $quit->recv;
2480
2481
2482=head1 BENCHMARKS
2483
2484To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
2485over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
2486of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
2487
2488=head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
2489
2490Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
2491through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
2492timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
2493which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
2494
2495Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
2496distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2497for the EV and Perl backends only.
2498
2499=head3 Explanation of the columns
2500
2501I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
2502different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
2503loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
2504and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
2505would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
2506of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
2507
2508I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
2509RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
2510and Perl-based overheads.
2511
2512I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
2513takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
2514all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
2515and memory usage is not included in the figures.
2516
2517I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
2518callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
2519invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
2520signal the end of this phase.
2521
2522I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
2523watcher.
2524
2525=head3 Results
2526
2527 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
2528 EV/EV 100000 223 0.47 0.43 0.27 EV native interface
2529 EV/Any 100000 223 0.48 0.42 0.26 EV + AnyEvent watchers
2530 Coro::EV/Any 100000 223 0.47 0.42 0.26 coroutines + Coro::Signal
2531 Perl/Any 100000 431 2.70 0.74 0.92 pure perl implementation
2532 Event/Event 16000 516 31.16 31.84 0.82 Event native interface
2533 Event/Any 16000 1203 42.61 34.79 1.80 Event + AnyEvent watchers
2534 IOAsync/Any 16000 1911 41.92 27.45 16.81 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
2535 IOAsync/Any 16000 1726 40.69 26.37 15.25 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
2536 Glib/Any 16000 1118 89.00 12.57 51.17 quadratic behaviour
2537 Tk/Any 2000 1346 20.96 10.75 8.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
2538 POE/Any 2000 6951 108.97 795.32 14.24 via POE::Loop::Event
2539 POE/Any 2000 6648 94.79 774.40 575.51 via POE::Loop::Select
2540
2541=head3 Discussion
2542
2543The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
2544well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
2545can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
2546file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
2547the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
2548boost.
2549
2550Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
2551overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
2552the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
2553higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
2554
2555To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
2556benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
2557EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
2558cycles with POE.
2559
2560C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
2561maximal/minimal, respectively. When using the L<AE> API there is zero
2562overhead (when going through the AnyEvent API create is about 5-6 times
2563slower, with other times being equal, so still uses far less memory than
2564any other event loop and is still faster than Event natively).
2565
2566The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
2567constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
2568interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
2569adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
2570performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
2571them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
2572
2573The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
2574cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
2575
2576C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
2577when using its pure perl backend.
2578
2579C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
2580faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
2581C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
2582watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
2583making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
2584(note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
2585inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
2586
2587The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
2588more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
2589precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
2590file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
2591employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
2592hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
2593above).
2594
2595C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
2596select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
2597be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
2598memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
2599as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
2600requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
2601invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
2602implementation.
2603
2604The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
2605for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
2606small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
2607optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
2608using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
2609memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
2610design).
2611
2612=head3 Summary
2613
2614=over 4
2615
2616=item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
2617(even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
2618performance with or without AnyEvent.
2619
2620=item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
2621the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
2622does AnyEvent add significant overhead.
2623
2624=item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
2625reasonable memory usage.
2626
2627=back
2628
2629=head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
2630
2631This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
2632creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
2633timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
2634watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
2635watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
2636
2637The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
2638are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
2639fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
2640timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
2641most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
2642
2643In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
2644(1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
2645connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
2646
2647Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
2648distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2649for the EV and Perl backends only.
2650
2651=head3 Explanation of the columns
2652
2653I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
2654each server has a read and write socket end).
2655
2656I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
2657nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
2658
2659I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
2660single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
2661it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
2662a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
2663
2664=head3 Results
2665
2666 name sockets create request
2667 EV 20000 62.66 7.99
2668 Perl 20000 68.32 32.64
2669 IOAsync 20000 174.06 101.15 epoll
2670 IOAsync 20000 174.67 610.84 poll
2671 Event 20000 202.69 242.91
2672 Glib 20000 557.01 1689.52
2673 POE 20000 341.54 12086.32 uses POE::Loop::Event
2674
2675=head3 Discussion
2676
2677This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
2678particular event loop.
2679
2680EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
2681is relatively high, though.
2682
2683Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
2684loops Event and Glib.
2685
2686IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
2687good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
2688
2689Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
2690understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
2691the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
2692uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
2693
2694Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
2695clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
2696
2697POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
2698as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
2699it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
2700
2701=head3 Summary
2702
2703=over 4
2704
2705=item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
2706
2707=item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
2708
2709=back
2710
2711=head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
2712
2713While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
2714large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
2715I/O watchers.
2716
2717In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
2718case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
2719one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
2720well.
2721
2722The columns are identical to the previous table.
2723
2724=head3 Results
2725
2726 name sockets create request
2727 EV 16 20.00 6.54
2728 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
2729 Event 16 81.27 35.86
2730 Glib 16 32.63 15.48
2731 POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
2732
2733=head3 Discussion
2734
2735The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
2736server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
2737in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
2738to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
2739speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
2740them).
2741
2742EV is again fastest.
2743
2744Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
2745loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
2746matter.
2747
2748POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
2749others.
2750
2751=head3 Summary
2752
2753=over 4
2754
2755=item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
2756watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
2757
2758=back
2759
2760=head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
2761
2762Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
2763could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
2764simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
2765shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
2766fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
2767very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
2768baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
2769
2770The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
2771connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
2772creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
2773test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
2774benchmark nevertheless.
2775
2776 name runtime
2777 Lambda/select 0.330 sec
2778 + optimized 0.122 sec
2779 Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
2780 + optimized 0.138 sec
2781 Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
2782 POE/select, components 0.662 sec
2783 POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
2784 POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
2785
2786 AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
2787 AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
2788 +state machine 0.134 sec
2789
2790The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2791benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2792defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2793written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2794AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2795resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2796generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2797connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2798
2799The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2800offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2801Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2802non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2803
2804As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2805hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2806backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2807
2808And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2809slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda
2810higher level ("unoptimised") abstractions by a large margin, even though
2811it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O in a non-blocking way.
2812
2813The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2814F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2815part of the IO::Lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2816
2817
2818=head1 SIGNALS
2819
2820AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2821
2822=over 4
2823
2824=item SIGCHLD
2825
2826A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2827emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2828event loops install a similar handler.
2829
2830Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then
2831AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2832
2833=item SIGPIPE
2834
2835A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2836when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2837
2838The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2839on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2840badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2841program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2842some random socket.
2843
2844The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2845that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2846
2847Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2848
2849=back
2850
2851=cut
2852
2853undef $SIG{CHLD}
2854 if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2855
2856$SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2857 unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2858
2859=head1 RECOMMENDED/OPTIONAL MODULES
2860
2861One of AnyEvent's main goals is to be 100% Pure-Perl(tm): only perl (and
2862its built-in modules) are required to use it.
2863
2864That does not mean that AnyEvent won't take advantage of some additional
2865modules if they are installed.
2866
2867This section explains which additional modules will be used, and how they
2868affect AnyEvent's operation.
2869
2870=over 4
2871
2872=item L<Async::Interrupt>
2873
2874This slightly arcane module is used to implement fast signal handling: To
2875my knowledge, there is no way to do completely race-free and quick
2876signal handling in pure perl. To ensure that signals still get
2877delivered, AnyEvent will start an interval timer to wake up perl (and
2878catch the signals) with some delay (default is 10 seconds, look for
2879C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>).
2880
2881If this module is available, then it will be used to implement signal
2882catching, which means that signals will not be delayed, and the event loop
2883will not be interrupted regularly, which is more efficient (and good for
2884battery life on laptops).
2885
2886This affects not just the pure-perl event loop, but also other event loops
2887that have no signal handling on their own (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt).
2888
2889Some event loops (POE, Event, Event::Lib) offer signal watchers natively,
2890and either employ their own workarounds (POE) or use AnyEvent's workaround
2891(using C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>). Installing L<Async::Interrupt>
2892does nothing for those backends.
2893
2894=item L<EV>
2895
2896This module isn't really "optional", as it is simply one of the backend
2897event loops that AnyEvent can use. However, it is simply the best event
2898loop available in terms of features, speed and stability: It supports
2899the AnyEvent API optimally, implements all the watcher types in XS, does
2900automatic timer adjustments even when no monotonic clock is available,
2901can take avdantage of advanced kernel interfaces such as C<epoll> and
2902C<kqueue>, and is the fastest backend I<by far>. You can even embed
2903L<Glib>/L<Gtk2> in it (or vice versa, see L<EV::Glib> and L<Glib::EV>).
2904
2905If you only use backends that rely on another event loop (e.g. C<Tk>),
2906then this module will do nothing for you.
2907
2908=item L<Guard>
2909
2910The guard module, when used, will be used to implement
2911C<AnyEvent::Util::guard>. This speeds up guards considerably (and uses a
2912lot less memory), but otherwise doesn't affect guard operation much. It is
2913purely used for performance.
2914
2915=item L<JSON> and L<JSON::XS>
2916
2917One of these modules is required when you want to read or write JSON data
2918via L<AnyEvent::Handle>. L<JSON> is also written in pure-perl, but can take
2919advantage of the ultra-high-speed L<JSON::XS> module when it is installed.
2920
2921=item L<Net::SSLeay>
2922
2923Implementing TLS/SSL in Perl is certainly interesting, but not very
2924worthwhile: If this module is installed, then L<AnyEvent::Handle> (with
2925the help of L<AnyEvent::TLS>), gains the ability to do TLS/SSL.
2926
2927=item L<Time::HiRes>
2928
2929This module is part of perl since release 5.008. It will be used when the
2930chosen event library does not come with a timing source of its own. The
2931pure-perl event loop (L<AnyEvent::Loop>) will additionally load it to
2932try to use a monotonic clock for timing stability.
2933
2934=item L<AnyEvent::AIO> (and L<IO::AIO>)
2935
2936The default implementation of L<AnyEvent::IO> is to do I/O synchronously,
2937stopping programs while they access the disk, which is fine for a lot of
2938programs.
2939
2940Installing AnyEvent::AIO (and its IO::AIO dependency) makes it switch to
2941a true asynchronous implementation, so event processing can continue even
2942while waiting for disk I/O.
2943
2944=back
2945
2946
2947=head1 FORK
2948
2949Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2950because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll> calls
2951- higher performance APIs such as BSD's kqueue or the dreaded Linux epoll
2952are usually badly thought-out hacks that are incompatible with fork in
2953one way or another. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware and ensures that you
2954continue event-processing in both parent and child (or both, if you know
2955what you are doing).
2956
2957This means that, in general, you cannot fork and do event processing in
2958the child if the event library was initialised before the fork (which
2959usually happens when the first AnyEvent watcher is created, or the library
2960is loaded).
2961
2962If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2963watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child OR you must do
2964something completely out of the scope of AnyEvent.
2965
2966The problem of doing event processing in the parent I<and> the child
2967is much more complicated: even for backends that I<are> fork-aware or
2968fork-safe, their behaviour is not usually what you want: fork clones all
2969watchers, that means all timers, I/O watchers etc. are active in both
2970parent and child, which is almost never what you want. USing C<exec>
2971to start worker children from some kind of manage rprocess is usually
2972preferred, because it is much easier and cleaner, at the expense of having
2973to have another binary.
2974
2975
2976=head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2977
2978AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2979$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2980execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2981make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2982will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2983specified in the variable.
2984
2985You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2986before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2987
2988 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2989
2990 use AnyEvent;
2991
2992Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2993be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2994probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2995$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2996
2997Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2998C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2999enabled.
3000
3001
3002=head1 BUGS
3003
3004Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
3005to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
3006and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
3007memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
3008pronounced).
3009
680 3010
681=head1 SEE ALSO 3011=head1 SEE ALSO
682 3012
683Event modules: L<Coro::Event>, L<Coro>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>. 3013Tutorial/Introduction: L<AnyEvent::Intro>.
684 3014
685Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::Coro>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>. 3015FAQ: L<AnyEvent::FAQ>.
686 3016
687Nontrivial usage example: L<Net::FCP>. 3017Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util> (misc. grab-bag), L<AnyEvent::Log>
3018(simply logging).
688 3019
689=head1 3020Development/Debugging: L<AnyEvent::Strict> (stricter checking),
3021L<AnyEvent::Debug> (interactive shell, watcher tracing).
3022
3023Supported event modules: L<AnyEvent::Loop>, L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>,
3024L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>,
3025L<Qt>, L<POE>, L<FLTK>.
3026
3027Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
3028L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
3029L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
3030L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync>, L<Anyevent::Impl::Irssi>,
3031L<AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK>.
3032
3033Non-blocking handles, pipes, stream sockets, TCP clients and
3034servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>, L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
3035
3036Asynchronous File I/O: L<AnyEvent::IO>.
3037
3038Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
3039
3040Thread support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>, L<Coro::Event>.
3041
3042Nontrivial usage examples: L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>,
3043L<AnyEvent::HTTP>.
3044
3045
3046=head1 AUTHOR
3047
3048 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
3049 http://anyevent.schmorp.de
690 3050
691=cut 3051=cut
692 3052
6931 30531
694 3054

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