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Revision 1.378 by root, Fri Aug 26 18:08:07 2011 UTC

1=head1 NAME 1=head1 NAME
2 2
3AnyEvent - ??? 3AnyEvent - the DBI of event loop programming
4
5EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Irssi, rxvt-unicode, IO::Async, Qt,
6FLTK and POE are various supported event loops/environments.
4 7
5=head1 SYNOPSIS 8=head1 SYNOPSIS
6 9
10 use AnyEvent;
11
12 # if you prefer function calls, look at the AE manpage for
13 # an alternative API.
14
15 # file handle or descriptor readable
16 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
17
18 # one-shot or repeating timers
19 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
20 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...);
21
22 print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
23 print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
24
25 # POSIX signal
26 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
27
28 # child process exit
29 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
30 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
31 ...
32 });
33
34 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
35 my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
36
37 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
38 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
39 $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
40 # use a condvar in callback mode:
41 $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
42
43=head1 INTRODUCTION/TUTORIAL
44
45This manpage is mainly a reference manual. If you are interested
46in a tutorial or some gentle introduction, have a look at the
47L<AnyEvent::Intro> manpage.
48
49=head1 SUPPORT
50
51An FAQ document is available as L<AnyEvent::FAQ>.
52
53There also is a mailinglist for discussing all things AnyEvent, and an IRC
54channel, too.
55
56See the AnyEvent project page at the B<Schmorpforge Ta-Sa Software
57Repository>, at L<http://anyevent.schmorp.de>, for more info.
58
59=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
60
61Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
62nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
63
64Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of
65policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>.
66
67First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only
68interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
69pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
70the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
71only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process. AnyEvent
72cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between those event
73loops.
74
75The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
76programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
77religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
78module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
79model you use.
80
81For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
82actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is
83like joining a cult: After you join, you are dependent on them and you
84cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
85that isn't them. What's worse, all the potential users of your
86module are I<also> forced to use the same event loop you use.
87
88AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
89fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
90with the rest: POE + EV? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if your module
91uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it, too. But if
92your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all event models it
93supports (including stuff like IO::Async, as long as those use one of the
94supported event loops. It is easy to add new event loops to AnyEvent, too,
95so it is future-proof).
96
97In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
98model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
99modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
100follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and to the point, by only
101offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
102technically possible.
103
104Of course, AnyEvent comes with a big (and fully optional!) toolbox
105of useful functionality, such as an asynchronous DNS resolver, 100%
106non-blocking connects (even with TLS/SSL, IPv6 and on broken platforms
107such as Windows) and lots of real-world knowledge and workarounds for
108platform bugs and differences.
109
110Now, if you I<do want> lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
111useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
112model, you should I<not> use this module.
113
7=head1 DESCRIPTION 114=head1 DESCRIPTION
8 115
116L<AnyEvent> provides a uniform interface to various event loops. This
117allows module authors to use event loop functionality without forcing
118module users to use a specific event loop implementation (since more
119than one event loop cannot coexist peacefully).
120
121The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
122module.
123
124During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
125to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
126following modules is already loaded: L<EV>, L<AnyEvent::Loop>,
127L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>, L<POE>. The first one
128found is used. If none are detected, the module tries to load the first
129four modules in the order given; but note that if L<EV> is not
130available, the pure-perl L<AnyEvent::Loop> should always work, so
131the other two are not normally tried.
132
133Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
134an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
135that model the default. For example:
136
137 use Tk;
138 use AnyEvent;
139
140 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
141
142The I<likely> means that, if any module loads another event model and
143starts using it, all bets are off - this case should be very rare though,
144as very few modules hardcode event loops without announcing this very
145loudly.
146
147The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called C<AnyEvent::Loop>. Like
148other event modules you can load it explicitly and enjoy the high
149availability of that event loop :)
150
151=head1 WATCHERS
152
153AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that
154stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
155the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
156
157These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
158creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the
159callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model
160is in control).
161
162Note that B<callbacks must not permanently change global variables>
163potentially in use by the event loop (such as C<$_> or C<$[>) and that B<<
164callbacks must not C<die> >>. The former is good programming practice in
165Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
166widely between event loops.
167
168To disable a watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
169variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
170to it).
171
172All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
173
174Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for
175example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways.
176
177One way to achieve that is this pattern:
178
179 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub {
180 # you can use $w here, for example to undef it
181 undef $w;
182 });
183
184Note that C<my $w; $w => combination. This is necessary because in Perl,
185my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are
186declared.
187
188=head2 I/O WATCHERS
189
190 $w = AnyEvent->io (
191 fh => <filehandle_or_fileno>,
192 poll => <"r" or "w">,
193 cb => <callback>,
194 );
195
196You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method
197with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
198
199C<fh> is the Perl I<file handle> (or a naked file descriptor) to watch
200for events (AnyEvent might or might not keep a reference to this file
201handle). Note that only file handles pointing to things for which
202non-blocking operation makes sense are allowed. This includes sockets,
203most character devices, pipes, fifos and so on, but not for example files
204or block devices.
205
206C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which creates a
207watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
208
209C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
210
211Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
212presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
213callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
214
215The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of it.
216You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on the
217underlying file descriptor.
218
219Some event loops issue spurious readiness notifications, so you should
220always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
221handles.
222
223Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
224watcher.
225
226 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
227 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
228 warn "read: $input\n";
229 undef $w;
230 });
231
232=head2 TIME WATCHERS
233
234 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => <seconds>, cb => <callback>);
235
236 $w = AnyEvent->timer (
237 after => <fractional_seconds>,
238 interval => <fractional_seconds>,
239 cb => <callback>,
240 );
241
242You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
243method with the following mandatory arguments:
244
245C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
246supported) the callback should be invoked. C<cb> is the callback to invoke
247in that case.
248
249Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
250presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
251callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
252
253The callback will normally be invoked only once. If you specify another
254parameter, C<interval>, as a strictly positive number (> 0), then the
255callback will be invoked regularly at that interval (in fractional
256seconds) after the first invocation. If C<interval> is specified with a
257false value, then it is treated as if it were not specified at all.
258
259The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
260attempt is made to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval is
261only approximate.
262
263Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
264
265 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
266 warn "timeout\n";
267 });
268
269 # to cancel the timer:
270 undef $w;
271
272Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
273
274 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
275 warn "timeout\n";
276 };
277
278=head3 TIMING ISSUES
279
280There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
281in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
282o'clock").
283
284While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way, they
285use absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your clock
286"jumps", for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards from
287the wrong date of 2014-01-01 to 2008-01-01, a watcher that is supposed to
288fire "after a second" might actually take six years to finally fire.
289
290AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious
291of these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer, based
292on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on wallclock time)
293timers.
294
295AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
296AnyEvent API.
297
298AnyEvent has two additional methods that return the "current time":
299
9=over 4 300=over 4
10 301
302=item AnyEvent->time
303
304This returns the "current wallclock time" as a fractional number of
305seconds since the Epoch (the same thing as C<time> or C<Time::HiRes::time>
306return, and the result is guaranteed to be compatible with those).
307
308It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each call
309will check the system clock, which usually gets updated frequently.
310
311=item AnyEvent->now
312
313This also returns the "current wallclock time", but unlike C<time>, above,
314this value might change only once per event loop iteration, depending on
315the event loop (most return the same time as C<time>, above). This is the
316time that AnyEvent's timers get scheduled against.
317
318I<In almost all cases (in all cases if you don't care), this is the
319function to call when you want to know the current time.>
320
321This function is also often faster then C<< AnyEvent->time >>, and
322thus the preferred method if you want some timestamp (for example,
323L<AnyEvent::Handle> uses this to update its activity timeouts).
324
325The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very exact
326with your timing; you can skip it without a bad conscience.
327
328For a practical example of when these times differ, consider L<Event::Lib>
329and L<EV> and the following set-up:
330
331The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callbacks at
332time=500 (assume no other callbacks delay processing). In your callback,
333you wait a second by executing C<sleep 1> (blocking the process for a
334second) and then (at time=501) you create a relative timer that fires
335after three seconds.
336
337With L<Event::Lib>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> will
338both return C<501>, because that is the current time, and the timer will
339be scheduled to fire at time=504 (C<501> + C<3>).
340
341With L<EV>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> returns C<501> (as that is the current
342time), but C<< AnyEvent->now >> returns C<500>, as that is the time the
343last event processing phase started. With L<EV>, your timer gets scheduled
344to run at time=503 (C<500> + C<3>).
345
346In one sense, L<Event::Lib> is more exact, as it uses the current time
347regardless of any delays introduced by event processing. However, most
348callbacks do not expect large delays in processing, so this causes a
349higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the current time).
350
351In another sense, L<EV> is more exact, as your timer will be scheduled at
352the same time, regardless of how long event processing actually took.
353
354In either case, if you care (and in most cases, you don't), then you
355can get whatever behaviour you want with any event loop, by taking the
356difference between C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> into
357account.
358
359=item AnyEvent->now_update
360
361Some event loops (such as L<EV> or L<AnyEvent::Loop>) cache the current
362time for each loop iteration (see the discussion of L<< AnyEvent->now >>,
363above).
364
365When a callback runs for a long time (or when the process sleeps), then
366this "current" time will differ substantially from the real time, which
367might affect timers and time-outs.
368
369When this is the case, you can call this method, which will update the
370event loop's idea of "current time".
371
372A typical example would be a script in a web server (e.g. C<mod_perl>) -
373when mod_perl executes the script, then the event loop will have the wrong
374idea about the "current time" (being potentially far in the past, when the
375script ran the last time). In that case you should arrange a call to C<<
376AnyEvent->now_update >> each time the web server process wakes up again
377(e.g. at the start of your script, or in a handler).
378
379Note that updating the time I<might> cause some events to be handled.
380
381=back
382
383=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS
384
385 $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => <uppercase_signal_name>, cb => <callback>);
386
387You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal
388I<name> in uppercase and without any C<SIG> prefix, C<cb> is the Perl
389callback to be invoked whenever a signal occurs.
390
391Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
392presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
393callbacks cannot use arguments passed to signal watcher callbacks.
394
395Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
396invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous means
397that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process,
398but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
399
400The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal
401between multiple watchers, and AnyEvent will ensure that signals will not
402interrupt your program at bad times.
403
404This watcher might use C<%SIG> (depending on the event loop used),
405so programs overwriting those signals directly will likely not work
406correctly.
407
408Example: exit on SIGINT
409
410 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
411
412=head3 Restart Behaviour
413
414While restart behaviour is up to the event loop implementation, most will
415not restart syscalls (that includes L<Async::Interrupt> and AnyEvent's
416pure perl implementation).
417
418=head3 Safe/Unsafe Signals
419
420Perl signals can be either "safe" (synchronous to opcode handling) or
421"unsafe" (asynchronous) - the former might get delayed indefinitely, the
422latter might corrupt your memory.
423
424AnyEvent signal handlers are, in addition, synchronous to the event loop,
425i.e. they will not interrupt your running perl program but will only be
426called as part of the normal event handling (just like timer, I/O etc.
427callbacks, too).
428
429=head3 Signal Races, Delays and Workarounds
430
431Many event loops (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt, IO::Async) do not support attaching
432callbacks to signals in a generic way, which is a pity, as you cannot
433do race-free signal handling in perl, requiring C libraries for
434this. AnyEvent will try to do its best, which means in some cases,
435signals will be delayed. The maximum time a signal might be delayed is
436specified in C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY> (default: 10 seconds). This
437variable can be changed only before the first signal watcher is created,
438and should be left alone otherwise. This variable determines how often
439AnyEvent polls for signals (in case a wake-up was missed). Higher values
440will cause fewer spurious wake-ups, which is better for power and CPU
441saving.
442
443All these problems can be avoided by installing the optional
444L<Async::Interrupt> module, which works with most event loops. It will not
445work with inherently broken event loops such as L<Event> or L<Event::Lib>
446(and not with L<POE> currently, as POE does its own workaround with
447one-second latency). For those, you just have to suffer the delays.
448
449=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
450
451 $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => <process id>, cb => <callback>);
452
453You can also watch for a child process exit and catch its exit status.
454
455The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (on some backends,
456using C<0> watches for any child process exit, on others this will
457croak). The watcher will be triggered only when the child process has
458finished and an exit status is available, not on any trace events
459(stopped/continued).
460
461The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
462waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you I<can> rely on child watcher
463callback arguments.
464
465This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>,
466and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
467random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g. inside
468C<system>, is just fine).
469
470There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start them
471I<after> the child process was created, and this means the process could
472have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
473
474Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async do,
475see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event models
476that I<do> handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded before
477the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place). AnyEvent's
478pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless of when you
479start the watcher.
480
481This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first
482thing in an AnyEvent program, you I<have> to create at least one
483watcher before you C<fork> the child (alternatively, you can call
484C<AnyEvent::detect>).
485
486As most event loops do not support waiting for child events, they will be
487emulated by AnyEvent in most cases, in which case the latency and race
488problems mentioned in the description of signal watchers apply.
489
490Example: fork a process and wait for it
491
492 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
493
494 my $pid = fork or exit 5;
495
496 my $w = AnyEvent->child (
497 pid => $pid,
498 cb => sub {
499 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
500 warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
501 $done->send;
502 },
503 );
504
505 # do something else, then wait for process exit
506 $done->recv;
507
508=head2 IDLE WATCHERS
509
510 $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => <callback>);
511
512This will repeatedly invoke the callback after the process becomes idle,
513until either the watcher is destroyed or new events have been detected.
514
515Idle watchers are useful when there is a need to do something, but it
516is not so important (or wise) to do it instantly. The callback will be
517invoked only when there is "nothing better to do", which is usually
518defined as "all outstanding events have been handled and no new events
519have been detected". That means that idle watchers ideally get invoked
520when the event loop has just polled for new events but none have been
521detected. Instead of blocking to wait for more events, the idle watchers
522will be invoked.
523
524Unfortunately, most event loops do not really support idle watchers (only
525EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest, AnyEvent
526will simply call the callback "from time to time".
527
528Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the
529program is otherwise idle:
530
531 my @lines; # read data
532 my $idle_w;
533 my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
534 push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
535
536 # start an idle watcher, if not already done
537 $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
538 # handle only one line, when there are lines left
539 if (my $line = shift @lines) {
540 print "handled when idle: $line";
541 } else {
542 # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
543 undef $idle_w;
544 }
545 });
546 });
547
548=head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
549
550 $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
551
552 $cv->send (<list>);
553 my @res = $cv->recv;
554
555If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
556require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
557will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
558
559AnyEvent is slightly different: it expects somebody else to run the event
560loop and will only block when necessary (usually when told by the user).
561
562The tool to do that is called a "condition variable", so called because
563they represent a condition that must become true.
564
565Now is probably a good time to look at the examples further below.
566
567Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar
568>> method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
569C<cb>, which specifies a callback to be called when the condition variable
570becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
571the results).
572
573After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
574by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
575were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
576->send >> method).
577
578Since condition variables are the most complex part of the AnyEvent API, here are
579some different mental models of what they are - pick the ones you can connect to:
580
581=over 4
582
583=item * Condition variables are like callbacks - you can call them (and pass them instead
584of callbacks). Unlike callbacks however, you can also wait for them to be called.
585
586=item * Condition variables are signals - one side can emit or send them,
587the other side can wait for them, or install a handler that is called when
588the signal fires.
589
590=item * Condition variables are like "Merge Points" - points in your program
591where you merge multiple independent results/control flows into one.
592
593=item * Condition variables represent a transaction - functions that start
594some kind of transaction can return them, leaving the caller the choice
595between waiting in a blocking fashion, or setting a callback.
596
597=item * Condition variables represent future values, or promises to deliver
598some result, long before the result is available.
599
600=back
601
602Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has finished,
603for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests,
604then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
605availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
606called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
607
608You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
609you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
610could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
611button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
612
613Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
614two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
615lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but
616you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks,
617as this asks for trouble.
618
619Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
620used by AnyEvent itself are all named C<_ae_XXX> to make subclassing
621easy (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
622AnyEvent). To subclass, use C<AnyEvent::CondVar> as base class and call
623its C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
624
625There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
626eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
627for the send to occur.
628
629Example: wait for a timer.
630
631 # condition: "wait till the timer is fired"
632 my $timer_fired = AnyEvent->condvar;
633
634 # create the timer - we could wait for, say
635 # a handle becomign ready, or even an
636 # AnyEvent::HTTP request to finish, but
637 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
638 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
639 after => 1,
640 cb => sub { $timer_fired->send },
641 );
642
643 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
644 # calls ->send
645 $timer_fired->recv;
646
647Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that condition
648variables are also callable directly.
649
650 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
651 my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
652 $done->recv;
653
654Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
655callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from
656the main program:
657
658 use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
659
660 ...
661
662 my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
663
664And this is how you would just set a callback to be called whenever the
665results are available:
666
667 $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
668 my @info = $_[0]->recv;
669 });
670
671=head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
672
673These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
674code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
675the producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
676uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
677
678=over 4
679
680=item $cv->send (...)
681
682Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->recv >> and all further
683calls to C<recv> will (eventually) return after this method has been
684called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
685
686If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
687immediately from within send.
688
689Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
690future C<< ->recv >> calls.
691
692Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly (as if
693they were a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as calling
694C<send>.
695
696=item $cv->croak ($error)
697
698Similar to send, but causes all calls to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
699C<Carp::croak> with the given error message/object/scalar.
700
701This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
702user/consumer. Doing it this way instead of calling C<croak> directly
703delays the error detection, but has the overwhelming advantage that it
704diagnoses the error at the place where the result is expected, and not
705deep in some event callback with no connection to the actual code causing
706the problem.
707
708=item $cv->begin ([group callback])
709
710=item $cv->end
711
712These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events into
713one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel might want
714to use a condition variable for the whole process.
715
716Every call to C<< ->begin >> will increment a counter, and every call to
717C<< ->end >> will decrement it. If the counter reaches C<0> in C<< ->end
718>>, the (last) callback passed to C<begin> will be executed, passing the
719condvar as first argument. That callback is I<supposed> to call C<< ->send
720>>, but that is not required. If no group callback was set, C<send> will
721be called without any arguments.
722
723You can think of C<< $cv->send >> giving you an OR condition (one call
724sends), while C<< $cv->begin >> and C<< $cv->end >> giving you an AND
725condition (all C<begin> calls must be C<end>'ed before the condvar sends).
726
727Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for example,
728STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for both streams to
729close before activating a condvar:
730
731 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
732
733 $cv->begin; # first watcher
734 my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
735 defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
736 or $cv->end;
737 });
738
739 $cv->begin; # second watcher
740 my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
741 defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
742 or $cv->end;
743 });
744
745 $cv->recv;
746
747This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle), there is
748one call to C<begin>, so the condvar waits for all calls to C<end> before
749sending.
750
751The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as the
752there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks that are
753begun can potentially be zero:
754
755 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
756
757 my %result;
758 $cv->begin (sub { shift->send (\%result) });
759
760 for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
761 $cv->begin;
762 ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
763 $result{$host} = ...;
764 $cv->end;
765 };
766 }
767
768 $cv->end;
769
770This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
771C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
772order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to C<begin> when it starts
773each ping request and calls C<end> when it has received some result for
774it. Since C<begin> and C<end> only maintain a counter, the order in which
775results arrive is not relevant.
776
777There is an additional bracketing call to C<begin> and C<end> outside the
778loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the callback
779to be called once the counter reaches C<0>, and second, it ensures that
780C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
781doesn't execute once).
782
783This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
784potentially zero) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
785the callback and ensure C<end> is called at least once, and then, for each
786subrequest you start, call C<begin> and for each subrequest you finish,
787call C<end>.
788
789=back
790
791=head3 METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
792
793These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the
794code awaits the condition.
795
796=over 4
797
798=item $cv->recv
799
800Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
801>> methods have been called on C<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
802normally.
803
804You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid but
805will return immediately.
806
807If an error condition has been set by calling C<< ->croak >>, then this
808function will call C<croak>.
809
810In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
811in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
812
813Note that doing a blocking wait in a callback is not supported by any
814event loop, that is, recursive invocation of a blocking C<< ->recv
815>> is not allowed, and the C<recv> call will C<croak> if such a
816condition is detected. This condition can be slightly loosened by using
817L<Coro::AnyEvent>, which allows you to do a blocking C<< ->recv >> from
818any thread that doesn't run the event loop itself.
819
820Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
821(programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
822using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>. Instead, let the
823caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
824condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
825callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
826while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
827
828You can ensure that C<< ->recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
829only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
830time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
831waits otherwise.
832
833=item $bool = $cv->ready
834
835Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether C<send> or
836C<croak> have been called.
837
838=item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
839
840This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
841replaces it before doing so.
842
843The callback will be called when the condition becomes "true", i.e. when
844C<send> or C<croak> are called, with the only argument being the
845condition variable itself. If the condition is already true, the
846callback is called immediately when it is set. Calling C<recv> inside
847the callback or at any later time is guaranteed not to block.
848
849=back
850
851=head1 SUPPORTED EVENT LOOPS/BACKENDS
852
853The available backend classes are (every class has its own manpage):
854
855=over 4
856
857=item Backends that are autoprobed when no other event loop can be found.
858
859EV is the preferred backend when no other event loop seems to be in
860use. If EV is not installed, then AnyEvent will fall back to its own
861pure-perl implementation, which is available everywhere as it comes with
862AnyEvent itself.
863
864 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
865 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl AnyEvent::Loop, fast and portable.
866
867=item Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
868
869These will be used if they are already loaded when the first watcher
870is created, in which case it is assumed that the application is using
871them. This means that AnyEvent will automatically pick the right backend
872when the main program loads an event module before anything starts to
873create watchers. Nothing special needs to be done by the main program.
874
875 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
876 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, slow but very stable.
877 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very broken.
878 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
879 AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, very slow, some limitations.
880 AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi used when running within irssi.
881 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async.
882 AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa based on Cocoa::EventLoop.
883 AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK based on FLTK (fltk 2 binding).
884
885=item Backends with special needs.
886
887Qt requires the Qt::Application to be instantiated first, but will
888otherwise be picked up automatically. As long as the main program
889instantiates the application before any AnyEvent watchers are created,
890everything should just work.
891
892 AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt.
893
894=item Event loops that are indirectly supported via other backends.
895
896Some event loops can be supported via other modules:
897
898There is no direct support for WxWidgets (L<Wx>) or L<Prima>.
899
900B<WxWidgets> has no support for watching file handles. However, you can
901use WxWidgets through the POE adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that simply
902polls 20 times per second, which was considered to be too horrible to even
903consider for AnyEvent.
904
905B<Prima> is not supported as nobody seems to be using it, but it has a POE
906backend, so it can be supported through POE.
907
908AnyEvent knows about both L<Prima> and L<Wx>, however, and will try to
909load L<POE> when detecting them, in the hope that POE will pick them up,
910in which case everything will be automatic.
911
912=back
913
914=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
915
916These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
917write AnyEvent extension modules.
918
919=over 4
920
921=item $AnyEvent::MODEL
922
923Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created, before the
924backend has been autodetected.
925
926Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is the
927name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one
928of the C<AnyEvent::Impl::xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the
929case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode> it
930will be C<urxvt::anyevent>).
931
932=item AnyEvent::detect
933
934Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model
935if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would
936have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at
937runtime, and not e.g. during initialisation of your module.
938
939The effect of calling this function is as if a watcher had been created
940(specifically, actions that happen "when the first watcher is created"
941happen when calling detetc as well).
942
943If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
944created, use C<post_detect>.
945
946=item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
947
948Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
949autodetected (or immediately if that has already happened).
950
951The block will be executed I<after> the actual backend has been detected
952(C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> is set), but I<before> any watchers have been
953created, so it is possible to e.g. patch C<@AnyEvent::ISA> or do
954other initialisations - see the sources of L<AnyEvent::Strict> or
955L<AnyEvent::AIO> to see how this is used.
956
957The most common usage is to create some global watchers, without forcing
958event module detection too early, for example, L<AnyEvent::AIO> creates
959and installs the global L<IO::AIO> watcher in a C<post_detect> block to
960avoid autodetecting the event module at load time.
961
962If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
963that automatically removes the callback again when it is destroyed (or
964C<undef> when the hook was immediately executed). See L<AnyEvent::AIO> for
965a case where this is useful.
966
967Example: Create a watcher for the IO::AIO module and store it in
968C<$WATCHER>, but do so only do so after the event loop is initialised.
969
970 our WATCHER;
971
972 my $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect {
973 $WATCHER = AnyEvent->io (fh => IO::AIO::poll_fileno, poll => 'r', cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
974 };
975
976 # the ||= is important in case post_detect immediately runs the block,
977 # as to not clobber the newly-created watcher. assigning both watcher and
978 # post_detect guard to the same variable has the advantage of users being
979 # able to just C<undef $WATCHER> if the watcher causes them grief.
980
981 $WATCHER ||= $guard;
982
983=item @AnyEvent::post_detect
984
985If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
986before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will be called directly
987after the event loop has been chosen.
988
989You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
990if it is defined then the event loop has already been detected, and the
991array will be ignored.
992
993Best use C<AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }> when your application allows
994it, as it takes care of these details.
995
996This variable is mainly useful for modules that can do something useful
997when AnyEvent is used and thus want to know when it is initialised, but do
998not need to even load it by default. This array provides the means to hook
999into AnyEvent passively, without loading it.
1000
1001Example: To load Coro::AnyEvent whenever Coro and AnyEvent are used
1002together, you could put this into Coro (this is the actual code used by
1003Coro to accomplish this):
1004
1005 if (defined $AnyEvent::MODEL) {
1006 # AnyEvent already initialised, so load Coro::AnyEvent
1007 require Coro::AnyEvent;
1008 } else {
1009 # AnyEvent not yet initialised, so make sure to load Coro::AnyEvent
1010 # as soon as it is
1011 push @AnyEvent::post_detect, sub { require Coro::AnyEvent };
1012 }
1013
1014=item AnyEvent::postpone { BLOCK }
1015
1016Arranges for the block to be executed as soon as possible, but not before
1017the call itself returns. In practise, the block will be executed just
1018before the event loop polls for new events, or shortly afterwards.
1019
1020This function never returns anything (to make the C<return postpone { ...
1021}> idiom more useful.
1022
1023To understand the usefulness of this function, consider a function that
1024asynchronously does something for you and returns some transaction
1025object or guard to let you cancel the operation. For example,
1026C<AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect>:
1027
1028 # start a conenction attempt unless one is active
1029 $self->{connect_guard} ||= AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect "www.example.net", 80, sub {
1030 delete $self->{connect_guard};
1031 ...
1032 };
1033
1034Imagine that this function could instantly call the callback, for
1035example, because it detects an obvious error such as a negative port
1036number. Invoking the callback before the function returns causes problems
1037however: the callback will be called and will try to delete the guard
1038object. But since the function hasn't returned yet, there is nothing to
1039delete. When the function eventually returns it will assign the guard
1040object to C<< $self->{connect_guard} >>, where it will likely never be
1041deleted, so the program thinks it is still trying to connect.
1042
1043This is where C<AnyEvent::postpone> should be used. Instead of calling the
1044callback directly on error:
1045
1046 $cb->(undef), return # signal error to callback, BAD!
1047 if $some_error_condition;
1048
1049It should use C<postpone>:
1050
1051 AnyEvent::postpone { $cb->(undef) }, return # signal error to callback, later
1052 if $some_error_condition;
1053
1054=item AnyEvent::log $level, $msg[, @args]
1055
1056Log the given C<$msg> at the given C<$level>.
1057
1058If L<AnyEvent::Log> is not loaded then this function makes a simple test
1059to see whether the message will be logged. If the test succeeds it will
1060load AnyEvent::Log and call C<AnyEvent::Log::log> - consequently, look at
1061the L<AnyEvent::Log> documentation for details.
1062
1063If the test fails it will simply return.
1064
1065If you want to sprinkle loads of logging calls around your code, consider
1066creating a logger callback with the C<AnyEvent::Log::logger> function,
1067which can reduce typing, codesize and can reduce the logging overhead
1068enourmously.
1069
1070=back
1071
1072=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
1073
1074As a module author, you should C<use AnyEvent> and call AnyEvent methods
1075freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
1076
1077Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
1078decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
1079by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
1080to load the event module first.
1081
1082Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
1083the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
1084because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
1085events is to stay interactive.
1086
1087It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
1088requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
1089called C<results> that returns the results, it may call C<< ->recv >>
1090freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. Always).
1091
1092=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
1093
1094There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
1095dictate which event model to use.
1096
1097If the program is not event-based, it need not do anything special, even
1098when it depends on a module that uses an AnyEvent. If the program itself
1099uses AnyEvent, but does not care which event loop is used, all it needs
1100to do is C<use AnyEvent>. In either case, AnyEvent will choose the best
1101available loop implementation.
1102
1103If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
1104Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
1105event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
1106speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
1107modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
1108decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
1109might choose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
1110
1111You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
1112C<AnyEvent::Loop> module, which gives you similar behaviour
1113everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
1114
1115=head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
1116
1117Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
1118only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
1119
1120In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
1121
1122 AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
1123
1124This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
1125
1126Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
1127it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
1128variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
1129exit cleanly.
1130
1131
1132=head1 OTHER MODULES
1133
1134The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
1135AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other
1136AnyEvent modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the
1137modules come as part of AnyEvent, the others are available via CPAN (see
1138L<http://search.cpan.org/search?m=module&q=anyevent%3A%3A*> for
1139a longer non-exhaustive list), and the list is heavily biased towards
1140modules of the AnyEvent author himself :)
1141
1142=over 4
1143
1144=item L<AnyEvent::Util>
1145
1146Contains various utility functions that replace often-used blocking
1147functions such as C<inet_aton> with event/callback-based versions.
1148
1149=item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
1150
1151Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
1152addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
1153connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
1154
1155=item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
1156
1157Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
1158supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
1159non-blocking SSL/TLS (via L<AnyEvent::TLS>).
1160
1161=item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
1162
1163Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
1164
1165=item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>, L<AnyEvent::XMPP>, L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IGS>, L<AnyEvent::FCP>
1166
1167Implement event-based interfaces to the protocols of the same name (for
1168the curious, IGS is the International Go Server and FCP is the Freenet
1169Client Protocol).
1170
1171=item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
1172
1173Truly asynchronous (as opposed to non-blocking) I/O, should be in the
1174toolbox of every event programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses
1175L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent together, giving AnyEvent access to event-based
1176file I/O, and much more.
1177
1178=item L<AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify>
1179
1180AnyEvent is good for non-blocking stuff, but it can't detect file or
1181path changes (e.g. "watch this directory for new files", "watch this
1182file for changes"). The L<AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify> module promises to
1183do just that in a portbale fashion, supporting inotify on GNU/Linux and
1184some weird, without doubt broken, stuff on OS X to monitor files. It can
1185fall back to blocking scans at regular intervals transparently on other
1186platforms, so it's about as portable as it gets.
1187
1188(I haven't used it myself, but I haven't heard anybody complaining about
1189it yet).
1190
1191=item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
1192
1193Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process for you,
1194notifying you in an event-based way when the operation is finished.
1195
1196=item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
1197
1198A simple embedded webserver.
1199
1200=item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
1201
1202The fastest ping in the west.
1203
1204=item L<Coro>
1205
1206Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>, which allows you
1207to simply invert the flow control - don't call us, we will call you:
1208
1209 async {
1210 Coro::AnyEvent::sleep 5; # creates a 5s timer and waits for it
1211 print "5 seconds later!\n";
1212
1213 Coro::AnyEvent::readable *STDIN; # uses an I/O watcher
1214 my $line = <STDIN>; # works for ttys
1215
1216 AnyEvent::HTTP::http_get "url", Coro::rouse_cb;
1217 my ($body, $hdr) = Coro::rouse_wait;
1218 };
1219
1220=back
1221
11=cut 1222=cut
12 1223
13package AnyEvent; 1224package AnyEvent;
14 1225
1226# basically a tuned-down version of common::sense
1227sub common_sense {
1228 # from common:.sense 3.4
1229 ${^WARNING_BITS} ^= ${^WARNING_BITS} ^ "\x3c\x3f\x33\x00\x0f\xf0\x0f\xc0\xf0\xfc\x33\x00";
1230 # use strict vars subs - NO UTF-8, as Util.pm doesn't like this atm. (uts46data.pl)
1231 $^H |= 0x00000600;
1232}
1233
1234BEGIN { AnyEvent::common_sense }
1235
15use Carp; 1236use Carp ();
16 1237
17$VERSION = 0.1; 1238our $VERSION = '6.01';
1239our $MODEL;
18 1240
19no warnings; 1241our @ISA;
20 1242
1243our @REGISTRY;
1244
1245our $VERBOSE;
1246
1247BEGIN {
1248 require "AnyEvent/constants.pl";
1249
1250 eval "sub TAINT (){" . (${^TAINT}*1) . "}";
1251
1252 delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
1253 if ${^TAINT};
1254
1255 $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"} = $ENV{"AE_$_"}
1256 for grep s/^AE_// && !exists $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"}, keys %ENV;
1257
1258 @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV} = ()
1259 if ${^TAINT};
1260
1261 $VERBOSE = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
1262}
1263
1264our $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY = 10;
1265
1266our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
1267
1268{
1269 my $idx;
1270 $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
1271 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
1272 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1273}
1274
1275our @post_detect;
1276
1277sub post_detect(&) {
1278 my ($cb) = @_;
1279
1280 push @post_detect, $cb;
1281
1282 defined wantarray
1283 ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1284 : ()
1285}
1286
1287sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1288 @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1289}
1290
1291our $POSTPONE_W;
1292our @POSTPONE;
1293
1294sub _postpone_exec {
1295 undef $POSTPONE_W;
1296
1297 &{ shift @POSTPONE }
1298 while @POSTPONE;
1299}
1300
1301sub postpone(&) {
1302 push @POSTPONE, shift;
1303
1304 $POSTPONE_W ||= AE::timer (0, 0, \&_postpone_exec);
1305
1306 ()
1307}
1308
1309sub log($$;@) {
1310 # only load the big bloated module when we actually are about to log something
1311 if ($_[0] <= $VERBOSE) { # also catches non-numeric levels(!)
1312 require AnyEvent::Log;
1313 # AnyEvent::Log overwrites this function
1314 goto &log;
1315 }
1316
1317 0 # not logged
1318}
1319
1320if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG}) {
1321 require AnyEvent::Log; # AnyEvent::Log does the thing for us
1322}
1323
21my @models = ( 1324our @models = (
22 [Coro => Coro::Event::], 1325 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV:: , 1],
23 [Event => Event::], 1326 [AnyEvent::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: , 1],
24 [Glib => Glib::], 1327 # everything below here will not (normally) be autoprobed
25 [Tk => Tk::], 1328 # as the pure perl backend should work everywhere
1329 # and is usually faster
1330 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::, 1],
1331 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib:: , 1], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1332 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1333 [Irssi:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi::], # Irssi has a bogus "Event" package
1334 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1335 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
1336 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
1337 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1338 [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1339 [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # a bitch to autodetect
1340 [Cocoa::EventLoop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa::],
1341 [FLTK:: => AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK::],
26); 1342);
27 1343
28sub AUTOLOAD { 1344our @isa_hook;
29 $AUTOLOAD =~ s/.*://;
30 1345
31 for (@models) { 1346sub _isa_set {
32 my ($model, $package) = @$_; 1347 my @pkg = ("AnyEvent", (map $_->[0], grep defined, @isa_hook), $MODEL);
33 if (defined ${"$package\::VERSION"}) { 1348
34 $EVENT = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model"; 1349 @{"$pkg[$_-1]::ISA"} = $pkg[$_]
35 eval "require $EVENT"; die if $@; 1350 for 1 .. $#pkg;
36 goto &{"$EVENT\::$AUTOLOAD"}; 1351
1352 grep $_ && $_->[1], @isa_hook
1353 and AE::_reset ();
1354}
1355
1356# used for hooking AnyEvent::Strict and AnyEvent::Debug::Wrap into the class hierarchy
1357sub _isa_hook($$;$) {
1358 my ($i, $pkg, $reset_ae) = @_;
1359
1360 $isa_hook[$i] = $pkg ? [$pkg, $reset_ae] : undef;
1361
1362 _isa_set;
1363}
1364
1365# all autoloaded methods reserve the complete glob, not just the method slot.
1366# due to bugs in perls method cache implementation.
1367our @methods = qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar);
1368
1369sub detect() {
1370 return $MODEL if $MODEL; # some programs keep references to detect
1371
1372 local $!; # for good measure
1373 local $SIG{__DIE__}; # we use eval
1374
1375 # free some memory
1376 *detect = sub () { $MODEL };
1377 # undef &func doesn't correctly update the method cache. grmbl.
1378 # so we delete the whole glob. grmbl.
1379 # otoh, perl doesn't let me undef an active usb, but it lets me free
1380 # a glob with an active sub. hrm. i hope it works, but perl is
1381 # usually buggy in this department. sigh.
1382 delete @{"AnyEvent::"}{@methods};
1383 undef @methods;
1384
1385 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z0-9:]+)$/) {
1386 my $model = $1;
1387 $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model" unless $model =~ s/::$//;
1388 if (eval "require $model") {
1389 AnyEvent::log 7 => "loaded model '$model' (forced by \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}), using it.";
1390 $MODEL = $model;
1391 } else {
1392 AnyEvent::log 5 => "unable to load model '$model' (from \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}):\n$@";
37 } 1393 }
38 } 1394 }
39 1395
40 for (@models) { 1396 # check for already loaded models
41 my ($model, $package) = @$_; 1397 unless ($MODEL) {
42 $EVENT = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model"; 1398 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1399 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
1400 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
43 if (eval "require $EVENT") { 1401 if (eval "require $model") {
44 goto &{"$EVENT\::$AUTOLOAD"}; 1402 AnyEvent::log 7 => "autodetected model '$model', using it.";
1403 $MODEL = $model;
1404 last;
1405 }
1406 }
1407 }
1408
1409 unless ($MODEL) {
1410 # try to autoload a model
1411 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1412 my ($package, $model, $autoload) = @$_;
1413 if (
1414 $autoload
1415 and eval "require $package"
1416 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
1417 and eval "require $model"
1418 ) {
1419 AnyEvent::log 7 => "autoloaded model '$model', using it.";
1420 $MODEL = $model;
1421 last;
1422 }
1423 }
1424
1425 $MODEL
1426 or die "AnyEvent: backend autodetection failed - did you properly install AnyEvent?";
45 } 1427 }
46 } 1428 }
47 1429
48 die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any of these: Coro, Event, Glib or Tk."; 1430 # free memory only needed for probing
49} 1431 undef @models;
1432 undef @REGISTRY;
50 1433
511; 1434 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
52 1435
1436 # now nuke some methods that are overridden by the backend.
1437 # SUPER usage is not allowed in these.
1438 for (qw(time signal child idle)) {
1439 undef &{"AnyEvent::Base::$_"}
1440 if defined &{"$MODEL\::$_"};
1441 }
1442
1443 _isa_set;
1444
1445 # we're officially open!
1446
1447 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}) {
1448 require AnyEvent::Strict;
1449 }
1450
1451 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP}) {
1452 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1453 AnyEvent::Debug::wrap ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP});
1454 }
1455
1456 if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL}) {
1457 require AnyEvent::Socket;
1458 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1459
1460 my $shell = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL};
1461 $shell =~ s/\$\$/$$/g;
1462
1463 my ($host, $service) = AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport ($shell);
1464 $AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL = AnyEvent::Debug::shell ($host, $service);
1465 }
1466
1467 # now the anyevent environment is set up as the user told us to, so
1468 # call the actual user code - post detects
1469
1470 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
1471 undef @post_detect;
1472
1473 *post_detect = sub(&) {
1474 shift->();
1475
1476 undef
1477 };
1478
1479 $MODEL
1480}
1481
1482for my $name (@methods) {
1483 *$name = sub {
1484 detect;
1485 # we use goto because
1486 # a) it makes the thunk more transparent
1487 # b) it allows us to delete the thunk later
1488 goto &{ UNIVERSAL::can AnyEvent => "SUPER::$name" }
1489 };
1490}
1491
1492# utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1493# to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1494# allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1495sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1496 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1497
1498 # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1499 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<&") : ($w, ">&");
1500
1501 open my $fh2, $mode, $fh
1502 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1503
1504 # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1505
1506 ($fh2, $rw)
1507}
1508
1509=head1 SIMPLIFIED AE API
1510
1511Starting with version 5.0, AnyEvent officially supports a second, much
1512simpler, API that is designed to reduce the calling, typing and memory
1513overhead by using function call syntax and a fixed number of parameters.
1514
1515See the L<AE> manpage for details.
1516
1517=cut
1518
1519package AE;
1520
1521our $VERSION = $AnyEvent::VERSION;
1522
1523sub _reset() {
1524 eval q{
1525 # fall back to the main API by default - backends and AnyEvent::Base
1526 # implementations can overwrite these.
1527
1528 sub io($$$) {
1529 AnyEvent->io (fh => $_[0], poll => $_[1] ? "w" : "r", cb => $_[2])
1530 }
1531
1532 sub timer($$$) {
1533 AnyEvent->timer (after => $_[0], interval => $_[1], cb => $_[2])
1534 }
1535
1536 sub signal($$) {
1537 AnyEvent->signal (signal => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1538 }
1539
1540 sub child($$) {
1541 AnyEvent->child (pid => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1542 }
1543
1544 sub idle($) {
1545 AnyEvent->idle (cb => $_[0]);
1546 }
1547
1548 sub cv(;&) {
1549 AnyEvent->condvar (@_ ? (cb => $_[0]) : ())
1550 }
1551
1552 sub now() {
1553 AnyEvent->now
1554 }
1555
1556 sub now_update() {
1557 AnyEvent->now_update
1558 }
1559
1560 sub time() {
1561 AnyEvent->time
1562 }
1563
1564 *postpone = \&AnyEvent::postpone;
1565 *log = \&AnyEvent::log;
1566 };
1567 die if $@;
1568}
1569
1570BEGIN { _reset }
1571
1572package AnyEvent::Base;
1573
1574# default implementations for many methods
1575
1576sub time {
1577 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1578 # probe for availability of Time::HiRes
1579 if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1580 *time = sub { Time::HiRes::time () };
1581 *AE::time = \& Time::HiRes::time ;
1582 *now = \&time;
1583 AnyEvent::log 8 => "AnyEvent: using Time::HiRes for sub-second timing accuracy.";
1584 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1585 } else {
1586 *time = sub { CORE::time };
1587 *AE::time = sub (){ CORE::time };
1588 *now = \&time;
1589 AnyEvent::log 3 => "using built-in time(), WARNING, no sub-second resolution!";
1590 }
1591 };
1592 die if $@;
1593
1594 &time
1595}
1596
1597*now = \&time;
1598sub now_update { }
1599
1600sub _poll {
1601 Carp::croak "$AnyEvent::MODEL does not support blocking waits. Caught";
1602}
1603
1604# default implementation for ->condvar
1605# in fact, the default should not be overwritten
1606
1607sub condvar {
1608 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1609 *condvar = sub {
1610 bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1611 };
1612
1613 *AE::cv = sub (;&) {
1614 bless { @_ ? (_ae_cb => shift) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1615 };
1616 };
1617 die if $@;
1618
1619 &condvar
1620}
1621
1622# default implementation for ->signal
1623
1624our $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1625
1626sub _have_async_interrupt() {
1627 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT = 1*(!$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT}
1628 && eval "use Async::Interrupt 1.02 (); 1")
1629 unless defined $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1630
1631 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1632}
1633
1634our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1635our (%SIG_ASY, %SIG_ASY_W);
1636our ($SIG_COUNT, $SIG_TW);
1637
1638# install a dummy wakeup watcher to reduce signal catching latency
1639# used by Impls
1640sub _sig_add() {
1641 unless ($SIG_COUNT++) {
1642 # try to align timer on a full-second boundary, if possible
1643 my $NOW = AE::now;
1644
1645 $SIG_TW = AE::timer
1646 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY - ($NOW - int $NOW),
1647 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY,
1648 sub { } # just for the PERL_ASYNC_CHECK
1649 ;
1650 }
1651}
1652
1653sub _sig_del {
1654 undef $SIG_TW
1655 unless --$SIG_COUNT;
1656}
1657
1658our $_sig_name_init; $_sig_name_init = sub {
1659 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1660 undef $_sig_name_init;
1661
1662 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1663 *sig2num = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2num;
1664 *sig2name = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2name;
1665 } else {
1666 require Config;
1667
1668 my %signame2num;
1669 @signame2num{ split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_name} }
1670 = split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_num};
1671
1672 my @signum2name;
1673 @signum2name[values %signame2num] = keys %signame2num;
1674
1675 *sig2num = sub($) {
1676 $_[0] > 0 ? shift : $signame2num{+shift}
1677 };
1678 *sig2name = sub ($) {
1679 $_[0] > 0 ? $signum2name[+shift] : shift
1680 };
1681 }
1682 };
1683 die if $@;
1684};
1685
1686sub sig2num ($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2num }
1687sub sig2name($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2name }
1688
1689sub signal {
1690 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1691 # probe for availability of Async::Interrupt
1692 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1693 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using Async::Interrupt for race-free signal handling.";
1694
1695 $SIGPIPE_R = new Async::Interrupt::EventPipe;
1696 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R->fileno, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1697
1698 } else {
1699 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using emulated perl signal handling with latency timer.";
1700
1701 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1702 require AnyEvent::Util;
1703
1704 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1705 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R, 1) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1706 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W, 1) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1707 } else {
1708 pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1709 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1710 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1711
1712 # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1713 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1714 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1715 }
1716
1717 $SIGPIPE_R
1718 or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1719
1720 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1721 }
1722
1723 *signal = $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1724 ? sub {
1725 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1726
1727 # async::interrupt
1728 my $signal = sig2num $arg{signal};
1729 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1730
1731 $SIG_ASY{$signal} ||= new Async::Interrupt
1732 cb => sub { undef $SIG_EV{$signal} },
1733 signal => $signal,
1734 pipe => [$SIGPIPE_R->filenos],
1735 pipe_autodrain => 0,
1736 ;
1737
1738 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1739 }
1740 : sub {
1741 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1742
1743 # pure perl
1744 my $signal = sig2name $arg{signal};
1745 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1746
1747 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
1748 local $!;
1749 syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1750 undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
1751 };
1752
1753 # can't do signal processing without introducing races in pure perl,
1754 # so limit the signal latency.
1755 _sig_add;
1756
1757 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1758 }
1759 ;
1760
1761 *AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY = sub {
1762 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1763
1764 _sig_del;
1765
1766 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
1767
1768 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1769 ? delete $SIG_ASY{$signal}
1770 : # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1771 # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1772 # instead of getting the default action.
1773 undef $SIG{$signal}
1774 unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
1775 };
1776
1777 *_signal_exec = sub {
1778 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1779 ? $SIGPIPE_R->drain
1780 : sysread $SIGPIPE_R, (my $dummy), 9;
1781
1782 while (%SIG_EV) {
1783 for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1784 delete $SIG_EV{$_};
1785 &$_ for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
1786 }
1787 }
1788 };
1789 };
1790 die if $@;
1791
1792 &signal
1793}
1794
1795# default implementation for ->child
1796
1797our %PID_CB;
1798our $CHLD_W;
1799our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
1800
1801# used by many Impl's
1802sub _emit_childstatus($$) {
1803 my (undef, $rpid, $rstatus) = @_;
1804
1805 $_->($rpid, $rstatus)
1806 for values %{ $PID_CB{$rpid} || {} },
1807 values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} };
1808}
1809
1810sub child {
1811 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1812 *_sigchld = sub {
1813 my $pid;
1814
1815 AnyEvent->_emit_childstatus ($pid, $?)
1816 while ($pid = waitpid -1, WNOHANG) > 0;
1817 };
1818
1819 *child = sub {
1820 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1821
1822 my $pid = $arg{pid};
1823 my $cb = $arg{cb};
1824
1825 $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb+0} = $cb;
1826
1827 unless ($CHLD_W) {
1828 $CHLD_W = AE::signal CHLD => \&_sigchld;
1829 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
1830 &_sigchld;
1831 }
1832
1833 bless [$pid, $cb+0], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
1834 };
1835
1836 *AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY = sub {
1837 my ($pid, $icb) = @{$_[0]};
1838
1839 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$icb};
1840 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
1841
1842 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
1843 };
1844 };
1845 die if $@;
1846
1847 &child
1848}
1849
1850# idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1851# of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1852# the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1853sub idle {
1854 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1855 *idle = sub {
1856 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1857
1858 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1859
1860 $rcb = sub {
1861 if ($cb) {
1862 $w = AE::time;
1863 &$cb;
1864 $w = AE::time - $w;
1865
1866 # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1867 # within some limits
1868 $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1869 $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1870
1871 $w = AE::timer $w, 0, $rcb;
1872 } else {
1873 # clean up...
1874 undef $w;
1875 undef $rcb;
1876 }
1877 };
1878
1879 $w = AE::timer 0.05, 0, $rcb;
1880
1881 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1882 };
1883
1884 *AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY = sub {
1885 undef $${$_[0]};
1886 };
1887 };
1888 die if $@;
1889
1890 &idle
1891}
1892
1893package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1894
1895our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1896
1897# only to be used for subclassing
1898sub new {
1899 my $class = shift;
1900 bless AnyEvent->condvar (@_), $class
1901}
1902
1903package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1904
1905#use overload
1906# '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1907# fallback => 1;
1908
1909# save 300+ kilobytes by dirtily hardcoding overloading
1910${"AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::OVERLOAD"}{dummy}++; # Register with magic by touching.
1911*{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = sub { }; # "Make it findable via fetchmethod."
1912*{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::(&{}'} = sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } }; # &{}
1913${'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = 1; # fallback
1914
1915our $WAITING;
1916
1917sub _send {
1918 # nop
1919}
1920
1921sub _wait {
1922 AnyEvent->_poll until $_[0]{_ae_sent};
1923}
1924
1925sub send {
1926 my $cv = shift;
1927 $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1928 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1929 $cv->_send;
1930}
1931
1932sub croak {
1933 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1934 $_[0]->send;
1935}
1936
1937sub ready {
1938 $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1939}
1940
1941sub recv {
1942 unless ($_[0]{_ae_sent}) {
1943 $WAITING
1944 and Carp::croak "AnyEvent::CondVar: recursive blocking wait attempted";
1945
1946 local $WAITING = 1;
1947 $_[0]->_wait;
1948 }
1949
1950 $_[0]{_ae_croak}
1951 and Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak};
1952
1953 wantarray
1954 ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} }
1955 : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
1956}
1957
1958sub cb {
1959 my $cv = shift;
1960
1961 @_
1962 and $cv->{_ae_cb} = shift
1963 and $cv->{_ae_sent}
1964 and (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv);
1965
1966 $cv->{_ae_cb}
1967}
1968
1969sub begin {
1970 ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1971 $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1972}
1973
1974sub end {
1975 return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1976 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
1977}
1978
1979# undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
1980*broadcast = \&send;
1981*wait = \&recv;
1982
1983=head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1984
1985In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1986caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
1987the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
1988checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1989development.
1990
1991As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
1992executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
1993also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
1994program.
1995
1996The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
1997within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
1998$Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
1999so on.
2000
2001=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
2002
2003AnyEvent supports a number of environment variables that tune the
2004runtime behaviour. They are usually evaluated when AnyEvent is
2005loaded, initialised, or a submodule that uses them is loaded. Many of
2006them also cause AnyEvent to load additional modules - for example,
2007C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP> causes the L<AnyEvent::Debug> module to be
2008loaded.
2009
2010All the environment variables documented here start with
2011C<PERL_ANYEVENT_>, which is what AnyEvent considers its own
2012namespace. Other modules are encouraged (but by no means required) to use
2013C<PERL_ANYEVENT_SUBMODULE> if they have registered the AnyEvent::Submodule
2014namespace on CPAN, for any submodule. For example, L<AnyEvent::HTTP> could
2015be expected to use C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HTTP_PROXY> (it should not access env
2016variables starting with C<AE_>, see below).
2017
2018All variables can also be set via the C<AE_> prefix, that is, instead
2019of setting C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> you can also set C<AE_VERBOSE>. In
2020case there is a clash btween anyevent and another program that uses
2021C<AE_something> you can set the corresponding C<PERL_ANYEVENT_something>
2022variable to the empty string, as those variables take precedence.
2023
2024When AnyEvent is first loaded, it copies all C<AE_xxx> env variables
2025to their C<PERL_ANYEVENT_xxx> counterpart unless that variable already
2026exists. If taint mode is on, then AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment
2027variables starting with C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> (or replace them
2028with C<undef> or the empty string, if the corresaponding C<AE_> variable
2029is set).
2030
2031The exact algorithm is currently:
2032
2033 1. if taint mode enabled, delete all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables from %ENV
2034 2. copy over AE_xyz to PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz unless the latter alraedy exists
2035 3. if taint mode enabled, set all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables to undef.
2036
2037This ensures that child processes will not see the C<AE_> variables.
2038
2039The following environment variables are currently known to AnyEvent:
2040
2041=over 4
2042
2043=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
2044
2045By default, AnyEvent will be completely silent except in fatal
2046conditions. You can set this environment variable to make AnyEvent more
2047talkative. If you want to do more than just set the global logging level
2048you should have a look at C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>, which allows much more
2049complex specifications.
2050
2051When set to C<5> or higher (warn), causes AnyEvent to warn about unexpected
2052conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified by
2053C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>, or a guard callback throwing an exception - this
2054is the minimum recommended level.
2055
2056When set to C<7> or higher (info), cause AnyEvent to report which event model it
2057chooses.
2058
2059When set to C<8> or higher (debug), then AnyEvent will report extra information on
2060which optional modules it loads and how it implements certain features.
2061
2062=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>
2063
2064Accepts rather complex logging specifications. For example, you could log
2065all C<debug> messages of some module to stderr, warnings and above to
2066stderr, and errors and above to syslog, with:
2067
2068 PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG=Some::Module=debug,+log:filter=warn,+%syslog:%syslog=error,syslog
2069
2070For the rather extensive details, see L<AnyEvent::Log>.
2071
2072This variable is evaluated when AnyEvent (or L<AnyEvent::Log>) is loaded,
2073so will take effect even before AnyEvent has initialised itself.
2074
2075Note that specifying this environment variable causes the L<AnyEvent::Log>
2076module to be loaded, while C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> does not, so only
2077using the latter saves a few hundred kB of memory until the first message
2078is being logged.
2079
2080=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
2081
2082AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
2083argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
2084will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
2085check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
2086it will croak.
2087
2088In other words, enables "strict" mode.
2089
2090Unlike C<use strict> (or its modern cousin, C<< use L<common::sense>
2091>>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in production. Keeping
2092C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while developing programs
2093can be very useful, however.
2094
2095=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL>
2096
2097If this env variable is set, then its contents will be interpreted by
2098C<AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport> (after replacing every occurance of
2099C<$$> by the process pid) and an C<AnyEvent::Debug::shell> is bound on
2100that port. The shell object is saved in C<$AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL>.
2101
2102This happens when the first watcher is created.
2103
2104For example, to bind a debug shell on a unix domain socket in
2105F<< /tmp/debug<pid>.sock >>, you could use this:
2106
2107 PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL=/tmp/debug\$\$.sock perlprog
2108
2109Note that creating sockets in F</tmp> is very unsafe on multiuser
2110systems.
2111
2112=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP>
2113
2114Can be set to C<0>, C<1> or C<2> and enables wrapping of all watchers for
2115debugging purposes. See C<AnyEvent::Debug::wrap> for details.
2116
2117=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
2118
2119This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
2120auto detection and -probing kicks in.
2121
2122It normally is a string consisting entirely of ASCII letters (e.g. C<EV>
2123or C<IOAsync>). The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended and the
2124resulting module name is loaded and - if the load was successful - used as
2125event model backend. If it fails to load then AnyEvent will proceed with
2126auto detection and -probing.
2127
2128If the string ends with C<::> instead (e.g. C<AnyEvent::Impl::EV::>) then
2129nothing gets prepended and the module name is used as-is (hint: C<::> at
2130the end of a string designates a module name and quotes it appropriately).
2131
2132For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Loop::Perl>) you
2133could start your program like this:
2134
2135 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
2136
2137=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
2138
2139Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
2140for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
2141of auto probing).
2142
2143Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
2144current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
2145used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
2146list.
2147
2148This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
2149against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
2150small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
2151
2152Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
2153but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
2154- only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
2155addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
2156IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
2157
2158=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HOSTS>
2159
2160This variable, if specified, overrides the F</etc/hosts> file used by
2161L<AnyEvent::Socket>C<::resolve_sockaddr>, i.e. hosts aliases will be read
2162from that file instead.
2163
2164=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
2165
2166Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension for
2167DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, especially
2168when DNSSEC is involved, but some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS
2169packets, which is why it is off by default.
2170
2171Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
2172EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
2173
2174=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
2175
2176The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
2177will create in parallel.
2178
2179=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
2180
2181The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
2182resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
2183sent to the DNS server.
2184
2185=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
2186
2187The absolute path to a F<resolv.conf>-style file to use instead of
2188F</etc/resolv.conf> (or the OS-specific configuration) in the default
2189resolver, or the empty string to select the default configuration.
2190
2191=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
2192
2193When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
2194L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
2195variables are nonempty, they will be used to specify CA certificate
2196locations instead of a system-dependent default.
2197
2198=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_GUARD> and C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT>
2199
2200When these are set to C<1>, then the respective modules are not
2201loaded. Mostly good for testing AnyEvent itself.
2202
2203=back
2204
2205=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
2206
2207This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
2208a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
2209provide AnyEvent compatibility.
2210
2211If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
2212supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
2213pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of
2214the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
2215C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading
2216AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
2217
2218Example:
2219
2220 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
2221
2222This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::>
2223package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is already loaded.
2224
2225When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
2226will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to C<use> the
2227C<urxvt::anyevent> module.
2228
2229The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
2230L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> (Source code)
2231and so on for actual examples. Use C<perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to
2232see the sources.
2233
2234If you don't provide C<signal> and C<child> watchers than AnyEvent will
2235provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
2236
2237The above example isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt)
2238terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
2239in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter
2240inside I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the
2241I<rxvt-unicode> distribution.
2242
2243I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
2244condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
2245C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
2246not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
2247
2248=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
2249
2250The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
2251to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
2252program when the user enters quit:
2253
2254 use AnyEvent;
2255
2256 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
2257
2258 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
2259 fh => \*STDIN,
2260 poll => 'r',
2261 cb => sub {
2262 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
2263 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
2264 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
2265 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
2266 },
2267 );
2268
2269 my $time_watcher = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, interval => 1, cb => sub {
2270 warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' at most every second
2271 });
2272
2273 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
2274
2275=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
2276
2277Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
2278API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
2279
2280 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); # blocks
2281
2282 my $transaction = $fcp->txn_client_get ($url); # does not block
2283 $transaction->cb ( sub { ... } ); # set optional result callback
2284 my $data = $transaction->result; # possibly blocks
2285
2286The C<client_get> method works like C<LWP::Simple::get>: it requests the
2287given URL and waits till the data has arrived. It is defined to be:
2288
2289 sub client_get { $_[0]->txn_client_get ($_[1])->result }
2290
2291And in fact is automatically generated. This is the blocking API of
2292L<Net::FCP>, and it works as simple as in any other, similar, module.
2293
2294More complicated is C<txn_client_get>: It only creates a transaction
2295(completion, result, ...) object and initiates the transaction.
2296
2297 my $txn = bless { }, Net::FCP::Txn::;
2298
2299It also creates a condition variable that is used to signal the completion
2300of the request:
2301
2302 $txn->{finished} = AnyAvent->condvar;
2303
2304It then creates a socket in non-blocking mode.
2305
2306 socket $txn->{fh}, ...;
2307 fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK;
2308 connect $txn->{fh}, ...
2309 and !$!{EWOULDBLOCK}
2310 and !$!{EINPROGRESS}
2311 and Carp::croak "unable to connect: $!\n";
2312
2313Then it creates a write-watcher which gets called whenever an error occurs
2314or the connection succeeds:
2315
2316 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'w', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_w });
2317
2318And returns this transaction object. The C<fh_ready_w> callback gets
2319called as soon as the event loop detects that the socket is ready for
2320writing.
2321
2322The C<fh_ready_w> method makes the socket blocking again, writes the
2323request data and replaces the watcher by a read watcher (waiting for reply
2324data). The actual code is more complicated, but that doesn't matter for
2325this example:
2326
2327 fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, 0;
2328 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
2329 or die "connection or write error";
2330 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
2331
2332Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
2333result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
2334
2335 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
2336
2337 if (end-of-file or data complete) {
2338 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
2339 $txn->{finished}->send;
2340 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
2341 }
2342
2343The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
2344request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
2345data:
2346
2347 $txn->{finished}->recv;
2348 return $txn->{result};
2349
2350The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
2351that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
2352whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
2353and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
2354problems get reported to the code that tries to use the result, not in a
2355random callback.
2356
2357All of this enables the following usage styles:
2358
23591. Blocking:
2360
2361 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
2362
23632. Blocking, but running in parallel:
2364
2365 my @datas = map $_->result,
2366 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
2367 @urls;
2368
2369Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
2370anything about events.
2371
23723a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
2373
2374 use EV;
2375
2376 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
2377 my $txn = shift;
2378 my $data = $txn->result;
2379 ...
2380 });
2381
2382 EV::loop;
2383
23843b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
2385
2386 use AnyEvent;
2387
2388 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
2389
2390 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
2391 ...
2392 $quit->send;
2393 });
2394
2395 $quit->recv;
2396
2397
2398=head1 BENCHMARKS
2399
2400To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
2401over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
2402of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
2403
2404=head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
2405
2406Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
2407through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
2408timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
2409which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
2410
2411Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
2412distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2413for the EV and Perl backends only.
2414
2415=head3 Explanation of the columns
2416
2417I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
2418different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
2419loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
2420and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
2421would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
2422of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
2423
2424I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
2425RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
2426and Perl-based overheads.
2427
2428I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
2429takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
2430all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
2431and memory usage is not included in the figures.
2432
2433I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
2434callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
2435invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
2436signal the end of this phase.
2437
2438I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
2439watcher.
2440
2441=head3 Results
2442
2443 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
2444 EV/EV 100000 223 0.47 0.43 0.27 EV native interface
2445 EV/Any 100000 223 0.48 0.42 0.26 EV + AnyEvent watchers
2446 Coro::EV/Any 100000 223 0.47 0.42 0.26 coroutines + Coro::Signal
2447 Perl/Any 100000 431 2.70 0.74 0.92 pure perl implementation
2448 Event/Event 16000 516 31.16 31.84 0.82 Event native interface
2449 Event/Any 16000 1203 42.61 34.79 1.80 Event + AnyEvent watchers
2450 IOAsync/Any 16000 1911 41.92 27.45 16.81 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
2451 IOAsync/Any 16000 1726 40.69 26.37 15.25 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
2452 Glib/Any 16000 1118 89.00 12.57 51.17 quadratic behaviour
2453 Tk/Any 2000 1346 20.96 10.75 8.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
2454 POE/Any 2000 6951 108.97 795.32 14.24 via POE::Loop::Event
2455 POE/Any 2000 6648 94.79 774.40 575.51 via POE::Loop::Select
2456
2457=head3 Discussion
2458
2459The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
2460well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
2461can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
2462file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
2463the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
2464boost.
2465
2466Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
2467overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
2468the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
2469higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
2470
2471To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
2472benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
2473EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
2474cycles with POE.
2475
2476C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
2477maximal/minimal, respectively. When using the L<AE> API there is zero
2478overhead (when going through the AnyEvent API create is about 5-6 times
2479slower, with other times being equal, so still uses far less memory than
2480any other event loop and is still faster than Event natively).
2481
2482The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
2483constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
2484interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
2485adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
2486performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
2487them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
2488
2489The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
2490cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
2491
2492C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
2493when using its pure perl backend.
2494
2495C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
2496faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
2497C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
2498watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
2499making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
2500(note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
2501inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
2502
2503The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
2504more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
2505precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
2506file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
2507employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
2508hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
2509above).
2510
2511C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
2512select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
2513be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
2514memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
2515as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
2516requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
2517invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
2518implementation.
2519
2520The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
2521for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
2522small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
2523optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
2524using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
2525memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
2526design).
2527
2528=head3 Summary
2529
2530=over 4
2531
2532=item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
2533(even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
2534performance with or without AnyEvent.
2535
2536=item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
2537the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
2538does AnyEvent add significant overhead.
2539
2540=item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
2541reasonable memory usage.
2542
2543=back
2544
2545=head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
2546
2547This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
2548creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
2549timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
2550watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
2551watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
2552
2553The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
2554are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
2555fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
2556timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
2557most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
2558
2559In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
2560(1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
2561connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
2562
2563Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
2564distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2565for the EV and Perl backends only.
2566
2567=head3 Explanation of the columns
2568
2569I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
2570each server has a read and write socket end).
2571
2572I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
2573nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
2574
2575I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
2576single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
2577it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
2578a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
2579
2580=head3 Results
2581
2582 name sockets create request
2583 EV 20000 62.66 7.99
2584 Perl 20000 68.32 32.64
2585 IOAsync 20000 174.06 101.15 epoll
2586 IOAsync 20000 174.67 610.84 poll
2587 Event 20000 202.69 242.91
2588 Glib 20000 557.01 1689.52
2589 POE 20000 341.54 12086.32 uses POE::Loop::Event
2590
2591=head3 Discussion
2592
2593This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
2594particular event loop.
2595
2596EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
2597is relatively high, though.
2598
2599Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
2600loops Event and Glib.
2601
2602IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
2603good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
2604
2605Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
2606understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
2607the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
2608uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
2609
2610Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
2611clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
2612
2613POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
2614as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
2615it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
2616
2617=head3 Summary
2618
2619=over 4
2620
2621=item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
2622
2623=item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
2624
2625=back
2626
2627=head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
2628
2629While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
2630large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
2631I/O watchers.
2632
2633In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
2634case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
2635one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
2636well.
2637
2638The columns are identical to the previous table.
2639
2640=head3 Results
2641
2642 name sockets create request
2643 EV 16 20.00 6.54
2644 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
2645 Event 16 81.27 35.86
2646 Glib 16 32.63 15.48
2647 POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
2648
2649=head3 Discussion
2650
2651The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
2652server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
2653in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
2654to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
2655speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
2656them).
2657
2658EV is again fastest.
2659
2660Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
2661loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
2662matter.
2663
2664POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
2665others.
2666
2667=head3 Summary
2668
2669=over 4
2670
2671=item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
2672watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
2673
2674=back
2675
2676=head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
2677
2678Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
2679could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
2680simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
2681shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
2682fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
2683very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
2684baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
2685
2686The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
2687connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
2688creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
2689test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
2690benchmark nevertheless.
2691
2692 name runtime
2693 Lambda/select 0.330 sec
2694 + optimized 0.122 sec
2695 Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
2696 + optimized 0.138 sec
2697 Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
2698 POE/select, components 0.662 sec
2699 POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
2700 POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
2701
2702 AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
2703 AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
2704 +state machine 0.134 sec
2705
2706The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2707benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2708defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2709written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2710AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2711resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2712generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2713connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2714
2715The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2716offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2717Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2718non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2719
2720As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2721hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2722backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2723
2724And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2725slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda
2726higher level ("unoptimised") abstractions by a large margin, even though
2727it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O in a non-blocking way.
2728
2729The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2730F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2731part of the IO::Lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2732
2733
2734=head1 SIGNALS
2735
2736AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2737
2738=over 4
2739
2740=item SIGCHLD
2741
2742A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2743emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2744event loops install a similar handler.
2745
2746Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then
2747AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2748
2749=item SIGPIPE
2750
2751A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2752when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2753
2754The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2755on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2756badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2757program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2758some random socket.
2759
2760The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2761that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2762
2763Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2764
2765=back
2766
2767=cut
2768
2769undef $SIG{CHLD}
2770 if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2771
2772$SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2773 unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2774
2775=head1 RECOMMENDED/OPTIONAL MODULES
2776
2777One of AnyEvent's main goals is to be 100% Pure-Perl(tm): only perl (and
2778its built-in modules) are required to use it.
2779
2780That does not mean that AnyEvent won't take advantage of some additional
2781modules if they are installed.
2782
2783This section explains which additional modules will be used, and how they
2784affect AnyEvent's operation.
2785
2786=over 4
2787
2788=item L<Async::Interrupt>
2789
2790This slightly arcane module is used to implement fast signal handling: To
2791my knowledge, there is no way to do completely race-free and quick
2792signal handling in pure perl. To ensure that signals still get
2793delivered, AnyEvent will start an interval timer to wake up perl (and
2794catch the signals) with some delay (default is 10 seconds, look for
2795C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>).
2796
2797If this module is available, then it will be used to implement signal
2798catching, which means that signals will not be delayed, and the event loop
2799will not be interrupted regularly, which is more efficient (and good for
2800battery life on laptops).
2801
2802This affects not just the pure-perl event loop, but also other event loops
2803that have no signal handling on their own (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt).
2804
2805Some event loops (POE, Event, Event::Lib) offer signal watchers natively,
2806and either employ their own workarounds (POE) or use AnyEvent's workaround
2807(using C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>). Installing L<Async::Interrupt>
2808does nothing for those backends.
2809
2810=item L<EV>
2811
2812This module isn't really "optional", as it is simply one of the backend
2813event loops that AnyEvent can use. However, it is simply the best event
2814loop available in terms of features, speed and stability: It supports
2815the AnyEvent API optimally, implements all the watcher types in XS, does
2816automatic timer adjustments even when no monotonic clock is available,
2817can take avdantage of advanced kernel interfaces such as C<epoll> and
2818C<kqueue>, and is the fastest backend I<by far>. You can even embed
2819L<Glib>/L<Gtk2> in it (or vice versa, see L<EV::Glib> and L<Glib::EV>).
2820
2821If you only use backends that rely on another event loop (e.g. C<Tk>),
2822then this module will do nothing for you.
2823
2824=item L<Guard>
2825
2826The guard module, when used, will be used to implement
2827C<AnyEvent::Util::guard>. This speeds up guards considerably (and uses a
2828lot less memory), but otherwise doesn't affect guard operation much. It is
2829purely used for performance.
2830
2831=item L<JSON> and L<JSON::XS>
2832
2833One of these modules is required when you want to read or write JSON data
2834via L<AnyEvent::Handle>. L<JSON> is also written in pure-perl, but can take
2835advantage of the ultra-high-speed L<JSON::XS> module when it is installed.
2836
2837=item L<Net::SSLeay>
2838
2839Implementing TLS/SSL in Perl is certainly interesting, but not very
2840worthwhile: If this module is installed, then L<AnyEvent::Handle> (with
2841the help of L<AnyEvent::TLS>), gains the ability to do TLS/SSL.
2842
2843=item L<Time::HiRes>
2844
2845This module is part of perl since release 5.008. It will be used when the
2846chosen event library does not come with a timing source of its own. The
2847pure-perl event loop (L<AnyEvent::Loop>) will additionally load it to
2848try to use a monotonic clock for timing stability.
2849
2850=back
2851
2852
2853=head1 FORK
2854
2855Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2856because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll> calls
2857- higher performance APIs such as BSD's kqueue or the dreaded Linux epoll
2858are usually badly thought-out hacks that are incompatible with fork in
2859one way or another. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware and ensures that you
2860continue event-processing in both parent and child (or both, if you know
2861what you are doing).
2862
2863This means that, in general, you cannot fork and do event processing in
2864the child if the event library was initialised before the fork (which
2865usually happens when the first AnyEvent watcher is created, or the library
2866is loaded).
2867
2868If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2869watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child OR you must do
2870something completely out of the scope of AnyEvent.
2871
2872The problem of doing event processing in the parent I<and> the child
2873is much more complicated: even for backends that I<are> fork-aware or
2874fork-safe, their behaviour is not usually what you want: fork clones all
2875watchers, that means all timers, I/O watchers etc. are active in both
2876parent and child, which is almost never what you want. USing C<exec>
2877to start worker children from some kind of manage rprocess is usually
2878preferred, because it is much easier and cleaner, at the expense of having
2879to have another binary.
2880
2881
2882=head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2883
2884AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2885$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2886execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2887make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2888will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2889specified in the variable.
2890
2891You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2892before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2893
2894 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2895
2896 use AnyEvent;
2897
2898Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2899be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2900probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2901$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2902
2903Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2904C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2905enabled.
2906
2907
2908=head1 BUGS
2909
2910Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
2911to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
2912and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
2913memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
2914pronounced).
2915
2916
2917=head1 SEE ALSO
2918
2919Tutorial/Introduction: L<AnyEvent::Intro>.
2920
2921FAQ: L<AnyEvent::FAQ>.
2922
2923Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util> (misc. grab-bag), L<AnyEvent::Log>
2924(simply logging).
2925
2926Development/Debugging: L<AnyEvent::Strict> (stricter checking),
2927L<AnyEvent::Debug> (interactive shell, watcher tracing).
2928
2929Supported event modules: L<AnyEvent::Loop>, L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>,
2930L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>,
2931L<Qt>, L<POE>, L<FLTK>.
2932
2933Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
2934L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
2935L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
2936L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync>, L<Anyevent::Impl::Irssi>,
2937L<AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK>.
2938
2939Non-blocking handles, pipes, stream sockets, TCP clients and
2940servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>, L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
2941
2942Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2943
2944Thread support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>, L<Coro::Event>.
2945
2946Nontrivial usage examples: L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>,
2947L<AnyEvent::HTTP>.
2948
2949
2950=head1 AUTHOR
2951
2952 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
2953 http://home.schmorp.de/
2954
2955=cut
2956
29571
2958

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