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1=head1 NAME 1=head1 NAME
2 2
3AnyEvent - provide framework for multiple event loops 3AnyEvent - provide framework for multiple event loops
4 4
5Event, Coro, Glib, Tk, Perl - various supported event loops 5EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Qt and POE are various supported
6event loops.
6 7
7=head1 SYNOPSIS 8=head1 SYNOPSIS
8 9
9 use AnyEvent; 10 use AnyEvent;
10 11
12 # file descriptor readable
11 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r|w", cb => sub { 13 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
14
15 # one-shot or repeating timers
16 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
17 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...
18
19 print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
20 print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
21
22 # POSIX signal
23 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
24
25 # child process exit
26 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
27 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
12 ... 28 ...
13 }); 29 });
14 30
15 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { 31 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
16 ... 32 my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
17 });
18 33
19 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores wether a condition was flagged 34 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
35 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
20 $w->wait; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->broadcast 36 $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
21 $w->broadcast; # wake up current and all future wait's 37 # use a condvar in callback mode:
38 $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
39
40=head1 INTRODUCTION/TUTORIAL
41
42This manpage is mainly a reference manual. If you are interested
43in a tutorial or some gentle introduction, have a look at the
44L<AnyEvent::Intro> manpage.
45
46=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
47
48Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
49nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
50
51Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of
52policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>.
53
54First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only
55interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
56pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
57the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
58only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process. AnyEvent
59cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between those event
60loops.
61
62The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
63programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
64religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
65module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
66model you use.
67
68For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
69actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is
70like joining a cult: After you joined, you are dependent on them and you
71cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
72that isn't them. What's worse, all the potential users of your
73module are I<also> forced to use the same event loop you use.
74
75AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
76fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
77with the rest: POE + IO::Async? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if
78your module uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it,
79too. But if your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all
80event models it supports (including stuff like IO::Async, as long as those
81use one of the supported event loops. It is trivial to add new event loops
82to AnyEvent, too, so it is future-proof).
83
84In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
85model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
86modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
87follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and up to the point, by only
88offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
89technically possible.
90
91Of course, AnyEvent comes with a big (and fully optional!) toolbox
92of useful functionality, such as an asynchronous DNS resolver, 100%
93non-blocking connects (even with TLS/SSL, IPv6 and on broken platforms
94such as Windows) and lots of real-world knowledge and workarounds for
95platform bugs and differences.
96
97Now, if you I<do want> lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
98useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
99model, you should I<not> use this module.
22 100
23=head1 DESCRIPTION 101=head1 DESCRIPTION
24 102
25L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This 103L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This
26allows module authors to utilise an event loop without forcing module 104allows module authors to utilise an event loop without forcing module
27users to use the same event loop (as only a single event loop can coexist 105users to use the same event loop (as only a single event loop can coexist
28peacefully at any one time). 106peacefully at any one time).
29 107
30The interface itself is vaguely similar but not identical to the Event 108The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
31module. 109module.
32 110
33On the first call of any method, the module tries to detect the currently 111During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
34loaded event loop by probing wether any of the following modules is 112to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
35loaded: L<Coro::Event>, L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>. The first one found is 113following modules is already loaded: L<EV>,
36used. If none is found, the module tries to load these modules in the 114L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>,
37order given. The first one that could be successfully loaded will be 115L<POE>. The first one found is used. If none are found, the module tries
38used. If still none could be found, AnyEvent will fall back to a pure-perl 116to load these modules (excluding Tk, Event::Lib, Qt and POE as the pure perl
39event loop, which is also not very efficient. 117adaptor should always succeed) in the order given. The first one that can
118be successfully loaded will be used. If, after this, still none could be
119found, AnyEvent will fall back to a pure-perl event loop, which is not
120very efficient, but should work everywhere.
40 121
41Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading 122Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
42an Event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make 123an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
43that model the default. For example: 124that model the default. For example:
44 125
45 use Tk; 126 use Tk;
46 use AnyEvent; 127 use AnyEvent;
47 128
48 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk 129 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
49 130
131The I<likely> means that, if any module loads another event model and
132starts using it, all bets are off. Maybe you should tell their authors to
133use AnyEvent so their modules work together with others seamlessly...
134
50The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called 135The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called
51C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>. Like other event modules you can load it 136C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>. Like other event modules you can load it
52explicitly. 137explicitly and enjoy the high availability of that event loop :)
53 138
54=head1 WATCHERS 139=head1 WATCHERS
55 140
56AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that 141AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that
57stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as 142stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
58the callback to call, the filehandle to watch, etc. 143the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
59 144
60These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After 145These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
61creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke 146creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the
147callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model
148is in control).
149
150Note that B<callbacks must not permanently change global variables>
151potentially in use by the event loop (such as C<$_> or C<$[>) and that B<<
152callbacks must not C<die> >>. The former is good programming practise in
153Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
154widely between event loops.
155
62the callback. To disable the watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by 156To disable the watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
63setting the variable that stores it to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all 157variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
64references to it). 158to it).
65 159
66All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class. 160All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
67 161
162Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for
163example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways.
164
165An any way to achieve that is this pattern:
166
167 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub {
168 # you can use $w here, for example to undef it
169 undef $w;
170 });
171
172Note that C<my $w; $w => combination. This is necessary because in Perl,
173my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are
174declared.
175
68=head2 IO WATCHERS 176=head2 I/O WATCHERS
69 177
70You can create I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method with 178You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method
71the following mandatory arguments: 179with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
72 180
73C<fh> the Perl I<filehandle> (not filedescriptor) to watch for 181C<fh> is the Perl I<file handle> (or a naked file descriptor) to watch
182for events (AnyEvent might or might not keep a reference to this file
183handle). Note that only file handles pointing to things for which
184non-blocking operation makes sense are allowed. This includes sockets,
185most character devices, pipes, fifos and so on, but not for example files
186or block devices.
187
74events. C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, that creates 188C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which creates a
75a watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events. C<cb> teh callback 189watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
76to invoke everytime the filehandle becomes ready.
77 190
78Only one io watcher per C<fh> and C<poll> combination is allowed (i.e. on 191C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
79a socket you can have one r + one w, not any more (limitation comes from
80Tk - if you are sure you are not using Tk this limitation is gone).
81 192
82Filehandles will be kept alive, so as long as the watcher exists, the 193Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
83filehandle exists, too. 194presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
195callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
84 196
85Example: 197The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of it.
198You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on the
199underlying file descriptor.
86 200
201Some event loops issue spurious readyness notifications, so you should
202always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
203handles.
204
87 # wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the watcher 205Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
206watcher.
207
88 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub { 208 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
89 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); 209 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
90 warn "read: $input\n"; 210 warn "read: $input\n";
91 undef $w; 211 undef $w;
92 }); 212 });
94=head2 TIME WATCHERS 214=head2 TIME WATCHERS
95 215
96You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >> 216You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
97method with the following mandatory arguments: 217method with the following mandatory arguments:
98 218
99C<after> after how many seconds (fractions are supported) should the timer 219C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
100activate. C<cb> the callback to invoke. 220supported) the callback should be invoked. C<cb> is the callback to invoke
221in that case.
101 222
102The timer callback will be invoked at most once: if you want a repeating 223Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
103timer you have to create a new watcher (this is a limitation by both Tk 224presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
104and Glib). 225callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
105 226
106Example: 227The callback will normally be invoked once only. If you specify another
228parameter, C<interval>, as a strictly positive number (> 0), then the
229callback will be invoked regularly at that interval (in fractional
230seconds) after the first invocation. If C<interval> is specified with a
231false value, then it is treated as if it were missing.
107 232
233The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
234attempt is done to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval is
235only approximate.
236
108 # fire an event after 7.7 seconds 237Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
238
109 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub { 239 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
110 warn "timeout\n"; 240 warn "timeout\n";
111 }); 241 });
112 242
113 # to cancel the timer: 243 # to cancel the timer:
114 undef $w 244 undef $w;
115 245
116=head2 CONDITION WATCHERS 246Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
117 247
118Condition watchers can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar >> 248 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
119method without any arguments. 249 warn "timeout\n";
250 };
120 251
121A condition watcher watches for a condition - precisely that the C<< 252=head3 TIMING ISSUES
122->broadcast >> method has been called.
123 253
124The watcher has only two methods: 254There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
255in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
256o'clock").
257
258While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way, they
259use absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your clock
260"jumps", for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards from
261the wrong date of 2014-01-01 to 2008-01-01, a watcher that is supposed to
262fire "after" a second might actually take six years to finally fire.
263
264AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious
265about these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer, based
266on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on wallclock time)
267timers.
268
269AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
270AnyEvent API.
271
272AnyEvent has two additional methods that return the "current time":
125 273
126=over 4 274=over 4
127 275
128=item $cv->wait 276=item AnyEvent->time
129 277
130Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->broadcast >> method has been 278This returns the "current wallclock time" as a fractional number of
131called on c<$cv>, while servicing other watchers normally. 279seconds since the Epoch (the same thing as C<time> or C<Time::HiRes::time>
280return, and the result is guaranteed to be compatible with those).
132 281
133Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case, so 282It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each call
134if you are using this from a module, never require a blocking wait, but 283will check the system clock, which usually gets updated frequently.
135let the caller decide wether the call will block or not (for example,
136by coupling condition variables with some kind of request results and
137supporting callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not
138block, while still suppporting blockign waits if the caller so desires).
139 284
140You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls will return 285=item AnyEvent->now
141immediately.
142 286
143=item $cv->broadcast 287This also returns the "current wallclock time", but unlike C<time>, above,
288this value might change only once per event loop iteration, depending on
289the event loop (most return the same time as C<time>, above). This is the
290time that AnyEvent's timers get scheduled against.
144 291
145Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->wait >> and all further 292I<In almost all cases (in all cases if you don't care), this is the
146calls to C<wait> will return after this method has been called. If nobody 293function to call when you want to know the current time.>
147is waiting the broadcast will be remembered..
148 294
149Example: 295This function is also often faster then C<< AnyEvent->time >>, and
296thus the preferred method if you want some timestamp (for example,
297L<AnyEvent::Handle> uses this to update it's activity timeouts).
298
299The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very exact
300with your timing, you can skip it without bad conscience.
301
302For a practical example of when these times differ, consider L<Event::Lib>
303and L<EV> and the following set-up:
304
305The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callback at
306time=500 (assume no other callbacks delay processing). In your callback,
307you wait a second by executing C<sleep 1> (blocking the process for a
308second) and then (at time=501) you create a relative timer that fires
309after three seconds.
310
311With L<Event::Lib>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> will
312both return C<501>, because that is the current time, and the timer will
313be scheduled to fire at time=504 (C<501> + C<3>).
314
315With L<EV>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> returns C<501> (as that is the current
316time), but C<< AnyEvent->now >> returns C<500>, as that is the time the
317last event processing phase started. With L<EV>, your timer gets scheduled
318to run at time=503 (C<500> + C<3>).
319
320In one sense, L<Event::Lib> is more exact, as it uses the current time
321regardless of any delays introduced by event processing. However, most
322callbacks do not expect large delays in processing, so this causes a
323higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the current time).
324
325In another sense, L<EV> is more exact, as your timer will be scheduled at
326the same time, regardless of how long event processing actually took.
327
328In either case, if you care (and in most cases, you don't), then you
329can get whatever behaviour you want with any event loop, by taking the
330difference between C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> into
331account.
332
333=item AnyEvent->now_update
334
335Some event loops (such as L<EV> or L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) cache
336the current time for each loop iteration (see the discussion of L<<
337AnyEvent->now >>, above).
338
339When a callback runs for a long time (or when the process sleeps), then
340this "current" time will differ substantially from the real time, which
341might affect timers and time-outs.
342
343When this is the case, you can call this method, which will update the
344event loop's idea of "current time".
345
346Note that updating the time I<might> cause some events to be handled.
347
348=back
349
350=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS
351
352You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal
353I<name> in uppercase and without any C<SIG> prefix, C<cb> is the Perl
354callback to be invoked whenever a signal occurs.
355
356Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
357presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
358callbacks cannot use arguments passed to signal watcher callbacks.
359
360Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
361invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous means
362that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process,
363but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
364
365The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal
366between multiple watchers.
367
368This watcher might use C<%SIG>, so programs overwriting those signals
369directly will likely not work correctly.
370
371Example: exit on SIGINT
372
373 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
374
375=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
376
377You can also watch on a child process exit and catch its exit status.
378
379The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (if set to C<0>, it
380watches for any child process exit). The watcher will triggered only when
381the child process has finished and an exit status is available, not on
382any trace events (stopped/continued).
383
384The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
385waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you I<can> rely on child watcher
386callback arguments.
387
388This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>,
389and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
390random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g. inside
391C<system>, is just fine).
392
393There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start them
394I<after> the child process was created, and this means the process could
395have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
396
397Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async do,
398see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event models
399that I<do> handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded before
400the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place). AnyEvent's
401pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless of when you
402start the watcher.
403
404This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first
405thing in an AnyEvent program, you I<have> to create at least one
406watcher before you C<fork> the child (alternatively, you can call
407C<AnyEvent::detect>).
408
409Example: fork a process and wait for it
410
411 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
412
413 my $pid = fork or exit 5;
414
415 my $w = AnyEvent->child (
416 pid => $pid,
417 cb => sub {
418 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
419 warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
420 $done->send;
421 },
422 );
423
424 # do something else, then wait for process exit
425 $done->recv;
426
427=head2 IDLE WATCHERS
428
429Sometimes there is a need to do something, but it is not so important
430to do it instantly, but only when there is nothing better to do. This
431"nothing better to do" is usually defined to be "no other events need
432attention by the event loop".
433
434Idle watchers ideally get invoked when the event loop has nothing
435better to do, just before it would block the process to wait for new
436events. Instead of blocking, the idle watcher is invoked.
437
438Most event loops unfortunately do not really support idle watchers (only
439EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest, AnyEvent
440will simply call the callback "from time to time".
441
442Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the
443program is otherwise idle:
444
445 my @lines; # read data
446 my $idle_w;
447 my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
448 push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
449
450 # start an idle watcher, if not already done
451 $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
452 # handle only one line, when there are lines left
453 if (my $line = shift @lines) {
454 print "handled when idle: $line";
455 } else {
456 # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
457 undef $idle_w;
458 }
459 });
460 });
461
462=head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
463
464If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
465require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
466will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
467
468AnyEvent is different, it expects somebody else to run the event loop and
469will only block when necessary (usually when told by the user).
470
471The instrument to do that is called a "condition variable", so called
472because they represent a condition that must become true.
473
474Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar
475>> method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
476
477C<cb>, which specifies a callback to be called when the condition variable
478becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
479the results).
480
481After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
482by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
483were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
484->send >> method).
485
486Condition variables are similar to callbacks, except that you can
487optionally wait for them. They can also be called merge points - points
488in time where multiple outstanding events have been processed. And yet
489another way to call them is transactions - each condition variable can be
490used to represent a transaction, which finishes at some point and delivers
491a result.
492
493Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has finished,
494for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests,
495then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
496availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
497called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
498
499You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
500you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
501could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
502button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
503
504Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
505two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
506lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but
507you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks,
508as this asks for trouble.
509
510Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
511used by AnyEvent itself are all named C<_ae_XXX> to make subclassing
512easy (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
513AnyEvent). To subclass, use C<AnyEvent::CondVar> as base class and call
514it's C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
515
516There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
517eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
518for the send to occur.
519
520Example: wait for a timer.
150 521
151 # wait till the result is ready 522 # wait till the result is ready
152 my $result_ready = AnyEvent->condvar; 523 my $result_ready = AnyEvent->condvar;
153 524
154 # do something such as adding a timer 525 # do something such as adding a timer
155 # or socket watcher the calls $result_ready->broadcast 526 # or socket watcher the calls $result_ready->send
156 # when the "result" is ready. 527 # when the "result" is ready.
528 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
529 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
530 after => 1,
531 cb => sub { $result_ready->send },
532 );
157 533
534 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
535 # calls send
158 $result_ready->wait; 536 $result_ready->recv;
537
538Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that
539condition variables are also code references.
540
541 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
542 my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
543 $done->recv;
544
545Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
546callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from
547the main program:
548
549 use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
550
551 ...
552
553 my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
554
555And this is how you would just ste a callback to be called whenever the
556results are available:
557
558 $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
559 my @info = $_[0]->recv;
560 });
561
562=head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
563
564These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
565code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
566the producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
567uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
568
569=over 4
570
571=item $cv->send (...)
572
573Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->recv >> and all further
574calls to C<recv> will (eventually) return after this method has been
575called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
576
577If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
578immediately from within send.
579
580Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
581future C<< ->recv >> calls.
582
583Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly
584(as a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as calling
585C<send>. Note, however, that many C-based event loops do not handle
586overloading, so as tempting as it may be, passing a condition variable
587instead of a callback does not work. Both the pure perl and EV loops
588support overloading, however, as well as all functions that use perl to
589invoke a callback (as in L<AnyEvent::Socket> and L<AnyEvent::DNS> for
590example).
591
592=item $cv->croak ($error)
593
594Similar to send, but causes all call's to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
595C<Carp::croak> with the given error message/object/scalar.
596
597This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
598user/consumer.
599
600=item $cv->begin ([group callback])
601
602=item $cv->end
603
604These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events into
605one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel might want
606to use a condition variable for the whole process.
607
608Every call to C<< ->begin >> will increment a counter, and every call to
609C<< ->end >> will decrement it. If the counter reaches C<0> in C<< ->end
610>>, the (last) callback passed to C<begin> will be executed. That callback
611is I<supposed> to call C<< ->send >>, but that is not required. If no
612callback was set, C<send> will be called without any arguments.
613
614You can think of C<< $cv->send >> giving you an OR condition (one call
615sends), while C<< $cv->begin >> and C<< $cv->end >> giving you an AND
616condition (all C<begin> calls must be C<end>'ed before the condvar sends).
617
618Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for example,
619STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for both streams to
620close before activating a condvar:
621
622 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
623
624 $cv->begin; # first watcher
625 my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
626 defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
627 or $cv->end;
628 });
629
630 $cv->begin; # second watcher
631 my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
632 defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
633 or $cv->end;
634 });
635
636 $cv->recv;
637
638This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle), there is
639one call to C<begin>, so the condvar waits for all calls to C<end> before
640sending.
641
642The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as the
643there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks that are
644begung can potentially be zero:
645
646 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
647
648 my %result;
649 $cv->begin (sub { $cv->send (\%result) });
650
651 for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
652 $cv->begin;
653 ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
654 $result{$host} = ...;
655 $cv->end;
656 };
657 }
658
659 $cv->end;
660
661This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
662C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
663order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to C<begin> when it starts
664each ping request and calls C<end> when it has received some result for
665it. Since C<begin> and C<end> only maintain a counter, the order in which
666results arrive is not relevant.
667
668There is an additional bracketing call to C<begin> and C<end> outside the
669loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the callback
670to be called once the counter reaches C<0>, and second, it ensures that
671C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
672doesn't execute once).
673
674This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
675potentially none) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
676the callback and ensure C<end> is called at least once, and then, for each
677subrequest you start, call C<begin> and for each subrequest you finish,
678call C<end>.
159 679
160=back 680=back
161 681
162=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS 682=head3 METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
163 683
164You can listen for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal 684These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the
165I<name> without any C<SIG> prefix. Multiple signals events can be clumped 685code awaits the condition.
166together into one callback invocation, and callback invocation might or
167might not be asynchronous.
168 686
169These watchers might use C<%SIG>, so programs overwriting those signals 687=over 4
170directly will likely not work correctly.
171 688
172Example: exit on SIGINT 689=item $cv->recv
173 690
174 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 }); 691Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
692>> methods have been called on c<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
693normally.
175 694
176=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS 695You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid but
696will return immediately.
177 697
178You can also listen for the status of a child process specified by the 698If an error condition has been set by calling C<< ->croak >>, then this
179C<pid> argument. The watcher will only trigger once. This works by 699function will call C<croak>.
180installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>.
181 700
182Example: wait for pid 1333 701In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
702in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
183 703
184 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => 1333, cb => sub { warn "exit status $?" }); 704Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
705(programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
706using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>, but let the
707caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
708condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
709callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
710while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
185 711
186=head1 GLOBALS 712Another reason I<never> to C<< ->recv >> in a module is that you cannot
713sensibly have two C<< ->recv >>'s in parallel, as that would require
714multiple interpreters or coroutines/threads, none of which C<AnyEvent>
715can supply.
716
717The L<Coro> module, however, I<can> and I<does> supply coroutines and, in
718fact, L<Coro::AnyEvent> replaces AnyEvent's condvars by coroutine-safe
719versions and also integrates coroutines into AnyEvent, making blocking
720C<< ->recv >> calls perfectly safe as long as they are done from another
721coroutine (one that doesn't run the event loop).
722
723You can ensure that C<< -recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
724only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
725time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
726waits otherwise.
727
728=item $bool = $cv->ready
729
730Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether C<send> or
731C<croak> have been called.
732
733=item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
734
735This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
736replaces it before doing so.
737
738The callback will be called when the condition becomes "true", i.e. when
739C<send> or C<croak> are called, with the only argument being the condition
740variable itself. Calling C<recv> inside the callback or at any later time
741is guaranteed not to block.
742
743=back
744
745=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
187 746
188=over 4 747=over 4
189 748
190=item $AnyEvent::MODEL 749=item $AnyEvent::MODEL
191 750
195C<AnyEvent::Impl:xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the case 754C<AnyEvent::Impl:xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the case
196AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode>). 755AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode>).
197 756
198The known classes so far are: 757The known classes so far are:
199 758
200 AnyEvent::Impl::Coro based on Coro::Event, best choise. 759 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (an interface to libev, best choice).
201 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, also best choice :) 760 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, second best choice.
761 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl implementation, fast and portable.
202 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, second-best choice. 762 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, third-best choice.
203 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very bad choice. 763 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very bad choice.
204 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl implementation, inefficient. 764 AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt, cannot be autoprobed (see its docs).
765 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
766 AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, not generic enough for full support.
767
768 # warning, support for IO::Async is only partial, as it is too broken
769 # and limited toe ven support the AnyEvent API. See AnyEvent::Impl::Async.
770 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async, cannot be autoprobed (see its docs).
771
772There is no support for WxWidgets, as WxWidgets has no support for
773watching file handles. However, you can use WxWidgets through the
774POE Adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that simply polls 20 times per
775second, which was considered to be too horrible to even consider for
776AnyEvent. Likewise, other POE backends can be used by AnyEvent by using
777it's adaptor.
778
779AnyEvent knows about L<Prima> and L<Wx> and will try to use L<POE> when
780autodetecting them.
205 781
206=item AnyEvent::detect 782=item AnyEvent::detect
207 783
208Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model if 784Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model
209necessary. You should only call this function right before you would have 785if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would
210created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, very late at runtime. 786have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at
787runtime.
788
789=item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
790
791Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
792autodetected (or immediately if this has already happened).
793
794If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
795that automatically removes the callback again when it is destroyed. See
796L<Coro::BDB> for a case where this is useful.
797
798=item @AnyEvent::post_detect
799
800If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
801before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will called directly after
802the event loop has been chosen.
803
804You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
805if it contains a true value then the event loop has already been detected,
806and the array will be ignored.
807
808Best use C<AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }> instead.
211 809
212=back 810=back
213 811
214=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE 812=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
215 813
216As a module author, you should "use AnyEvent" and call AnyEvent methods 814As a module author, you should C<use AnyEvent> and call AnyEvent methods
217freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it. 815freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
218 816
219Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - Anyevent will 817Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
220decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so 818decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
221by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module 819by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
222to load the event module first. 820to load the event module first.
223 821
822Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
823the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
824because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
825events is to stay interactive.
826
827It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
828requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
829called C<results> that returns the results, it should call C<< ->recv >>
830freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. always).
831
224=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM 832=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
225 833
226There will always be a single main program - the only place that should 834There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
227dictate which event model to use. 835dictate which event model to use.
228 836
229If it doesn't care, it can just "use AnyEvent" and use it itself, or not 837If it doesn't care, it can just "use AnyEvent" and use it itself, or not
230do anything special and let AnyEvent decide which implementation to chose. 838do anything special (it does not need to be event-based) and let AnyEvent
839decide which implementation to chose if some module relies on it.
231 840
232If the main program relies on a specific event model (for example, in Gtk2 841If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
233programs you have to rely on either Glib or Glib::Event), you should load 842Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
234it before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it, generally, as early 843event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
235as possible. The reason is that modules might create watchers when they 844speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
236are loaded, and AnyEvent will decide on the event model to use as soon as 845modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
237it creates watchers, and it might chose the wrong one unless you load the 846decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
238correct one yourself. 847might chose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
239 848
240You can chose to use a rather inefficient pure-perl implementation by 849You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
241loading the C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl> module, but letting AnyEvent chose is 850C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl> module, which gives you similar behaviour
242generally better. 851everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
852
853=head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
854
855Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
856only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
857
858In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
859
860 AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
861
862This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
863
864Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
865it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
866variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
867exit cleanly.
868
869
870=head1 OTHER MODULES
871
872The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
873AnyEvent and can therefore be mixed easily with other AnyEvent modules
874in the same program. Some of the modules come with AnyEvent, some are
875available via CPAN.
876
877=over 4
878
879=item L<AnyEvent::Util>
880
881Contains various utility functions that replace often-used but blocking
882functions such as C<inet_aton> by event-/callback-based versions.
883
884=item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
885
886Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
887addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
888connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
889
890=item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
891
892Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
893supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
894non-blocking SSL/TLS.
895
896=item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
897
898Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
899
900=item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>
901
902A simple-to-use HTTP library that is capable of making a lot of concurrent
903HTTP requests.
904
905=item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
906
907Provides a simple web application server framework.
908
909=item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
910
911The fastest ping in the west.
912
913=item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
914
915Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process.
916
917=item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
918
919Truly asynchronous I/O, should be in the toolbox of every event
920programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent
921together.
922
923=item L<AnyEvent::BDB>
924
925Truly asynchronous Berkeley DB access. AnyEvent::BDB transparently fuses
926L<BDB> and AnyEvent together.
927
928=item L<AnyEvent::GPSD>
929
930A non-blocking interface to gpsd, a daemon delivering GPS information.
931
932=item L<AnyEvent::IGS>
933
934A non-blocking interface to the Internet Go Server protocol (used by
935L<App::IGS>).
936
937=item L<AnyEvent::IRC>
938
939AnyEvent based IRC client module family (replacing the older Net::IRC3).
940
941=item L<Net::XMPP2>
942
943AnyEvent based XMPP (Jabber protocol) module family.
944
945=item L<Net::FCP>
946
947AnyEvent-based implementation of the Freenet Client Protocol, birthplace
948of AnyEvent.
949
950=item L<Event::ExecFlow>
951
952High level API for event-based execution flow control.
953
954=item L<Coro>
955
956Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>.
957
958=item L<IO::Lambda>
959
960The lambda approach to I/O - don't ask, look there. Can use AnyEvent.
961
962=back
243 963
244=cut 964=cut
245 965
246package AnyEvent; 966package AnyEvent;
247 967
248no warnings; 968no warnings;
249use strict; 969use strict qw(vars subs);
250 970
251use Carp; 971use Carp;
252 972
253our $VERSION = '2.53'; 973our $VERSION = 4.8;
254our $MODEL; 974our $MODEL;
255 975
256our $AUTOLOAD; 976our $AUTOLOAD;
257our @ISA; 977our @ISA;
258 978
979our @REGISTRY;
980
981our $WIN32;
982
983BEGIN {
984 eval "sub WIN32(){ " . (($^O =~ /mswin32/i)*1) ." }";
985 eval "sub TAINT(){ " . (${^TAINT}*1) . " }";
986
987 delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
988 if ${^TAINT};
989}
990
259our $verbose = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1; 991our $verbose = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
260 992
261our @REGISTRY; 993our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
994
995{
996 my $idx;
997 $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
998 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
999 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1000}
262 1001
263my @models = ( 1002my @models = (
264 [Coro::Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Coro::], 1003 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV::],
265 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::], 1004 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::],
266 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib::],
267 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::],
268 [AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl::], 1005 [AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl::],
1006 # everything below here will not be autoprobed
1007 # as the pureperl backend should work everywhere
1008 # and is usually faster
1009 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1010 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib::], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1011 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1012 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
1013 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
1014 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1015 [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1016 # IO::Async is just too broken - we would need workaorunds for its
1017 # byzantine signal and broken child handling, among others.
1018 # IO::Async is rather hard to detect, as it doesn't have any
1019 # obvious default class.
1020# [IO::Async:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1021# [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1022# [IO::Async::Notifier:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
269); 1023);
270 1024
271our %method = map +($_ => 1), qw(io timer condvar broadcast wait signal one_event DESTROY); 1025our %method = map +($_ => 1),
1026 qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar one_event DESTROY);
1027
1028our @post_detect;
1029
1030sub post_detect(&) {
1031 my ($cb) = @_;
1032
1033 if ($MODEL) {
1034 $cb->();
1035
1036 1
1037 } else {
1038 push @post_detect, $cb;
1039
1040 defined wantarray
1041 ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1042 : ()
1043 }
1044}
1045
1046sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1047 @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1048}
272 1049
273sub detect() { 1050sub detect() {
274 unless ($MODEL) { 1051 unless ($MODEL) {
275 no strict 'refs'; 1052 no strict 'refs';
1053 local $SIG{__DIE__};
1054
1055 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z]+)$/) {
1056 my $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$1";
1057 if (eval "require $model") {
1058 $MODEL = $model;
1059 warn "AnyEvent: loaded model '$model' (forced by \$PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
1060 } else {
1061 warn "AnyEvent: unable to load model '$model' (from \$PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL):\n$@" if $verbose;
1062 }
1063 }
276 1064
277 # check for already loaded models 1065 # check for already loaded models
1066 unless ($MODEL) {
278 for (@REGISTRY, @models) { 1067 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
279 my ($package, $model) = @$_; 1068 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
280 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) { 1069 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
281 if (eval "require $model") { 1070 if (eval "require $model") {
282 $MODEL = $model; 1071 $MODEL = $model;
283 warn "AnyEvent: found model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1; 1072 warn "AnyEvent: autodetected model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
284 last; 1073 last;
1074 }
285 } 1075 }
286 } 1076 }
1077
1078 unless ($MODEL) {
1079 # try to load a model
1080
1081 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1082 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
1083 if (eval "require $package"
1084 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
1085 and eval "require $model") {
1086 $MODEL = $model;
1087 warn "AnyEvent: autoprobed model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
1088 last;
1089 }
1090 }
1091
1092 $MODEL
1093 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: EV, Event or Glib.\n";
1094 }
287 } 1095 }
288 1096
289 unless ($MODEL) { 1097 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
290 # try to load a model
291
292 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
293 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
294 if (eval "require $package"
295 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
296 and eval "require $model") {
297 $MODEL = $model;
298 warn "AnyEvent: autoprobed and loaded model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1;
299 last;
300 }
301 }
302
303 $MODEL
304 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: Event (or Coro+Event), Glib or Tk.";
305 }
306 1098
307 unshift @ISA, $MODEL; 1099 unshift @ISA, $MODEL;
308 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base"; 1100
1101 require AnyEvent::Strict if $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT};
1102
1103 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
309 } 1104 }
310 1105
311 $MODEL 1106 $MODEL
312} 1107}
313 1108
321 1116
322 my $class = shift; 1117 my $class = shift;
323 $class->$func (@_); 1118 $class->$func (@_);
324} 1119}
325 1120
1121# utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1122# to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1123# allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1124sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1125 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1126
1127 # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1128 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<") : ($w, ">");
1129
1130 open my $fh2, "$mode&", $fh
1131 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1132
1133 # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1134
1135 ($fh2, $rw)
1136}
1137
326package AnyEvent::Base; 1138package AnyEvent::Base;
327 1139
1140# default implementations for many methods
1141
1142BEGIN {
1143 if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1144 *_time = \&Time::HiRes::time;
1145 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1146 } else {
1147 *_time = sub { time }; # epic fail
1148 }
1149}
1150
1151sub time { _time }
1152sub now { _time }
1153sub now_update { }
1154
328# default implementation for ->condvar, ->wait, ->broadcast 1155# default implementation for ->condvar
329 1156
330sub condvar { 1157sub condvar {
331 bless \my $flag, "AnyEvent::Base::CondVar" 1158 bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
332}
333
334sub AnyEvent::Base::CondVar::broadcast {
335 ${$_[0]}++;
336}
337
338sub AnyEvent::Base::CondVar::wait {
339 AnyEvent->one_event while !${$_[0]};
340} 1159}
341 1160
342# default implementation for ->signal 1161# default implementation for ->signal
343 1162
344our %SIG_CB; 1163our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1164
1165sub _signal_exec {
1166 sysread $SIGPIPE_R, my $dummy, 4;
1167
1168 while (%SIG_EV) {
1169 for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1170 delete $SIG_EV{$_};
1171 $_->() for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
1172 }
1173 }
1174}
345 1175
346sub signal { 1176sub signal {
347 my (undef, %arg) = @_; 1177 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
348 1178
1179 unless ($SIGPIPE_R) {
1180 require Fcntl;
1181
1182 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1183 require AnyEvent::Util;
1184
1185 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1186 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1187 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1188 } else {
1189 pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1190 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, &Fcntl::F_SETFL, &Fcntl::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1191 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, &Fcntl::F_SETFL, &Fcntl::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1192
1193 # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1194 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, &Fcntl::F_SETFD, &Fcntl::FD_CLOEXEC;
1195 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, &Fcntl::F_SETFD, &Fcntl::FD_CLOEXEC;
1196 }
1197
1198 $SIGPIPE_R
1199 or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1200
1201 $SIG_IO = AnyEvent->io (fh => $SIGPIPE_R, poll => "r", cb => \&_signal_exec);
1202 }
1203
349 my $signal = uc $arg{signal} 1204 my $signal = uc $arg{signal}
350 or Carp::croak "required option 'signal' is missing"; 1205 or Carp::croak "required option 'signal' is missing";
351 1206
352 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb}; 1207 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
353 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub { 1208 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
354 $_->() for values %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} || {} }; 1209 local $!;
1210 syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1211 undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
355 }; 1212 };
356 1213
357 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::Signal" 1214 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
358} 1215}
359 1216
360sub AnyEvent::Base::Signal::DESTROY { 1217sub AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY {
361 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]}; 1218 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
362 1219
363 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb}; 1220 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
364 1221
1222 # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1223 # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1224 # instead of getting the default action.
365 $SIG{$signal} = 'DEFAULT' unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} }; 1225 undef $SIG{$signal} unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
366} 1226}
367 1227
368# default implementation for ->child 1228# default implementation for ->child
369 1229
370our %PID_CB; 1230our %PID_CB;
371our $CHLD_W; 1231our $CHLD_W;
372our $PID_IDLE; 1232our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
373our $WNOHANG; 1233our $WNOHANG;
374 1234
375sub _child_wait { 1235sub _sigchld {
376 while (0 < (my $pid = waitpid -1, $WNOHANG)) { 1236 while (0 < (my $pid = waitpid -1, $WNOHANG)) {
377 $_->() for values %{ (delete $PID_CB{$pid}) || {} }; 1237 $_->($pid, $?) for (values %{ $PID_CB{$pid} || {} }),
1238 (values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} });
378 } 1239 }
379
380 undef $PID_IDLE;
381} 1240}
382 1241
383sub child { 1242sub child {
384 my (undef, %arg) = @_; 1243 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
385 1244
386 my $pid = uc $arg{pid} 1245 defined (my $pid = $arg{pid} + 0)
387 or Carp::croak "required option 'pid' is missing"; 1246 or Carp::croak "required option 'pid' is missing";
388 1247
389 $PID_CB{$pid}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb}; 1248 $PID_CB{$pid}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
390 1249
391 unless ($WNOHANG) {
392 $WNOHANG = eval { require POSIX; &POSIX::WNOHANG } || 1; 1250 $WNOHANG ||= eval { local $SIG{__DIE__}; require POSIX; &POSIX::WNOHANG } || 1;
1251
1252 unless ($CHLD_W) {
1253 $CHLD_W = AnyEvent->signal (signal => 'CHLD', cb => \&_sigchld);
1254 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
1255 &_sigchld;
393 } 1256 }
394 1257
395 unless ($CHLD_W) {
396 $CHLD_W = AnyEvent->signal (signal => 'CHLD', cb => \&_child_wait);
397 # child could be a zombie already
398 $PID_IDLE ||= AnyEvent->timer (after => 0, cb => \&_child_wait);
399 }
400
401 bless [$pid, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::Child" 1258 bless [$pid, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
402} 1259}
403 1260
404sub AnyEvent::Base::Child::DESTROY { 1261sub AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY {
405 my ($pid, $cb) = @{$_[0]}; 1262 my ($pid, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
406 1263
407 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb}; 1264 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb};
408 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} }; 1265 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
409 1266
410 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB; 1267 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
411} 1268}
412 1269
1270# idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1271# of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1272# the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1273sub idle {
1274 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1275
1276 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1277
1278 $rcb = sub {
1279 if ($cb) {
1280 $w = _time;
1281 &$cb;
1282 $w = _time - $w;
1283
1284 # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1285 # within some limits
1286 $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1287 $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1288
1289 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $w, cb => $rcb);
1290 } else {
1291 # clean up...
1292 undef $w;
1293 undef $rcb;
1294 }
1295 };
1296
1297 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.05, cb => $rcb);
1298
1299 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1300}
1301
1302sub AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY {
1303 undef $${$_[0]};
1304}
1305
1306package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1307
1308our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1309
1310package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1311
1312use overload
1313 '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1314 fallback => 1;
1315
1316sub _send {
1317 # nop
1318}
1319
1320sub send {
1321 my $cv = shift;
1322 $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1323 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1324 $cv->_send;
1325}
1326
1327sub croak {
1328 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1329 $_[0]->send;
1330}
1331
1332sub ready {
1333 $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1334}
1335
1336sub _wait {
1337 AnyEvent->one_event while !$_[0]{_ae_sent};
1338}
1339
1340sub recv {
1341 $_[0]->_wait;
1342
1343 Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak} if $_[0]{_ae_croak};
1344 wantarray ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} } : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
1345}
1346
1347sub cb {
1348 $_[0]{_ae_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1349 $_[0]{_ae_cb}
1350}
1351
1352sub begin {
1353 ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1354 $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1355}
1356
1357sub end {
1358 return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1359 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
1360}
1361
1362# undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
1363*broadcast = \&send;
1364*wait = \&_wait;
1365
1366=head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1367
1368In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1369caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
1370the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
1371checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1372development.
1373
1374As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
1375executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
1376also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
1377program.
1378
1379The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
1380within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
1381$Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
1382so on.
1383
1384=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
1385
1386The following environment variables are used by this module or its
1387submodules.
1388
1389Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
1390C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
1391enabled.
1392
1393=over 4
1394
1395=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
1396
1397By default, AnyEvent will be completely silent except in fatal
1398conditions. You can set this environment variable to make AnyEvent more
1399talkative.
1400
1401When set to C<1> or higher, causes AnyEvent to warn about unexpected
1402conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified by
1403C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>.
1404
1405When set to C<2> or higher, cause AnyEvent to report to STDERR which event
1406model it chooses.
1407
1408=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
1409
1410AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
1411argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
1412will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
1413check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
1414it will croak.
1415
1416In other words, enables "strict" mode.
1417
1418Unlike C<use strict>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in
1419production. Keeping C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while
1420developing programs can be very useful, however.
1421
1422=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
1423
1424This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
1425auto detection and -probing kicks in. It must be a string consisting
1426entirely of ASCII letters. The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended
1427and the resulting module name is loaded and if the load was successful,
1428used as event model. If it fails to load AnyEvent will proceed with
1429auto detection and -probing.
1430
1431This functionality might change in future versions.
1432
1433For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) you
1434could start your program like this:
1435
1436 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
1437
1438=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
1439
1440Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
1441for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
1442of auto probing).
1443
1444Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
1445current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
1446used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
1447list.
1448
1449This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
1450against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
1451small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
1452
1453Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
1454but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
1455- only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
1456addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
1457IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
1458
1459=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
1460
1461Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension
1462for DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, but
1463some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS packets, which is why it is off by
1464default.
1465
1466Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
1467EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
1468
1469=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
1470
1471The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
1472will create in parallel.
1473
1474=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
1475
1476The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
1477resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
1478sent to the DNS server.
1479
1480=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
1481
1482The file to use instead of F</etc/resolv.conf> (or OS-specific
1483configuration) in the default resolver. When set to the empty string, no
1484default config will be used.
1485
1486=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
1487
1488When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
1489L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
1490variables exist, they will be used to specify CA certificate locations
1491instead of a system-dependent default.
1492
1493=back
1494
413=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE 1495=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
1496
1497This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
1498a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
1499provide AnyEvent compatibility.
414 1500
415If you need to support another event library which isn't directly 1501If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
416supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by 1502supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
417pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of 1503pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of
418the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto 1504the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
419C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading 1505C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading
420AnyEvent. 1506AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
421 1507
422Example: 1508Example:
423 1509
424 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::]; 1510 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
425 1511
426This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::> 1512This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::>
427package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is loaded. When 1513package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is already loaded.
1514
428AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it will 1515When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
429first check for the presence of urxvt. 1516will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to C<use> the
1517C<urxvt::anyevent> module.
430 1518
431The class should provide implementations for all watcher types (see 1519The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
432L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> 1520L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> (Source code)
433(Source code) and so on for actual examples, use C<perldoc -m 1521and so on for actual examples. Use C<perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to
434AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to see the sources). 1522see the sources.
435 1523
1524If you don't provide C<signal> and C<child> watchers than AnyEvent will
1525provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
1526
436The above isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt) 1527The above example isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt)
437uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included in AnyEvent 1528terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
438because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter inside 1529in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter
439I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the 1530inside I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the
440I<rxvt-unicode> distribution. 1531I<rxvt-unicode> distribution.
441 1532
442I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to 1533I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
443condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will 1534condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
444C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must 1535C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
445not be in an interactive application, so it makes sense. 1536not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
446 1537
447=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
448
449The following environment variables are used by this module:
450
451C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> when set to C<2> or higher, reports which event
452model gets used.
453
454=head1 EXAMPLE 1538=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
455 1539
456The following program uses an io watcher to read data from stdin, a timer 1540The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
457to display a message once per second, and a condvar to exit the program 1541to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
458when the user enters quit: 1542program when the user enters quit:
459 1543
460 use AnyEvent; 1544 use AnyEvent;
461 1545
462 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar; 1546 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
463 1547
464 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub { 1548 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
1549 fh => \*STDIN,
1550 poll => 'r',
1551 cb => sub {
465 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r> 1552 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
466 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line 1553 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
467 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read 1554 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
468 $cv->broadcast if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i 1555 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
1556 },
469 }); 1557 );
470 1558
471 my $time_watcher; # can only be used once 1559 my $time_watcher; # can only be used once
472 1560
473 sub new_timer { 1561 sub new_timer {
474 $timer = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => sub { 1562 $timer = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => sub {
477 }); 1565 });
478 } 1566 }
479 1567
480 new_timer; # create first timer 1568 new_timer; # create first timer
481 1569
482 $cv->wait; # wait until user enters /^q/i 1570 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
483 1571
484=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE 1572=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
485 1573
486Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following 1574Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
487API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http: 1575API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
537 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request} 1625 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
538 or die "connection or write error"; 1626 or die "connection or write error";
539 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r }); 1627 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
540 1628
541Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the 1629Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
542result and signals any possible waiters that the request ahs finished: 1630result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
543 1631
544 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf}; 1632 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
545 1633
546 if (end-of-file or data complete) { 1634 if (end-of-file or data complete) {
547 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf}; 1635 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
548 $txn->{finished}->broadcast; 1636 $txn->{finished}->send;
549 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback 1637 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
550 } 1638 }
551 1639
552The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the 1640The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
553request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the 1641request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
554data: 1642data:
555 1643
556 $txn->{finished}->wait; 1644 $txn->{finished}->recv;
557 return $txn->{result}; 1645 return $txn->{result};
558 1646
559The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions) 1647The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
560that occured during request processing. The C<result> method detects 1648that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
561wether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object) 1649whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
562and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other 1650and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
563problems get reported tot he code that tries to use the result, not in a 1651problems get reported tot he code that tries to use the result, not in a
564random callback. 1652random callback.
565 1653
566All of this enables the following usage styles: 1654All of this enables the following usage styles:
567 1655
5681. Blocking: 16561. Blocking:
569 1657
570 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); 1658 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
571 1659
5722. Blocking, but parallelizing: 16602. Blocking, but running in parallel:
573 1661
574 my @datas = map $_->result, 1662 my @datas = map $_->result,
575 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_), 1663 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
576 @urls; 1664 @urls;
577 1665
578Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know 1666Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
579anything about events. 1667anything about events.
580 1668
5813a. Event-based in a main program, using any support Event module: 16693a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
582 1670
583 use Event; 1671 use EV;
584 1672
585 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub { 1673 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
586 my $txn = shift; 1674 my $txn = shift;
587 my $data = $txn->result; 1675 my $data = $txn->result;
588 ... 1676 ...
589 }); 1677 });
590 1678
591 Event::loop; 1679 EV::loop;
592 1680
5933b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too: 16813b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
594 1682
595 use AnyEvent; 1683 use AnyEvent;
596 1684
597 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar; 1685 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
598 1686
599 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub { 1687 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
600 ... 1688 ...
601 $quit->broadcast; 1689 $quit->send;
602 }); 1690 });
603 1691
604 $quit->wait; 1692 $quit->recv;
1693
1694
1695=head1 BENCHMARKS
1696
1697To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
1698over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
1699of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
1700
1701=head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
1702
1703Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
1704through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
1705timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
1706which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
1707
1708Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
1709distribution.
1710
1711=head3 Explanation of the columns
1712
1713I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
1714different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
1715loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
1716and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
1717would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
1718of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
1719
1720I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
1721RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
1722and Perl-based overheads.
1723
1724I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
1725takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
1726all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
1727and memory usage is not included in the figures.
1728
1729I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
1730callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
1731invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
1732signal the end of this phase.
1733
1734I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
1735watcher.
1736
1737=head3 Results
1738
1739 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
1740 EV/EV 400000 224 0.47 0.35 0.27 EV native interface
1741 EV/Any 100000 224 2.88 0.34 0.27 EV + AnyEvent watchers
1742 CoroEV/Any 100000 224 2.85 0.35 0.28 coroutines + Coro::Signal
1743 Perl/Any 100000 452 4.13 0.73 0.95 pure perl implementation
1744 Event/Event 16000 517 32.20 31.80 0.81 Event native interface
1745 Event/Any 16000 590 35.85 31.55 1.06 Event + AnyEvent watchers
1746 IOAsync/Any 16000 989 38.10 32.77 11.13 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
1747 IOAsync/Any 16000 990 37.59 29.50 10.61 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
1748 Glib/Any 16000 1357 102.33 12.31 51.00 quadratic behaviour
1749 Tk/Any 2000 1860 27.20 66.31 14.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
1750 POE/Event 2000 6328 109.99 751.67 14.02 via POE::Loop::Event
1751 POE/Select 2000 6027 94.54 809.13 579.80 via POE::Loop::Select
1752
1753=head3 Discussion
1754
1755The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
1756well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
1757can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
1758file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
1759the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
1760boost.
1761
1762Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
1763overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
1764the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
1765higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
1766
1767To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
1768benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
1769EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
1770cycles with POE.
1771
1772C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
1773maximal/minimal, respectively. Even when going through AnyEvent, it uses
1774far less memory than any other event loop and is still faster than Event
1775natively.
1776
1777The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
1778constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
1779interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
1780adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
1781performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
1782them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
1783
1784The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
1785cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
1786
1787C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
1788when using its pure perl backend.
1789
1790C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
1791faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
1792C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
1793watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
1794making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
1795(note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
1796inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
1797
1798The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
1799more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
1800precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
1801file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
1802employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
1803hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
1804above).
1805
1806C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
1807select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
1808be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
1809memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
1810as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
1811requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
1812invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
1813implementation.
1814
1815The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
1816for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
1817small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
1818optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
1819using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
1820memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
1821design).
1822
1823=head3 Summary
1824
1825=over 4
1826
1827=item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
1828(even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
1829performance with or without AnyEvent.
1830
1831=item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
1832the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
1833adds AnyEvent significant overhead.
1834
1835=item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
1836reasonable memory usage.
1837
1838=back
1839
1840=head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
1841
1842This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
1843creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
1844timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
1845watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
1846watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
1847
1848The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
1849are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
1850fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
1851timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
1852most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
1853
1854In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
1855(1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
1856connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
1857
1858Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
1859distribution.
1860
1861=head3 Explanation of the columns
1862
1863I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
1864each server has a read and write socket end).
1865
1866I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
1867nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
1868
1869I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
1870single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
1871it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
1872a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
1873
1874=head3 Results
1875
1876 name sockets create request
1877 EV 20000 69.01 11.16
1878 Perl 20000 73.32 35.87
1879 IOAsync 20000 157.00 98.14 epoll
1880 IOAsync 20000 159.31 616.06 poll
1881 Event 20000 212.62 257.32
1882 Glib 20000 651.16 1896.30
1883 POE 20000 349.67 12317.24 uses POE::Loop::Event
1884
1885=head3 Discussion
1886
1887This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
1888particular event loop.
1889
1890EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
1891is relatively high, though.
1892
1893Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
1894loops Event and Glib.
1895
1896IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
1897good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
1898
1899Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
1900understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
1901the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
1902uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
1903
1904Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
1905clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
1906
1907POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
1908as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
1909it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
1910
1911=head3 Summary
1912
1913=over 4
1914
1915=item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
1916
1917=item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
1918
1919=back
1920
1921=head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
1922
1923While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
1924large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
1925I/O watchers.
1926
1927In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
1928case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
1929one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
1930well.
1931
1932The columns are identical to the previous table.
1933
1934=head3 Results
1935
1936 name sockets create request
1937 EV 16 20.00 6.54
1938 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
1939 Event 16 81.27 35.86
1940 Glib 16 32.63 15.48
1941 POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
1942
1943=head3 Discussion
1944
1945The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
1946server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
1947in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
1948to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
1949speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
1950them).
1951
1952EV is again fastest.
1953
1954Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
1955loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
1956matter.
1957
1958POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
1959others.
1960
1961=head3 Summary
1962
1963=over 4
1964
1965=item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
1966watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
1967
1968=back
1969
1970=head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
1971
1972Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
1973could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
1974simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
1975shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
1976fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
1977very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
1978baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
1979
1980The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
1981connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
1982creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
1983test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
1984benchmark nevertheless.
1985
1986 name runtime
1987 Lambda/select 0.330 sec
1988 + optimized 0.122 sec
1989 Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
1990 + optimized 0.138 sec
1991 Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
1992 POE/select, components 0.662 sec
1993 POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
1994 POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
1995
1996 AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
1997 AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
1998 +state machine 0.134 sec
1999
2000The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2001benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2002defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2003written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2004AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2005resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2006generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2007connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2008
2009The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2010offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2011Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2012non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2013
2014As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2015hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2016backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2017
2018And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2019slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda by a
2020large margin, even though it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O
2021in a non-blocking way.
2022
2023The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2024F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2025part of the IO::lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2026
2027
2028=head1 SIGNALS
2029
2030AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2031
2032=over 4
2033
2034=item SIGCHLD
2035
2036A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2037emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2038event loops install a similar handler.
2039
2040If, when AnyEvent is loaded, SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then AnyEvent will
2041reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2042
2043=item SIGPIPE
2044
2045A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2046when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2047
2048The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2049on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2050badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2051program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2052some random socket.
2053
2054The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2055that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2056
2057Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2058
2059=back
2060
2061=cut
2062
2063undef $SIG{CHLD}
2064 if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2065
2066$SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2067 unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2068
2069=head1 FORK
2070
2071Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2072because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll>
2073calls. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware.
2074
2075If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2076watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child.
2077
2078
2079=head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2080
2081AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2082$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2083execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2084make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2085will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2086specified in the variable.
2087
2088You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2089before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2090
2091 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2092
2093 use AnyEvent;
2094
2095Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2096be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2097probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2098$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2099
2100Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2101C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2102enabled.
2103
2104
2105=head1 BUGS
2106
2107Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
2108to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
2109and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
2110memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
2111pronounced).
2112
605 2113
606=head1 SEE ALSO 2114=head1 SEE ALSO
607 2115
608Event modules: L<Coro::Event>, L<Coro>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>. 2116Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util>.
609 2117
610Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::Coro>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>. 2118Event modules: L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>, L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>,
2119L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>, L<POE>.
611 2120
612Nontrivial usage example: L<Net::FCP>. 2121Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
2122L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
2123L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
2124L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>.
613 2125
614=head1 2126Non-blocking file handles, sockets, TCP clients and
2127servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>.
2128
2129Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2130
2131Coroutine support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>, L<Coro::Event>,
2132
2133Nontrivial usage examples: L<Net::FCP>, L<Net::XMPP2>, L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2134
2135
2136=head1 AUTHOR
2137
2138 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
2139 http://home.schmorp.de/
615 2140
616=cut 2141=cut
617 2142
6181 21431
619 2144

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