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1=head1 NAME 1=head1 NAME
2 2
3AnyEvent - provide framework for multiple event loops 3AnyEvent - the DBI of event loop programming
4 4
5EV, Event, Coro::EV, Coro::Event, Glib, Tk, Perl - various supported event loops 5EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Irssi, rxvt-unicode, IO::Async, Qt
6and POE are various supported event loops/environments.
6 7
7=head1 SYNOPSIS 8=head1 SYNOPSIS
8 9
9 use AnyEvent; 10 use AnyEvent;
10 11
12 # if you prefer function calls, look at the L<AE> manpage for
13 # an alternative API.
14
15 # file handle or descriptor readable
11 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r|w", cb => sub { 16 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
17
18 # one-shot or repeating timers
19 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
20 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...
21
22 print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
23 print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
24
25 # POSIX signal
26 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
27
28 # child process exit
29 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
30 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
12 ... 31 ...
13 }); 32 });
14 33
15 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { 34 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
16 ... 35 my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
17 });
18 36
19 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged 37 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
38 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
20 $w->wait; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->broadcast 39 $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
21 $w->broadcast; # wake up current and all future wait's 40 # use a condvar in callback mode:
41 $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
42
43=head1 INTRODUCTION/TUTORIAL
44
45This manpage is mainly a reference manual. If you are interested
46in a tutorial or some gentle introduction, have a look at the
47L<AnyEvent::Intro> manpage.
48
49=head1 SUPPORT
50
51There is a mailinglist for discussing all things AnyEvent, and an IRC
52channel, too.
53
54See the AnyEvent project page at the B<Schmorpforge Ta-Sa Software
55Repository>, at L<http://anyevent.schmorp.de>, for more info.
22 56
23=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT) 57=head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
24 58
25Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen 59Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
26nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent? 60nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
27 61
28Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of 62Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of
29policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>. 63policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>.
30 64
31First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only 65First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only
32interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use in a 66interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
33pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike, 67pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
34the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general, 68the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
35only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process. AnyEvent 69only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process. AnyEvent
36helps hiding the differences between those event loops. 70cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between those event
71loops.
37 72
38The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event 73The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
39programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a 74programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
40religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your 75religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
41module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event 76module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
42model you use. 77model you use.
43 78
44For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is 79For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
45actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is 80actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is
46like joining a cult: After you joined, you are dependent on them and you 81like joining a cult: After you joined, you are dependent on them and you
47cannot use anything else, as it is simply incompatible to everything that 82cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
48isn't itself. What's worse, all the potential users of your module are 83that isn't them. What's worse, all the potential users of your
49I<also> forced to use the same event loop you use. 84module are I<also> forced to use the same event loop you use.
50 85
51AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works 86AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
52fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together 87fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
53with the rest: POE + IO::Async? no go. Tk + Event? no go. Again: if 88with the rest: POE + IO::Async? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if
54your module uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it, 89your module uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it,
55too. But if your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all 90too. But if your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all
56event models it supports (including stuff like POE and IO::Async, as long 91event models it supports (including stuff like IO::Async, as long as those
57as those use one of the supported event loops. It is trivial to add new 92use one of the supported event loops. It is trivial to add new event loops
58event loops to AnyEvent, too, so it is future-proof). 93to AnyEvent, too, so it is future-proof).
59 94
60In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event 95In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
61model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar 96model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
62modules, you get an enourmous amount of code and strict rules you have to 97modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
63follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and up to the point, by only 98follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and up to the point, by only
64offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as 99offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
65technically possible. 100technically possible.
66 101
102Of course, AnyEvent comes with a big (and fully optional!) toolbox
103of useful functionality, such as an asynchronous DNS resolver, 100%
104non-blocking connects (even with TLS/SSL, IPv6 and on broken platforms
105such as Windows) and lots of real-world knowledge and workarounds for
106platform bugs and differences.
107
67Of course, if you want lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat 108Now, if you I<do want> lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
68useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event 109useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
69model, you should I<not> use this module. 110model, you should I<not> use this module.
70
71 111
72=head1 DESCRIPTION 112=head1 DESCRIPTION
73 113
74L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This 114L<AnyEvent> provides an identical interface to multiple event loops. This
75allows module authors to utilise an event loop without forcing module 115allows module authors to utilise an event loop without forcing module
79The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event> 119The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
80module. 120module.
81 121
82During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries 122During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
83to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the 123to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
84following modules is already loaded: L<Coro::EV>, L<Coro::Event>, L<EV>, 124following modules is already loaded: L<EV>,
85L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>. The first one found is used. If none are found, 125L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>,
86the module tries to load these modules in the stated order. The first one 126L<POE>. The first one found is used. If none are found, the module tries
127to load these modules (excluding Tk, Event::Lib, Qt and POE as the pure perl
128adaptor should always succeed) in the order given. The first one that can
87that can be successfully loaded will be used. If, after this, still none 129be successfully loaded will be used. If, after this, still none could be
88could be found, AnyEvent will fall back to a pure-perl event loop, which 130found, AnyEvent will fall back to a pure-perl event loop, which is not
89is not very efficient, but should work everywhere. 131very efficient, but should work everywhere.
90 132
91Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading 133Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
92an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make 134an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
93that model the default. For example: 135that model the default. For example:
94 136
101starts using it, all bets are off. Maybe you should tell their authors to 143starts using it, all bets are off. Maybe you should tell their authors to
102use AnyEvent so their modules work together with others seamlessly... 144use AnyEvent so their modules work together with others seamlessly...
103 145
104The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called 146The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called
105C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>. Like other event modules you can load it 147C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>. Like other event modules you can load it
106explicitly. 148explicitly and enjoy the high availability of that event loop :)
107 149
108=head1 WATCHERS 150=head1 WATCHERS
109 151
110AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that 152AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that
111stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as 153stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
112the callback to call, the filehandle to watch, etc. 154the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
113 155
114These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After 156These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
115creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the 157creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the
116callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model 158callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model
117is in control). 159is in control).
118 160
161Note that B<callbacks must not permanently change global variables>
162potentially in use by the event loop (such as C<$_> or C<$[>) and that B<<
163callbacks must not C<die> >>. The former is good programming practise in
164Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
165widely between event loops.
166
119To disable the watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the 167To disable the watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
120variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references 168variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
121to it). 169to it).
122 170
123All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class. 171All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
125Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for 173Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for
126example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways. 174example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways.
127 175
128An any way to achieve that is this pattern: 176An any way to achieve that is this pattern:
129 177
130 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub { 178 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub {
131 # you can use $w here, for example to undef it 179 # you can use $w here, for example to undef it
132 undef $w; 180 undef $w;
133 }); 181 });
134 182
135Note that C<my $w; $w => combination. This is necessary because in Perl, 183Note that C<my $w; $w => combination. This is necessary because in Perl,
136my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are 184my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are
137declared. 185declared.
138 186
139=head2 IO WATCHERS 187=head2 I/O WATCHERS
188
189 $w = AnyEvent->io (
190 fh => <filehandle_or_fileno>,
191 poll => <"r" or "w">,
192 cb => <callback>,
193 );
140 194
141You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method 195You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method
142with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments: 196with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
143 197
144C<fh> the Perl I<file handle> (I<not> file descriptor) to watch for 198C<fh> is the Perl I<file handle> (or a naked file descriptor) to watch
199for events (AnyEvent might or might not keep a reference to this file
200handle). Note that only file handles pointing to things for which
201non-blocking operation makes sense are allowed. This includes sockets,
202most character devices, pipes, fifos and so on, but not for example files
203or block devices.
204
145events. C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which 205C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which creates a
146creates a watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, 206watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
207
147respectively. C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle 208C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
148becomes ready.
149 209
150File handles will be kept alive, so as long as the watcher exists, the 210Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
151file handle exists, too. 211presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
212callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
152 213
214The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of it.
153It is not allowed to close a file handle as long as any watcher is active 215You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on the
154on the underlying file descriptor. 216underlying file descriptor.
155 217
156Some event loops issue spurious readyness notifications, so you should 218Some event loops issue spurious readyness notifications, so you should
157always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file 219always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
158handles. 220handles.
159 221
160Example:
161
162 # wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the watcher 222Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
223watcher.
224
163 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub { 225 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
164 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); 226 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
165 warn "read: $input\n"; 227 warn "read: $input\n";
166 undef $w; 228 undef $w;
167 }); 229 });
168 230
169=head2 TIME WATCHERS 231=head2 TIME WATCHERS
170 232
233 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => <seconds>, cb => <callback>);
234
235 $w = AnyEvent->timer (
236 after => <fractional_seconds>,
237 interval => <fractional_seconds>,
238 cb => <callback>,
239 );
240
171You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >> 241You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
172method with the following mandatory arguments: 242method with the following mandatory arguments:
173 243
174C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are 244C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
175supported) should the timer activate. C<cb> the callback to invoke in that 245supported) the callback should be invoked. C<cb> is the callback to invoke
176case. 246in that case.
177 247
178The timer callback will be invoked at most once: if you want a repeating 248Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
179timer you have to create a new watcher (this is a limitation by both Tk 249presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
180and Glib). 250callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
181 251
182Example: 252The callback will normally be invoked once only. If you specify another
253parameter, C<interval>, as a strictly positive number (> 0), then the
254callback will be invoked regularly at that interval (in fractional
255seconds) after the first invocation. If C<interval> is specified with a
256false value, then it is treated as if it were missing.
183 257
258The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
259attempt is done to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval is
260only approximate.
261
184 # fire an event after 7.7 seconds 262Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
263
185 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub { 264 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
186 warn "timeout\n"; 265 warn "timeout\n";
187 }); 266 });
188 267
189 # to cancel the timer: 268 # to cancel the timer:
190 undef $w; 269 undef $w;
191 270
192Example 2:
193
194 # fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second 271Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
195 my $w;
196 272
197 my $cb = sub {
198 # cancel the old timer while creating a new one
199 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => $cb); 273 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
274 warn "timeout\n";
200 }; 275 };
201
202 # start the "loop" by creating the first watcher
203 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, cb => $cb);
204 276
205=head3 TIMING ISSUES 277=head3 TIMING ISSUES
206 278
207There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire 279There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
208in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12 280in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
209o'clock"). 281o'clock").
210 282
211While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way, they use 283While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way, they
212absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your clock "jumps", 284use absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your clock
213for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards from the wrong 2014-01-01 to 285"jumps", for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards from
2142008-01-01, a watcher that you created to fire "after" a second might actually take 286the wrong date of 2014-01-01 to 2008-01-01, a watcher that is supposed to
215six years to finally fire. 287fire "after" a second might actually take six years to finally fire.
216 288
217AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious 289AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious
218about these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer) and 290about these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer, based
219absolute (ev_periodic) timers. 291on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on wallclock time)
292timers.
220 293
221AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the 294AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
222AnyEvent API. 295AnyEvent API.
223 296
297AnyEvent has two additional methods that return the "current time":
298
299=over 4
300
301=item AnyEvent->time
302
303This returns the "current wallclock time" as a fractional number of
304seconds since the Epoch (the same thing as C<time> or C<Time::HiRes::time>
305return, and the result is guaranteed to be compatible with those).
306
307It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each call
308will check the system clock, which usually gets updated frequently.
309
310=item AnyEvent->now
311
312This also returns the "current wallclock time", but unlike C<time>, above,
313this value might change only once per event loop iteration, depending on
314the event loop (most return the same time as C<time>, above). This is the
315time that AnyEvent's timers get scheduled against.
316
317I<In almost all cases (in all cases if you don't care), this is the
318function to call when you want to know the current time.>
319
320This function is also often faster then C<< AnyEvent->time >>, and
321thus the preferred method if you want some timestamp (for example,
322L<AnyEvent::Handle> uses this to update it's activity timeouts).
323
324The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very exact
325with your timing, you can skip it without bad conscience.
326
327For a practical example of when these times differ, consider L<Event::Lib>
328and L<EV> and the following set-up:
329
330The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callback at
331time=500 (assume no other callbacks delay processing). In your callback,
332you wait a second by executing C<sleep 1> (blocking the process for a
333second) and then (at time=501) you create a relative timer that fires
334after three seconds.
335
336With L<Event::Lib>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> will
337both return C<501>, because that is the current time, and the timer will
338be scheduled to fire at time=504 (C<501> + C<3>).
339
340With L<EV>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> returns C<501> (as that is the current
341time), but C<< AnyEvent->now >> returns C<500>, as that is the time the
342last event processing phase started. With L<EV>, your timer gets scheduled
343to run at time=503 (C<500> + C<3>).
344
345In one sense, L<Event::Lib> is more exact, as it uses the current time
346regardless of any delays introduced by event processing. However, most
347callbacks do not expect large delays in processing, so this causes a
348higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the current time).
349
350In another sense, L<EV> is more exact, as your timer will be scheduled at
351the same time, regardless of how long event processing actually took.
352
353In either case, if you care (and in most cases, you don't), then you
354can get whatever behaviour you want with any event loop, by taking the
355difference between C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> into
356account.
357
358=item AnyEvent->now_update
359
360Some event loops (such as L<EV> or L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) cache
361the current time for each loop iteration (see the discussion of L<<
362AnyEvent->now >>, above).
363
364When a callback runs for a long time (or when the process sleeps), then
365this "current" time will differ substantially from the real time, which
366might affect timers and time-outs.
367
368When this is the case, you can call this method, which will update the
369event loop's idea of "current time".
370
371A typical example would be a script in a web server (e.g. C<mod_perl>) -
372when mod_perl executes the script, then the event loop will have the wrong
373idea about the "current time" (being potentially far in the past, when the
374script ran the last time). In that case you should arrange a call to C<<
375AnyEvent->now_update >> each time the web server process wakes up again
376(e.g. at the start of your script, or in a handler).
377
378Note that updating the time I<might> cause some events to be handled.
379
380=back
381
224=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS 382=head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS
225 383
384 $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => <uppercase_signal_name>, cb => <callback>);
385
226You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal 386You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal
227I<name> without any C<SIG> prefix, C<cb> is the Perl callback to 387I<name> in uppercase and without any C<SIG> prefix, C<cb> is the Perl
228be invoked whenever a signal occurs. 388callback to be invoked whenever a signal occurs.
229 389
390Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
391presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
392callbacks cannot use arguments passed to signal watcher callbacks.
393
230Multiple signals occurances can be clumped together into one callback 394Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
231invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. synchronous means 395invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous means
232that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process, 396that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process,
233but it is guarenteed not to interrupt any other callbacks. 397but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
234 398
235The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal 399The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal
236between multiple watchers. 400between multiple watchers, and AnyEvent will ensure that signals will not
401interrupt your program at bad times.
237 402
238This watcher might use C<%SIG>, so programs overwriting those signals 403This watcher might use C<%SIG> (depending on the event loop used),
239directly will likely not work correctly. 404so programs overwriting those signals directly will likely not work
405correctly.
240 406
241Example: exit on SIGINT 407Example: exit on SIGINT
242 408
243 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 }); 409 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
244 410
411=head3 Restart Behaviour
412
413While restart behaviour is up to the event loop implementation, most will
414not restart syscalls (that includes L<Async::Interrupt> and AnyEvent's
415pure perl implementation).
416
417=head3 Safe/Unsafe Signals
418
419Perl signals can be either "safe" (synchronous to opcode handling) or
420"unsafe" (asynchronous) - the former might get delayed indefinitely, the
421latter might corrupt your memory.
422
423AnyEvent signal handlers are, in addition, synchronous to the event loop,
424i.e. they will not interrupt your running perl program but will only be
425called as part of the normal event handling (just like timer, I/O etc.
426callbacks, too).
427
428=head3 Signal Races, Delays and Workarounds
429
430Many event loops (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt, IO::Async) do not support attaching
431callbacks to signals in a generic way, which is a pity, as you cannot
432do race-free signal handling in perl, requiring C libraries for
433this. AnyEvent will try to do it's best, which means in some cases,
434signals will be delayed. The maximum time a signal might be delayed is
435specified in C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY> (default: 10 seconds). This
436variable can be changed only before the first signal watcher is created,
437and should be left alone otherwise. This variable determines how often
438AnyEvent polls for signals (in case a wake-up was missed). Higher values
439will cause fewer spurious wake-ups, which is better for power and CPU
440saving.
441
442All these problems can be avoided by installing the optional
443L<Async::Interrupt> module, which works with most event loops. It will not
444work with inherently broken event loops such as L<Event> or L<Event::Lib>
445(and not with L<POE> currently, as POE does it's own workaround with
446one-second latency). For those, you just have to suffer the delays.
447
245=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS 448=head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
246 449
450 $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => <process id>, cb => <callback>);
451
247You can also watch on a child process exit and catch its exit status. 452You can also watch on a child process exit and catch its exit status.
248 453
249The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (if set to C<0>, it 454The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (one some backends,
250watches for any child process exit). The watcher will trigger as often 455using C<0> watches for any child process exit, on others this will
251as status change for the child are received. This works by installing a 456croak). The watcher will be triggered only when the child process has
252signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>. The callback will be called with the pid 457finished and an exit status is available, not on any trace events
253and exit status (as returned by waitpid). 458(stopped/continued).
254 459
255Example: wait for pid 1333 460The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
461waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you I<can> rely on child watcher
462callback arguments.
256 463
464This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>,
465and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
466random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g. inside
467C<system>, is just fine).
468
469There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start them
470I<after> the child process was created, and this means the process could
471have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
472
473Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async do,
474see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event models
475that I<do> handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded before
476the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place). AnyEvent's
477pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless of when you
478start the watcher.
479
480This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first
481thing in an AnyEvent program, you I<have> to create at least one
482watcher before you C<fork> the child (alternatively, you can call
483C<AnyEvent::detect>).
484
485As most event loops do not support waiting for child events, they will be
486emulated by AnyEvent in most cases, in which the latency and race problems
487mentioned in the description of signal watchers apply.
488
489Example: fork a process and wait for it
490
491 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
492
493 my $pid = fork or exit 5;
494
257 my $w = AnyEvent->child ( 495 my $w = AnyEvent->child (
258 pid => 1333, 496 pid => $pid,
259 cb => sub { 497 cb => sub {
260 my ($pid, $status) = @_; 498 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
261 warn "pid $pid exited with status $status"; 499 warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
500 $done->send;
262 }, 501 },
263 ); 502 );
503
504 # do something else, then wait for process exit
505 $done->recv;
506
507=head2 IDLE WATCHERS
508
509 $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => <callback>);
510
511Repeatedly invoke the callback after the process becomes idle, until
512either the watcher is destroyed or new events have been detected.
513
514Idle watchers are useful when there is a need to do something, but it
515is not so important (or wise) to do it instantly. The callback will be
516invoked only when there is "nothing better to do", which is usually
517defined as "all outstanding events have been handled and no new events
518have been detected". That means that idle watchers ideally get invoked
519when the event loop has just polled for new events but none have been
520detected. Instead of blocking to wait for more events, the idle watchers
521will be invoked.
522
523Unfortunately, most event loops do not really support idle watchers (only
524EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest, AnyEvent
525will simply call the callback "from time to time".
526
527Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the
528program is otherwise idle:
529
530 my @lines; # read data
531 my $idle_w;
532 my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
533 push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
534
535 # start an idle watcher, if not already done
536 $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
537 # handle only one line, when there are lines left
538 if (my $line = shift @lines) {
539 print "handled when idle: $line";
540 } else {
541 # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
542 undef $idle_w;
543 }
544 });
545 });
264 546
265=head2 CONDITION VARIABLES 547=head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
266 548
549 $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
550
551 $cv->send (<list>);
552 my @res = $cv->recv;
553
554If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
555require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
556will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
557
558AnyEvent is slightly different: it expects somebody else to run the event
559loop and will only block when necessary (usually when told by the user).
560
561The instrument to do that is called a "condition variable", so called
562because they represent a condition that must become true.
563
564Now is probably a good time to look at the examples further below.
565
267Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar >> 566Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar
268method without any arguments. 567>> method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
568C<cb>, which specifies a callback to be called when the condition variable
569becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
570the results).
269 571
270A condition variable waits for a condition - precisely that the C<< 572After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
271->broadcast >> method has been called. 573by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
574were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
575->send >> method).
272 576
273They are very useful to signal that a condition has been fulfilled, for 577Condition variables are similar to callbacks, except that you can
578optionally wait for them. They can also be called merge points - points
579in time where multiple outstanding events have been processed. And yet
580another way to call them is transactions - each condition variable can be
581used to represent a transaction, which finishes at some point and delivers
582a result. And yet some people know them as "futures" - a promise to
583compute/deliver something that you can wait for.
584
585Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has finished,
274example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests, 586for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests,
275then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the 587then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
276availability of results. 588availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
589called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
277 590
278You can also use condition variables to block your main program until 591You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
279an event occurs - for example, you could C<< ->wait >> in your main 592you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
280program until the user clicks the Quit button in your app, which would C<< 593could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
281->broadcast >> the "quit" event. 594button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
282 595
283Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have 596Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
284two pirces of code that call C<< ->wait >> in a round-robbin fashion, you 597two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
285lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but 598lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but
286you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks, 599you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks,
287as this asks for trouble. 600as this asks for trouble.
288 601
289This object has two methods: 602Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
603used by AnyEvent itself are all named C<_ae_XXX> to make subclassing
604easy (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
605AnyEvent). To subclass, use C<AnyEvent::CondVar> as base class and call
606it's C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
290 607
291=over 4 608There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
609eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
610for the send to occur.
292 611
293=item $cv->wait 612Example: wait for a timer.
294
295Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->broadcast >> method has been
296called on c<$cv>, while servicing other watchers normally.
297
298You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls will return
299immediately.
300
301Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
302(programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
303using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>, but let the
304caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
305condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
306callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
307while still suppporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
308
309Another reason I<never> to C<< ->wait >> in a module is that you cannot
310sensibly have two C<< ->wait >>'s in parallel, as that would require
311multiple interpreters or coroutines/threads, none of which C<AnyEvent>
312can supply (the coroutine-aware backends L<AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEV> and
313L<AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEvent> explicitly support concurrent C<< ->wait >>'s
314from different coroutines, however).
315
316=item $cv->broadcast
317
318Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->wait >> and all further
319calls to C<wait> will (eventually) return after this method has been
320called. If nobody is waiting the broadcast will be remembered..
321
322=back
323
324Example:
325 613
326 # wait till the result is ready 614 # wait till the result is ready
327 my $result_ready = AnyEvent->condvar; 615 my $result_ready = AnyEvent->condvar;
328 616
329 # do something such as adding a timer 617 # do something such as adding a timer
330 # or socket watcher the calls $result_ready->broadcast 618 # or socket watcher the calls $result_ready->send
331 # when the "result" is ready. 619 # when the "result" is ready.
332 # in this case, we simply use a timer: 620 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
333 my $w = AnyEvent->timer ( 621 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
334 after => 1, 622 after => 1,
335 cb => sub { $result_ready->broadcast }, 623 cb => sub { $result_ready->send },
336 ); 624 );
337 625
338 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the watcher 626 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
339 # calls broadcast 627 # calls ->send
340 $result_ready->wait; 628 $result_ready->recv;
629
630Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that condition
631variables are also callable directly.
632
633 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
634 my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
635 $done->recv;
636
637Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
638callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from
639the main program:
640
641 use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
642
643 ...
644
645 my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
646
647And this is how you would just set a callback to be called whenever the
648results are available:
649
650 $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
651 my @info = $_[0]->recv;
652 });
653
654=head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
655
656These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
657code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
658the producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
659uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
660
661=over 4
662
663=item $cv->send (...)
664
665Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->recv >> and all further
666calls to C<recv> will (eventually) return after this method has been
667called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
668
669If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
670immediately from within send.
671
672Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
673future C<< ->recv >> calls.
674
675Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly (as if
676they were a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as calling
677C<send>.
678
679=item $cv->croak ($error)
680
681Similar to send, but causes all call's to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
682C<Carp::croak> with the given error message/object/scalar.
683
684This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
685user/consumer. Doing it this way instead of calling C<croak> directly
686delays the error detetcion, but has the overwhelmign advantage that it
687diagnoses the error at the place where the result is expected, and not
688deep in some event clalback without connection to the actual code causing
689the problem.
690
691=item $cv->begin ([group callback])
692
693=item $cv->end
694
695These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events into
696one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel might want
697to use a condition variable for the whole process.
698
699Every call to C<< ->begin >> will increment a counter, and every call to
700C<< ->end >> will decrement it. If the counter reaches C<0> in C<< ->end
701>>, the (last) callback passed to C<begin> will be executed, passing the
702condvar as first argument. That callback is I<supposed> to call C<< ->send
703>>, but that is not required. If no group callback was set, C<send> will
704be called without any arguments.
705
706You can think of C<< $cv->send >> giving you an OR condition (one call
707sends), while C<< $cv->begin >> and C<< $cv->end >> giving you an AND
708condition (all C<begin> calls must be C<end>'ed before the condvar sends).
709
710Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for example,
711STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for both streams to
712close before activating a condvar:
713
714 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
715
716 $cv->begin; # first watcher
717 my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
718 defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
719 or $cv->end;
720 });
721
722 $cv->begin; # second watcher
723 my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
724 defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
725 or $cv->end;
726 });
727
728 $cv->recv;
729
730This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle), there is
731one call to C<begin>, so the condvar waits for all calls to C<end> before
732sending.
733
734The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as the
735there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks that are
736begung can potentially be zero:
737
738 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
739
740 my %result;
741 $cv->begin (sub { shift->send (\%result) });
742
743 for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
744 $cv->begin;
745 ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
746 $result{$host} = ...;
747 $cv->end;
748 };
749 }
750
751 $cv->end;
752
753This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
754C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
755order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to C<begin> when it starts
756each ping request and calls C<end> when it has received some result for
757it. Since C<begin> and C<end> only maintain a counter, the order in which
758results arrive is not relevant.
759
760There is an additional bracketing call to C<begin> and C<end> outside the
761loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the callback
762to be called once the counter reaches C<0>, and second, it ensures that
763C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
764doesn't execute once).
765
766This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
767potentially none) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
768the callback and ensure C<end> is called at least once, and then, for each
769subrequest you start, call C<begin> and for each subrequest you finish,
770call C<end>.
771
772=back
773
774=head3 METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
775
776These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the
777code awaits the condition.
778
779=over 4
780
781=item $cv->recv
782
783Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
784>> methods have been called on c<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
785normally.
786
787You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid but
788will return immediately.
789
790If an error condition has been set by calling C<< ->croak >>, then this
791function will call C<croak>.
792
793In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
794in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
795
796Note that doing a blocking wait in a callback is not supported by any
797event loop, that is, recursive invocation of a blocking C<< ->recv
798>> is not allowed, and the C<recv> call will C<croak> if such a
799condition is detected. This condition can be slightly loosened by using
800L<Coro::AnyEvent>, which allows you to do a blocking C<< ->recv >> from
801any thread that doesn't run the event loop itself.
802
803Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
804(programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
805using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>. Instead, let the
806caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
807condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
808callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
809while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
810
811You can ensure that C<< -recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
812only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
813time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
814waits otherwise.
815
816=item $bool = $cv->ready
817
818Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether C<send> or
819C<croak> have been called.
820
821=item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
822
823This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
824replaces it before doing so.
825
826The callback will be called when the condition becomes (or already was)
827"true", i.e. when C<send> or C<croak> are called (or were called), with
828the only argument being the condition variable itself. Calling C<recv>
829inside the callback or at any later time is guaranteed not to block.
830
831=back
832
833=head1 SUPPORTED EVENT LOOPS/BACKENDS
834
835The available backend classes are (every class has its own manpage):
836
837=over 4
838
839=item Backends that are autoprobed when no other event loop can be found.
840
841EV is the preferred backend when no other event loop seems to be in
842use. If EV is not installed, then AnyEvent will fall back to its own
843pure-perl implementation, which is available everywhere as it comes with
844AnyEvent itself.
845
846 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
847 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl implementation, fast and portable.
848
849=item Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
850
851These will be used when they are currently loaded when the first watcher
852is created, in which case it is assumed that the application is using
853them. This means that AnyEvent will automatically pick the right backend
854when the main program loads an event module before anything starts to
855create watchers. Nothing special needs to be done by the main program.
856
857 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
858 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, slow but very stable.
859 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very broken.
860 AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
861 AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, very slow, some limitations.
862 AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi used when running within irssi.
863
864=item Backends with special needs.
865
866Qt requires the Qt::Application to be instantiated first, but will
867otherwise be picked up automatically. As long as the main program
868instantiates the application before any AnyEvent watchers are created,
869everything should just work.
870
871 AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt.
872
873Support for IO::Async can only be partial, as it is too broken and
874architecturally limited to even support the AnyEvent API. It also
875is the only event loop that needs the loop to be set explicitly, so
876it can only be used by a main program knowing about AnyEvent. See
877L<AnyEvent::Impl::Async> for the gory details.
878
879 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async, cannot be autoprobed.
880
881=item Event loops that are indirectly supported via other backends.
882
883Some event loops can be supported via other modules:
884
885There is no direct support for WxWidgets (L<Wx>) or L<Prima>.
886
887B<WxWidgets> has no support for watching file handles. However, you can
888use WxWidgets through the POE adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that simply
889polls 20 times per second, which was considered to be too horrible to even
890consider for AnyEvent.
891
892B<Prima> is not supported as nobody seems to be using it, but it has a POE
893backend, so it can be supported through POE.
894
895AnyEvent knows about both L<Prima> and L<Wx>, however, and will try to
896load L<POE> when detecting them, in the hope that POE will pick them up,
897in which case everything will be automatic.
898
899=back
341 900
342=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS 901=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
343 902
903These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
904write AnyEvent extension modules.
905
344=over 4 906=over 4
345 907
346=item $AnyEvent::MODEL 908=item $AnyEvent::MODEL
347 909
348Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created. Then it 910Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created, before the
911backend has been autodetected.
912
349contains the event model that is being used, which is the name of the 913Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is the
350Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one of the 914name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one
351C<AnyEvent::Impl:xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the case 915of the C<AnyEvent::Impl:xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the
352AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode>). 916case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode> it
353 917will be C<urxvt::anyevent>).
354The known classes so far are:
355
356 AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEV based on Coro::EV, best choice.
357 AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEvent based on Coro::Event, second best choice.
358 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (an interface to libev, also best choice).
359 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, also second best choice :)
360 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, third-best choice.
361 AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very bad choice.
362 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl implementation, inefficient but portable.
363 918
364=item AnyEvent::detect 919=item AnyEvent::detect
365 920
366Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model 921Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model
367if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would 922if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would
368have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at 923have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at
369runtime. 924runtime, and not e.g. while initialising of your module.
925
926If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
927created, use C<post_detect>.
928
929=item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
930
931Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
932autodetected (or immediately if this has already happened).
933
934The block will be executed I<after> the actual backend has been detected
935(C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> is set), but I<before> any watchers have been
936created, so it is possible to e.g. patch C<@AnyEvent::ISA> or do
937other initialisations - see the sources of L<AnyEvent::Strict> or
938L<AnyEvent::AIO> to see how this is used.
939
940The most common usage is to create some global watchers, without forcing
941event module detection too early, for example, L<AnyEvent::AIO> creates
942and installs the global L<IO::AIO> watcher in a C<post_detect> block to
943avoid autodetecting the event module at load time.
944
945If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
946that automatically removes the callback again when it is destroyed (or
947C<undef> when the hook was immediately executed). See L<AnyEvent::AIO> for
948a case where this is useful.
949
950Example: Create a watcher for the IO::AIO module and store it in
951C<$WATCHER>. Only do so after the event loop is initialised, though.
952
953 our WATCHER;
954
955 my $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect {
956 $WATCHER = AnyEvent->io (fh => IO::AIO::poll_fileno, poll => 'r', cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
957 };
958
959 # the ||= is important in case post_detect immediately runs the block,
960 # as to not clobber the newly-created watcher. assigning both watcher and
961 # post_detect guard to the same variable has the advantage of users being
962 # able to just C<undef $WATCHER> if the watcher causes them grief.
963
964 $WATCHER ||= $guard;
965
966=item @AnyEvent::post_detect
967
968If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
969before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will called directly after
970the event loop has been chosen.
971
972You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
973if it is defined then the event loop has already been detected, and the
974array will be ignored.
975
976Best use C<AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }> when your application allows
977it, as it takes care of these details.
978
979This variable is mainly useful for modules that can do something useful
980when AnyEvent is used and thus want to know when it is initialised, but do
981not need to even load it by default. This array provides the means to hook
982into AnyEvent passively, without loading it.
983
984Example: To load Coro::AnyEvent whenever Coro and AnyEvent are used
985together, you could put this into Coro (this is the actual code used by
986Coro to accomplish this):
987
988 if (defined $AnyEvent::MODEL) {
989 # AnyEvent already initialised, so load Coro::AnyEvent
990 require Coro::AnyEvent;
991 } else {
992 # AnyEvent not yet initialised, so make sure to load Coro::AnyEvent
993 # as soon as it is
994 push @AnyEvent::post_detect, sub { require Coro::AnyEvent };
995 }
370 996
371=back 997=back
372 998
373=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE 999=head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
374 1000
378Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will 1004Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
379decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so 1005decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
380by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module 1006by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
381to load the event module first. 1007to load the event module first.
382 1008
383Never call C<< ->wait >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that 1009Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
384the C<< ->broadcast >> method has been called on it already. This is 1010the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
385because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using 1011because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
386events is to stay interactive. 1012events is to stay interactive.
387 1013
388It is fine, however, to call C<< ->wait >> when the user of your module 1014It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
389requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method 1015requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
390called C<results> that returns the results, it should call C<< ->wait >> 1016called C<results> that returns the results, it should call C<< ->recv >>
391freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. always). 1017freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. always).
392 1018
393=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM 1019=head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
394 1020
395There will always be a single main program - the only place that should 1021There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
397 1023
398If it doesn't care, it can just "use AnyEvent" and use it itself, or not 1024If it doesn't care, it can just "use AnyEvent" and use it itself, or not
399do anything special (it does not need to be event-based) and let AnyEvent 1025do anything special (it does not need to be event-based) and let AnyEvent
400decide which implementation to chose if some module relies on it. 1026decide which implementation to chose if some module relies on it.
401 1027
402If the main program relies on a specific event model. For example, in 1028If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
403Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module. You should load the 1029Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
404event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally 1030event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
405speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that 1031speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
406modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will 1032modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
407decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it 1033decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
408might chose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself. 1034might chose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
409 1035
410You can chose to use a rather inefficient pure-perl implementation by 1036You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
411loading the C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl> module, which gives you similar 1037C<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl> module, which gives you similar behaviour
412behaviour everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose is generally better. 1038everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
1039
1040=head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
1041
1042Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
1043only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
1044
1045In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
1046
1047 AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
1048
1049This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
1050
1051Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
1052it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
1053variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
1054exit cleanly.
1055
1056
1057=head1 OTHER MODULES
1058
1059The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
1060AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other AnyEvent
1061modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the modules
1062come with AnyEvent, most are available via CPAN.
1063
1064=over 4
1065
1066=item L<AnyEvent::Util>
1067
1068Contains various utility functions that replace often-used but blocking
1069functions such as C<inet_aton> by event-/callback-based versions.
1070
1071=item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
1072
1073Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
1074addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
1075connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
1076
1077=item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
1078
1079Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
1080supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
1081non-blocking SSL/TLS (via L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
1082
1083=item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
1084
1085Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
1086
1087=item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>
1088
1089A simple-to-use HTTP library that is capable of making a lot of concurrent
1090HTTP requests.
1091
1092=item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
1093
1094Provides a simple web application server framework.
1095
1096=item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
1097
1098The fastest ping in the west.
1099
1100=item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
1101
1102Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process.
1103
1104=item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
1105
1106Truly asynchronous I/O, should be in the toolbox of every event
1107programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent
1108together.
1109
1110=item L<AnyEvent::BDB>
1111
1112Truly asynchronous Berkeley DB access. AnyEvent::BDB transparently fuses
1113L<BDB> and AnyEvent together.
1114
1115=item L<AnyEvent::GPSD>
1116
1117A non-blocking interface to gpsd, a daemon delivering GPS information.
1118
1119=item L<AnyEvent::IRC>
1120
1121AnyEvent based IRC client module family (replacing the older Net::IRC3).
1122
1123=item L<AnyEvent::XMPP>
1124
1125AnyEvent based XMPP (Jabber protocol) module family (replacing the older
1126Net::XMPP2>.
1127
1128=item L<AnyEvent::IGS>
1129
1130A non-blocking interface to the Internet Go Server protocol (used by
1131L<App::IGS>).
1132
1133=item L<Net::FCP>
1134
1135AnyEvent-based implementation of the Freenet Client Protocol, birthplace
1136of AnyEvent.
1137
1138=item L<Event::ExecFlow>
1139
1140High level API for event-based execution flow control.
1141
1142=item L<Coro>
1143
1144Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>.
1145
1146=back
413 1147
414=cut 1148=cut
415 1149
416package AnyEvent; 1150package AnyEvent;
417 1151
418no warnings; 1152# basically a tuned-down version of common::sense
419use strict; 1153sub common_sense {
1154 # from common:.sense 1.0
1155 ${^WARNING_BITS} = "\xfc\x3f\x33\x00\x0f\xf3\xcf\xc0\xf3\xfc\x33\x00";
1156 # use strict vars subs - NO UTF-8, as Util.pm doesn't like this atm. (uts46data.pl)
1157 $^H |= 0x00000600;
1158}
420 1159
1160BEGIN { AnyEvent::common_sense }
1161
421use Carp; 1162use Carp ();
422 1163
423our $VERSION = '3.11'; 1164our $VERSION = '5.251';
424our $MODEL; 1165our $MODEL;
425 1166
426our $AUTOLOAD; 1167our $AUTOLOAD;
427our @ISA; 1168our @ISA;
428 1169
429our $verbose = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
430
431our @REGISTRY; 1170our @REGISTRY;
432 1171
1172our $VERBOSE;
1173
1174BEGIN {
1175 require "AnyEvent/constants.pl";
1176
1177 eval "sub TAINT (){" . (${^TAINT}*1) . "}";
1178
1179 delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
1180 if ${^TAINT};
1181
1182 $VERBOSE = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
1183
1184}
1185
1186our $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY = 10;
1187
1188our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
1189
1190{
1191 my $idx;
1192 $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
1193 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
1194 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1195}
1196
433my @models = ( 1197my @models = (
434 [Coro::EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEV::],
435 [Coro::Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEvent::],
436 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV::], 1198 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV:: , 1],
1199 [AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: , 1],
1200 # everything below here will not (normally) be autoprobed
1201 # as the pureperl backend should work everywhere
1202 # and is usually faster
437 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::], 1203 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::, 1],
438 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib::], 1204 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib:: , 1], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1205 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1206 [Irssi:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi::], # Irssi has a bogus "Event" package
1207 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1208 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
1209 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
439 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], 1210 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
440 [AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl::], 1211 [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1212 # IO::Async is just too broken - we would need workarounds for its
1213 # byzantine signal and broken child handling, among others.
1214 # IO::Async is rather hard to detect, as it doesn't have any
1215 # obvious default class.
1216 [IO::Async:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1217 [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1218 [IO::Async::Notifier:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
1219 [AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # requires special main program
441); 1220);
442 1221
443our %method = map +($_ => 1), qw(io timer condvar broadcast wait signal one_event DESTROY); 1222our %method = map +($_ => 1),
1223 qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar one_event DESTROY);
1224
1225our @post_detect;
1226
1227sub post_detect(&) {
1228 my ($cb) = @_;
1229
1230 push @post_detect, $cb;
1231
1232 defined wantarray
1233 ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1234 : ()
1235}
1236
1237sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1238 @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1239}
444 1240
445sub detect() { 1241sub detect() {
1242 # free some memory
1243 *detect = sub () { $MODEL };
1244
1245 local $!; # for good measure
1246 local $SIG{__DIE__};
1247
1248 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z]+)$/) {
1249 my $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$1";
1250 if (eval "require $model") {
1251 $MODEL = $model;
1252 warn "AnyEvent: loaded model '$model' (forced by \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}), using it.\n" if $VERBOSE >= 2;
1253 } else {
1254 warn "AnyEvent: unable to load model '$model' (from \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}):\n$@" if $VERBOSE;
1255 }
1256 }
1257
1258 # check for already loaded models
446 unless ($MODEL) { 1259 unless ($MODEL) {
447 no strict 'refs';
448
449 # check for already loaded models
450 for (@REGISTRY, @models) { 1260 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
451 my ($package, $model) = @$_; 1261 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
452 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) { 1262 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
453 if (eval "require $model") { 1263 if (eval "require $model") {
454 $MODEL = $model; 1264 $MODEL = $model;
455 warn "AnyEvent: found model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1; 1265 warn "AnyEvent: autodetected model '$model', using it.\n" if $VERBOSE >= 2;
456 last; 1266 last;
457 } 1267 }
458 } 1268 }
459 } 1269 }
460 1270
461 unless ($MODEL) { 1271 unless ($MODEL) {
462 # try to load a model 1272 # try to autoload a model
463
464 for (@REGISTRY, @models) { 1273 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
465 my ($package, $model) = @$_; 1274 my ($package, $model, $autoload) = @$_;
1275 if (
1276 $autoload
466 if (eval "require $package" 1277 and eval "require $package"
467 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0 1278 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
468 and eval "require $model") { 1279 and eval "require $model"
1280 ) {
469 $MODEL = $model; 1281 $MODEL = $model;
470 warn "AnyEvent: autoprobed and loaded model '$model', using it.\n" if $verbose > 1; 1282 warn "AnyEvent: autoloaded model '$model', using it.\n" if $VERBOSE >= 2;
471 last; 1283 last;
472 } 1284 }
473 } 1285 }
474 1286
475 $MODEL 1287 $MODEL
476 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: EV (or Coro+EV), Event (or Coro+Event), Glib or Tk."; 1288 or die "No event module selected for AnyEvent and autodetect failed. Install any one of these modules: EV, Event or Glib.\n";
477 } 1289 }
478
479 unshift @ISA, $MODEL;
480 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
481 } 1290 }
1291
1292 @models = (); # free probe data
1293
1294 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
1295 unshift @ISA, $MODEL;
1296
1297 # now nuke some methods that are overriden by the backend.
1298 # SUPER is not allowed.
1299 for (qw(time signal child idle)) {
1300 undef &{"AnyEvent::Base::$_"}
1301 if defined &{"$MODEL\::$_"};
1302 }
1303
1304 require AnyEvent::Strict if $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT};
1305
1306 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
1307
1308 *post_detect = sub(&) {
1309 shift->();
1310
1311 undef
1312 };
482 1313
483 $MODEL 1314 $MODEL
484} 1315}
485 1316
486sub AUTOLOAD { 1317sub AUTOLOAD {
487 (my $func = $AUTOLOAD) =~ s/.*://; 1318 (my $func = $AUTOLOAD) =~ s/.*://;
488 1319
489 $method{$func} 1320 $method{$func}
490 or croak "$func: not a valid method for AnyEvent objects"; 1321 or Carp::croak "$func: not a valid AnyEvent class method";
491 1322
492 detect unless $MODEL; 1323 detect;
493 1324
494 my $class = shift; 1325 my $class = shift;
495 $class->$func (@_); 1326 $class->$func (@_);
496} 1327}
497 1328
1329# utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1330# to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1331# allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1332sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1333 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1334
1335 # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1336 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<&") : ($w, ">&");
1337
1338 open my $fh2, $mode, $fh
1339 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1340
1341 # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1342
1343 ($fh2, $rw)
1344}
1345
1346=head1 SIMPLIFIED AE API
1347
1348Starting with version 5.0, AnyEvent officially supports a second, much
1349simpler, API that is designed to reduce the calling, typing and memory
1350overhead by using function call syntax and a fixed number of parameters.
1351
1352See the L<AE> manpage for details.
1353
1354=cut
1355
1356package AE;
1357
1358our $VERSION = $AnyEvent::VERSION;
1359
1360# fall back to the main API by default - backends and AnyEvent::Base
1361# implementations can overwrite these.
1362
1363sub io($$$) {
1364 AnyEvent->io (fh => $_[0], poll => $_[1] ? "w" : "r", cb => $_[2])
1365}
1366
1367sub timer($$$) {
1368 AnyEvent->timer (after => $_[0], interval => $_[1], cb => $_[2])
1369}
1370
1371sub signal($$) {
1372 AnyEvent->signal (signal => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1373}
1374
1375sub child($$) {
1376 AnyEvent->child (pid => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1377}
1378
1379sub idle($) {
1380 AnyEvent->idle (cb => $_[0])
1381}
1382
1383sub cv(;&) {
1384 AnyEvent->condvar (@_ ? (cb => $_[0]) : ())
1385}
1386
1387sub now() {
1388 AnyEvent->now
1389}
1390
1391sub now_update() {
1392 AnyEvent->now_update
1393}
1394
1395sub time() {
1396 AnyEvent->time
1397}
1398
498package AnyEvent::Base; 1399package AnyEvent::Base;
499 1400
1401# default implementations for many methods
1402
1403sub time {
1404 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1405 # probe for availability of Time::HiRes
1406 if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1407 warn "AnyEvent: using Time::HiRes for sub-second timing accuracy.\n" if $VERBOSE >= 8;
1408 *AE::time = \&Time::HiRes::time;
1409 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1410 } else {
1411 warn "AnyEvent: using built-in time(), WARNING, no sub-second resolution!\n" if $VERBOSE;
1412 *AE::time = sub (){ time }; # epic fail
1413 }
1414
1415 *time = sub { AE::time }; # different prototypes
1416 };
1417 die if $@;
1418
1419 &time
1420}
1421
1422*now = \&time;
1423
1424sub now_update { }
1425
500# default implementation for ->condvar, ->wait, ->broadcast 1426# default implementation for ->condvar
501 1427
502sub condvar { 1428sub condvar {
503 bless \my $flag, "AnyEvent::Base::CondVar" 1429 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
504} 1430 *condvar = sub {
1431 bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1432 };
505 1433
506sub AnyEvent::Base::CondVar::broadcast { 1434 *AE::cv = sub (;&) {
507 ${$_[0]}++; 1435 bless { @_ ? (_ae_cb => shift) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
508} 1436 };
1437 };
1438 die if $@;
509 1439
510sub AnyEvent::Base::CondVar::wait { 1440 &condvar
511 AnyEvent->one_event while !${$_[0]};
512} 1441}
513 1442
514# default implementation for ->signal 1443# default implementation for ->signal
515 1444
516our %SIG_CB; 1445our $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1446
1447sub _have_async_interrupt() {
1448 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT = 1*(!$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT}
1449 && eval "use Async::Interrupt 1.02 (); 1")
1450 unless defined $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1451
1452 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1453}
1454
1455our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1456our (%SIG_ASY, %SIG_ASY_W);
1457our ($SIG_COUNT, $SIG_TW);
1458
1459# install a dummy wakeup watcher to reduce signal catching latency
1460# used by Impls
1461sub _sig_add() {
1462 unless ($SIG_COUNT++) {
1463 # try to align timer on a full-second boundary, if possible
1464 my $NOW = AE::now;
1465
1466 $SIG_TW = AE::timer
1467 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY - ($NOW - int $NOW),
1468 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY,
1469 sub { } # just for the PERL_ASYNC_CHECK
1470 ;
1471 }
1472}
1473
1474sub _sig_del {
1475 undef $SIG_TW
1476 unless --$SIG_COUNT;
1477}
1478
1479our $_sig_name_init; $_sig_name_init = sub {
1480 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1481 undef $_sig_name_init;
1482
1483 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1484 *sig2num = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2num;
1485 *sig2name = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2name;
1486 } else {
1487 require Config;
1488
1489 my %signame2num;
1490 @signame2num{ split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_name} }
1491 = split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_num};
1492
1493 my @signum2name;
1494 @signum2name[values %signame2num] = keys %signame2num;
1495
1496 *sig2num = sub($) {
1497 $_[0] > 0 ? shift : $signame2num{+shift}
1498 };
1499 *sig2name = sub ($) {
1500 $_[0] > 0 ? $signum2name[+shift] : shift
1501 };
1502 }
1503 };
1504 die if $@;
1505};
1506
1507sub sig2num ($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2num }
1508sub sig2name($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2name }
517 1509
518sub signal { 1510sub signal {
1511 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1512 # probe for availability of Async::Interrupt
1513 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1514 warn "AnyEvent: using Async::Interrupt for race-free signal handling.\n" if $VERBOSE >= 8;
1515
1516 $SIGPIPE_R = new Async::Interrupt::EventPipe;
1517 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R->fileno, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1518
1519 } else {
1520 warn "AnyEvent: using emulated perl signal handling with latency timer.\n" if $VERBOSE >= 8;
1521
1522 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1523 require AnyEvent::Util;
1524
1525 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1526 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R, 1) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1527 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W, 1) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1528 } else {
1529 pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1530 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1531 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1532
1533 # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1534 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1535 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1536 }
1537
1538 $SIGPIPE_R
1539 or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1540
1541 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1542 }
1543
1544 *signal = $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1545 ? sub {
519 my (undef, %arg) = @_; 1546 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
520 1547
1548 # async::interrupt
521 my $signal = uc $arg{signal} 1549 my $signal = sig2num $arg{signal};
522 or Carp::croak "required option 'signal' is missing";
523
524 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb}; 1550 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1551
1552 $SIG_ASY{$signal} ||= new Async::Interrupt
1553 cb => sub { undef $SIG_EV{$signal} },
1554 signal => $signal,
1555 pipe => [$SIGPIPE_R->filenos],
1556 pipe_autodrain => 0,
1557 ;
1558
1559 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1560 }
1561 : sub {
1562 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1563
1564 # pure perl
1565 my $signal = sig2name $arg{signal};
1566 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1567
525 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub { 1568 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
1569 local $!;
1570 syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1571 undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
1572 };
1573
1574 # can't do signal processing without introducing races in pure perl,
1575 # so limit the signal latency.
1576 _sig_add;
1577
1578 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1579 }
1580 ;
1581
1582 *AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY = sub {
1583 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1584
1585 _sig_del;
1586
1587 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
1588
1589 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1590 ? delete $SIG_ASY{$signal}
1591 : # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1592 # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1593 # instead of getting the default action.
1594 undef $SIG{$signal}
1595 unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
1596 };
1597
1598 *_signal_exec = sub {
1599 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1600 ? $SIGPIPE_R->drain
1601 : sysread $SIGPIPE_R, (my $dummy), 9;
1602
1603 while (%SIG_EV) {
1604 for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1605 delete $SIG_EV{$_};
526 $_->() for values %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} || {} }; 1606 $_->() for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
1607 }
1608 }
1609 };
527 }; 1610 };
1611 die if $@;
528 1612
529 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::Signal" 1613 &signal
530}
531
532sub AnyEvent::Base::Signal::DESTROY {
533 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
534
535 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
536
537 $SIG{$signal} = 'DEFAULT' unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
538} 1614}
539 1615
540# default implementation for ->child 1616# default implementation for ->child
541 1617
542our %PID_CB; 1618our %PID_CB;
543our $CHLD_W; 1619our $CHLD_W;
544our $CHLD_DELAY_W; 1620our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
545our $PID_IDLE;
546our $WNOHANG; 1621our $WNOHANG;
547 1622
548sub _child_wait { 1623# used by many Impl's
549 while (0 < (my $pid = waitpid -1, $WNOHANG)) { 1624sub _emit_childstatus($$) {
1625 my (undef, $rpid, $rstatus) = @_;
1626
1627 $_->($rpid, $rstatus)
550 $_->($pid, $?) for (values %{ $PID_CB{$pid} || {} }), 1628 for values %{ $PID_CB{$rpid} || {} },
551 (values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} }); 1629 values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} };
552 }
553
554 undef $PID_IDLE;
555}
556
557sub _sigchld {
558 # make sure we deliver these changes "synchronous" with the event loop.
559 $CHLD_DELAY_W ||= AnyEvent->timer (after => 0, cb => sub {
560 undef $CHLD_DELAY_W;
561 &_child_wait;
562 });
563} 1630}
564 1631
565sub child { 1632sub child {
1633 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1634 *_sigchld = sub {
1635 my $pid;
1636
1637 AnyEvent->_emit_childstatus ($pid, $?)
1638 while ($pid = waitpid -1, $WNOHANG) > 0;
1639 };
1640
1641 *child = sub {
566 my (undef, %arg) = @_; 1642 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
567 1643
568 defined (my $pid = $arg{pid} + 0) 1644 defined (my $pid = $arg{pid} + 0)
569 or Carp::croak "required option 'pid' is missing"; 1645 or Carp::croak "required option 'pid' is missing";
570 1646
571 $PID_CB{$pid}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb}; 1647 $PID_CB{$pid}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
572 1648
573 unless ($WNOHANG) { 1649 # WNOHANG is almost cetrainly 1 everywhere
574 $WNOHANG = eval { require POSIX; &POSIX::WNOHANG } || 1; 1650 $WNOHANG ||= $^O =~ /^(?:openbsd|netbsd|linux|freebsd|cygwin|MSWin32)$/
575 } 1651 ? 1
1652 : eval { local $SIG{__DIE__}; require POSIX; &POSIX::WNOHANG } || 1;
576 1653
577 unless ($CHLD_W) { 1654 unless ($CHLD_W) {
578 $CHLD_W = AnyEvent->signal (signal => 'CHLD', cb => \&_sigchld); 1655 $CHLD_W = AE::signal CHLD => \&_sigchld;
579 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round 1656 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
580 &_sigchld; 1657 &_sigchld;
581 } 1658 }
582 1659
583 bless [$pid, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::Child" 1660 bless [$pid, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
584} 1661 };
585 1662
586sub AnyEvent::Base::Child::DESTROY { 1663 *AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY = sub {
587 my ($pid, $cb) = @{$_[0]}; 1664 my ($pid, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
588 1665
589 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb}; 1666 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb};
590 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} }; 1667 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
591 1668
592 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB; 1669 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
1670 };
1671 };
1672 die if $@;
1673
1674 &child
593} 1675}
1676
1677# idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1678# of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1679# the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1680sub idle {
1681 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1682 *idle = sub {
1683 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1684
1685 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1686
1687 $rcb = sub {
1688 if ($cb) {
1689 $w = _time;
1690 &$cb;
1691 $w = _time - $w;
1692
1693 # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1694 # within some limits
1695 $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1696 $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1697
1698 $w = AE::timer $w, 0, $rcb;
1699 } else {
1700 # clean up...
1701 undef $w;
1702 undef $rcb;
1703 }
1704 };
1705
1706 $w = AE::timer 0.05, 0, $rcb;
1707
1708 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1709 };
1710
1711 *AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY = sub {
1712 undef $${$_[0]};
1713 };
1714 };
1715 die if $@;
1716
1717 &idle
1718}
1719
1720package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1721
1722our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1723
1724package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1725
1726#use overload
1727# '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1728# fallback => 1;
1729
1730# save 300+ kilobytes by dirtily hardcoding overloading
1731${"AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::OVERLOAD"}{dummy}++; # Register with magic by touching.
1732*{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = sub { }; # "Make it findable via fetchmethod."
1733*{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::(&{}'} = sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } }; # &{}
1734${'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = 1; # fallback
1735
1736our $WAITING;
1737
1738sub _send {
1739 # nop
1740}
1741
1742sub send {
1743 my $cv = shift;
1744 $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1745 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1746 $cv->_send;
1747}
1748
1749sub croak {
1750 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1751 $_[0]->send;
1752}
1753
1754sub ready {
1755 $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1756}
1757
1758sub _wait {
1759 $WAITING
1760 and !$_[0]{_ae_sent}
1761 and Carp::croak "AnyEvent::CondVar: recursive blocking wait detected";
1762
1763 local $WAITING = 1;
1764 AnyEvent->one_event while !$_[0]{_ae_sent};
1765}
1766
1767sub recv {
1768 $_[0]->_wait;
1769
1770 Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak} if $_[0]{_ae_croak};
1771 wantarray ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} } : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
1772}
1773
1774sub cb {
1775 my $cv = shift;
1776
1777 @_
1778 and $cv->{_ae_cb} = shift
1779 and $cv->{_ae_sent}
1780 and (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv);
1781
1782 $cv->{_ae_cb}
1783}
1784
1785sub begin {
1786 ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1787 $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1788}
1789
1790sub end {
1791 return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1792 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
1793}
1794
1795# undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
1796*broadcast = \&send;
1797*wait = \&_wait;
1798
1799=head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1800
1801In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1802caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
1803the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
1804checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1805development.
1806
1807As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
1808executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
1809also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
1810program.
1811
1812The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
1813within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
1814$Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
1815so on.
1816
1817=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
1818
1819The following environment variables are used by this module or its
1820submodules.
1821
1822Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
1823C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
1824enabled.
1825
1826=over 4
1827
1828=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
1829
1830By default, AnyEvent will be completely silent except in fatal
1831conditions. You can set this environment variable to make AnyEvent more
1832talkative.
1833
1834When set to C<1> or higher, causes AnyEvent to warn about unexpected
1835conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified by
1836C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>.
1837
1838When set to C<2> or higher, cause AnyEvent to report to STDERR which event
1839model it chooses.
1840
1841When set to C<8> or higher, then AnyEvent will report extra information on
1842which optional modules it loads and how it implements certain features.
1843
1844=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
1845
1846AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
1847argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
1848will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
1849check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
1850it will croak.
1851
1852In other words, enables "strict" mode.
1853
1854Unlike C<use strict> (or it's modern cousin, C<< use L<common::sense>
1855>>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in production. Keeping
1856C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while developing programs
1857can be very useful, however.
1858
1859=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
1860
1861This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
1862auto detection and -probing kicks in. It must be a string consisting
1863entirely of ASCII letters. The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended
1864and the resulting module name is loaded and if the load was successful,
1865used as event model. If it fails to load AnyEvent will proceed with
1866auto detection and -probing.
1867
1868This functionality might change in future versions.
1869
1870For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) you
1871could start your program like this:
1872
1873 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
1874
1875=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
1876
1877Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
1878for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
1879of auto probing).
1880
1881Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
1882current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
1883used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
1884list.
1885
1886This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
1887against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
1888small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
1889
1890Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
1891but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
1892- only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
1893addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
1894IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
1895
1896=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
1897
1898Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension
1899for DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, but
1900some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS packets, which is why it is off by
1901default.
1902
1903Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
1904EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
1905
1906=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
1907
1908The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
1909will create in parallel.
1910
1911=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
1912
1913The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
1914resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
1915sent to the DNS server.
1916
1917=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
1918
1919The file to use instead of F</etc/resolv.conf> (or OS-specific
1920configuration) in the default resolver. When set to the empty string, no
1921default config will be used.
1922
1923=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
1924
1925When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
1926L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
1927variables exist, they will be used to specify CA certificate locations
1928instead of a system-dependent default.
1929
1930=item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_GUARD> and C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT>
1931
1932When these are set to C<1>, then the respective modules are not
1933loaded. Mostly good for testing AnyEvent itself.
1934
1935=back
594 1936
595=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE 1937=head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
596 1938
597This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in 1939This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
598a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to 1940a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
633I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to 1975I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
634condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will 1976condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
635C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must 1977C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
636not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense. 1978not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
637 1979
638=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
639
640The following environment variables are used by this module:
641
642C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> when set to C<2> or higher, cause AnyEvent to
643report to STDERR which event model it chooses.
644
645=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM 1980=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
646 1981
647The following program uses an IO watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer 1982The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
648to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the 1983to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
649program when the user enters quit: 1984program when the user enters quit:
650 1985
651 use AnyEvent; 1986 use AnyEvent;
652 1987
657 poll => 'r', 1992 poll => 'r',
658 cb => sub { 1993 cb => sub {
659 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r> 1994 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
660 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line 1995 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
661 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read 1996 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
662 $cv->broadcast if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i 1997 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
663 }, 1998 },
664 ); 1999 );
665 2000
666 my $time_watcher; # can only be used once
667
668 sub new_timer {
669 $timer = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, cb => sub { 2001 my $time_watcher = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, interval => 1, cb => sub {
670 warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' about every second 2002 warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' at most every second
671 &new_timer; # and restart the time
672 }); 2003 });
673 }
674 2004
675 new_timer; # create first timer
676
677 $cv->wait; # wait until user enters /^q/i 2005 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
678 2006
679=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE 2007=head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
680 2008
681Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following 2009Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
682API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http: 2010API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
732 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request} 2060 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
733 or die "connection or write error"; 2061 or die "connection or write error";
734 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r }); 2062 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
735 2063
736Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the 2064Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
737result and signals any possible waiters that the request ahs finished: 2065result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
738 2066
739 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf}; 2067 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
740 2068
741 if (end-of-file or data complete) { 2069 if (end-of-file or data complete) {
742 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf}; 2070 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
743 $txn->{finished}->broadcast; 2071 $txn->{finished}->send;
744 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback 2072 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
745 } 2073 }
746 2074
747The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the 2075The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
748request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the 2076request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
749data: 2077data:
750 2078
751 $txn->{finished}->wait; 2079 $txn->{finished}->recv;
752 return $txn->{result}; 2080 return $txn->{result};
753 2081
754The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions) 2082The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
755that occured during request processing. The C<result> method detects 2083that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
756whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object) 2084whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
757and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other 2085and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
758problems get reported tot he code that tries to use the result, not in a 2086problems get reported to the code that tries to use the result, not in a
759random callback. 2087random callback.
760 2088
761All of this enables the following usage styles: 2089All of this enables the following usage styles:
762 2090
7631. Blocking: 20911. Blocking:
791 2119
792 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar; 2120 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
793 2121
794 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub { 2122 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
795 ... 2123 ...
796 $quit->broadcast; 2124 $quit->send;
797 }); 2125 });
798 2126
799 $quit->wait; 2127 $quit->recv;
2128
2129
2130=head1 BENCHMARKS
2131
2132To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
2133over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
2134of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
2135
2136=head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
2137
2138Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
2139through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
2140timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
2141which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
2142
2143Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
2144distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2145for the EV and Perl backends only.
2146
2147=head3 Explanation of the columns
2148
2149I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
2150different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
2151loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
2152and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
2153would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
2154of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
2155
2156I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
2157RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
2158and Perl-based overheads.
2159
2160I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
2161takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
2162all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
2163and memory usage is not included in the figures.
2164
2165I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
2166callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
2167invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
2168signal the end of this phase.
2169
2170I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
2171watcher.
2172
2173=head3 Results
2174
2175 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
2176 EV/EV 100000 223 0.47 0.43 0.27 EV native interface
2177 EV/Any 100000 223 0.48 0.42 0.26 EV + AnyEvent watchers
2178 Coro::EV/Any 100000 223 0.47 0.42 0.26 coroutines + Coro::Signal
2179 Perl/Any 100000 431 2.70 0.74 0.92 pure perl implementation
2180 Event/Event 16000 516 31.16 31.84 0.82 Event native interface
2181 Event/Any 16000 1203 42.61 34.79 1.80 Event + AnyEvent watchers
2182 IOAsync/Any 16000 1911 41.92 27.45 16.81 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
2183 IOAsync/Any 16000 1726 40.69 26.37 15.25 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
2184 Glib/Any 16000 1118 89.00 12.57 51.17 quadratic behaviour
2185 Tk/Any 2000 1346 20.96 10.75 8.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
2186 POE/Any 2000 6951 108.97 795.32 14.24 via POE::Loop::Event
2187 POE/Any 2000 6648 94.79 774.40 575.51 via POE::Loop::Select
2188
2189=head3 Discussion
2190
2191The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
2192well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
2193can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
2194file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
2195the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
2196boost.
2197
2198Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
2199overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
2200the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
2201higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
2202
2203To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
2204benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
2205EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
2206cycles with POE.
2207
2208C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
2209maximal/minimal, respectively. When using the L<AE> API there is zero
2210overhead (when going through the AnyEvent API create is about 5-6 times
2211slower, with other times being equal, so still uses far less memory than
2212any other event loop and is still faster than Event natively).
2213
2214The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
2215constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
2216interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
2217adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
2218performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
2219them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
2220
2221The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
2222cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
2223
2224C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
2225when using its pure perl backend.
2226
2227C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
2228faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
2229C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
2230watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
2231making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
2232(note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
2233inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
2234
2235The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
2236more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
2237precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
2238file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
2239employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
2240hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
2241above).
2242
2243C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
2244select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
2245be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
2246memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
2247as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
2248requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
2249invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
2250implementation.
2251
2252The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
2253for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
2254small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
2255optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
2256using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
2257memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
2258design).
2259
2260=head3 Summary
2261
2262=over 4
2263
2264=item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
2265(even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
2266performance with or without AnyEvent.
2267
2268=item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
2269the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
2270adds AnyEvent significant overhead.
2271
2272=item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
2273reasonable memory usage.
2274
2275=back
2276
2277=head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
2278
2279This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
2280creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
2281timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
2282watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
2283watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
2284
2285The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
2286are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
2287fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
2288timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
2289most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
2290
2291In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
2292(1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
2293connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
2294
2295Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
2296distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2297for the EV and Perl backends only.
2298
2299=head3 Explanation of the columns
2300
2301I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
2302each server has a read and write socket end).
2303
2304I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
2305nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
2306
2307I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
2308single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
2309it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
2310a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
2311
2312=head3 Results
2313
2314 name sockets create request
2315 EV 20000 62.66 7.99
2316 Perl 20000 68.32 32.64
2317 IOAsync 20000 174.06 101.15 epoll
2318 IOAsync 20000 174.67 610.84 poll
2319 Event 20000 202.69 242.91
2320 Glib 20000 557.01 1689.52
2321 POE 20000 341.54 12086.32 uses POE::Loop::Event
2322
2323=head3 Discussion
2324
2325This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
2326particular event loop.
2327
2328EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
2329is relatively high, though.
2330
2331Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
2332loops Event and Glib.
2333
2334IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
2335good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
2336
2337Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
2338understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
2339the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
2340uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
2341
2342Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
2343clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
2344
2345POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
2346as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
2347it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
2348
2349=head3 Summary
2350
2351=over 4
2352
2353=item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
2354
2355=item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
2356
2357=back
2358
2359=head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
2360
2361While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
2362large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
2363I/O watchers.
2364
2365In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
2366case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
2367one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
2368well.
2369
2370The columns are identical to the previous table.
2371
2372=head3 Results
2373
2374 name sockets create request
2375 EV 16 20.00 6.54
2376 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
2377 Event 16 81.27 35.86
2378 Glib 16 32.63 15.48
2379 POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
2380
2381=head3 Discussion
2382
2383The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
2384server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
2385in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
2386to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
2387speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
2388them).
2389
2390EV is again fastest.
2391
2392Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
2393loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
2394matter.
2395
2396POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
2397others.
2398
2399=head3 Summary
2400
2401=over 4
2402
2403=item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
2404watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
2405
2406=back
2407
2408=head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
2409
2410Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
2411could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
2412simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
2413shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
2414fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
2415very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
2416baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
2417
2418The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
2419connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
2420creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
2421test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
2422benchmark nevertheless.
2423
2424 name runtime
2425 Lambda/select 0.330 sec
2426 + optimized 0.122 sec
2427 Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
2428 + optimized 0.138 sec
2429 Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
2430 POE/select, components 0.662 sec
2431 POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
2432 POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
2433
2434 AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
2435 AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
2436 +state machine 0.134 sec
2437
2438The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2439benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2440defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2441written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2442AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2443resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2444generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2445connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2446
2447The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2448offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2449Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2450non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2451
2452As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2453hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2454backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2455
2456And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2457slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda
2458higher level ("unoptimised") abstractions by a large margin, even though
2459it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O in a non-blocking way.
2460
2461The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2462F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2463part of the IO::Lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2464
2465
2466=head1 SIGNALS
2467
2468AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2469
2470=over 4
2471
2472=item SIGCHLD
2473
2474A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2475emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2476event loops install a similar handler.
2477
2478Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then
2479AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2480
2481=item SIGPIPE
2482
2483A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2484when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2485
2486The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2487on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2488badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2489program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2490some random socket.
2491
2492The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2493that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2494
2495Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2496
2497=back
2498
2499=cut
2500
2501undef $SIG{CHLD}
2502 if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2503
2504$SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2505 unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2506
2507=head1 RECOMMENDED/OPTIONAL MODULES
2508
2509One of AnyEvent's main goals is to be 100% Pure-Perl(tm): only perl (and
2510it's built-in modules) are required to use it.
2511
2512That does not mean that AnyEvent won't take advantage of some additional
2513modules if they are installed.
2514
2515This section explains which additional modules will be used, and how they
2516affect AnyEvent's operation.
2517
2518=over 4
2519
2520=item L<Async::Interrupt>
2521
2522This slightly arcane module is used to implement fast signal handling: To
2523my knowledge, there is no way to do completely race-free and quick
2524signal handling in pure perl. To ensure that signals still get
2525delivered, AnyEvent will start an interval timer to wake up perl (and
2526catch the signals) with some delay (default is 10 seconds, look for
2527C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>).
2528
2529If this module is available, then it will be used to implement signal
2530catching, which means that signals will not be delayed, and the event loop
2531will not be interrupted regularly, which is more efficient (and good for
2532battery life on laptops).
2533
2534This affects not just the pure-perl event loop, but also other event loops
2535that have no signal handling on their own (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt).
2536
2537Some event loops (POE, Event, Event::Lib) offer signal watchers natively,
2538and either employ their own workarounds (POE) or use AnyEvent's workaround
2539(using C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>). Installing L<Async::Interrupt>
2540does nothing for those backends.
2541
2542=item L<EV>
2543
2544This module isn't really "optional", as it is simply one of the backend
2545event loops that AnyEvent can use. However, it is simply the best event
2546loop available in terms of features, speed and stability: It supports
2547the AnyEvent API optimally, implements all the watcher types in XS, does
2548automatic timer adjustments even when no monotonic clock is available,
2549can take avdantage of advanced kernel interfaces such as C<epoll> and
2550C<kqueue>, and is the fastest backend I<by far>. You can even embed
2551L<Glib>/L<Gtk2> in it (or vice versa, see L<EV::Glib> and L<Glib::EV>).
2552
2553If you only use backends that rely on another event loop (e.g. C<Tk>),
2554then this module will do nothing for you.
2555
2556=item L<Guard>
2557
2558The guard module, when used, will be used to implement
2559C<AnyEvent::Util::guard>. This speeds up guards considerably (and uses a
2560lot less memory), but otherwise doesn't affect guard operation much. It is
2561purely used for performance.
2562
2563=item L<JSON> and L<JSON::XS>
2564
2565One of these modules is required when you want to read or write JSON data
2566via L<AnyEvent::Handle>. L<JSON> is also written in pure-perl, but can take
2567advantage of the ultra-high-speed L<JSON::XS> module when it is installed.
2568
2569=item L<Net::SSLeay>
2570
2571Implementing TLS/SSL in Perl is certainly interesting, but not very
2572worthwhile: If this module is installed, then L<AnyEvent::Handle> (with
2573the help of L<AnyEvent::TLS>), gains the ability to do TLS/SSL.
2574
2575=item L<Time::HiRes>
2576
2577This module is part of perl since release 5.008. It will be used when the
2578chosen event library does not come with a timing source on it's own. The
2579pure-perl event loop (L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>) will additionally use it to
2580try to use a monotonic clock for timing stability.
2581
2582=back
2583
2584
2585=head1 FORK
2586
2587Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2588because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll> calls
2589- higher performance APIs such as BSD's kqueue or the dreaded Linux epoll
2590are usually badly thought-out hacks that are incompatible with fork in
2591one way or another. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware and ensures that you
2592continue event-processing in both parent and child (or both, if you know
2593what you are doing).
2594
2595This means that, in general, you cannot fork and do event processing in
2596the child if the event library was initialised before the fork (which
2597usually happens when the first AnyEvent watcher is created, or the library
2598is loaded).
2599
2600If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2601watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child OR you must do
2602something completely out of the scope of AnyEvent.
2603
2604The problem of doing event processing in the parent I<and> the child
2605is much more complicated: even for backends that I<are> fork-aware or
2606fork-safe, their behaviour is not usually what you want: fork clones all
2607watchers, that means all timers, I/O watchers etc. are active in both
2608parent and child, which is almost never what you want. USing C<exec>
2609to start worker children from some kind of manage rprocess is usually
2610preferred, because it is much easier and cleaner, at the expense of having
2611to have another binary.
2612
2613
2614=head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2615
2616AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2617$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2618execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2619make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2620will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2621specified in the variable.
2622
2623You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2624before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2625
2626 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2627
2628 use AnyEvent;
2629
2630Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2631be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2632probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2633$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2634
2635Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2636C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2637enabled.
2638
2639
2640=head1 BUGS
2641
2642Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
2643to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
2644and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
2645memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
2646pronounced).
2647
800 2648
801=head1 SEE ALSO 2649=head1 SEE ALSO
802 2650
803Event modules: L<Coro::EV>, L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>, L<Glib::EV>, 2651Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util>.
804L<Coro::Event>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>, L<Coro>, L<Tk>.
805 2652
806Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, 2653Event modules: L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>, L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>,
2654L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>, L<POE>.
2655
807L<AnyEvent::Impl::CoroEvent>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>, 2656Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
808L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>. 2657L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
2658L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
2659L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync>, L<Anyevent::Impl::Irssi>.
809 2660
2661Non-blocking file handles, sockets, TCP clients and
2662servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>, L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
2663
2664Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2665
2666Coroutine support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>,
2667L<Coro::Event>,
2668
810Nontrivial usage examples: L<Net::FCP>, L<Net::XMPP2>. 2669Nontrivial usage examples: L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::XMPP>,
2670L<AnyEvent::HTTP>.
811 2671
812=head1 2672
2673=head1 AUTHOR
2674
2675 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
2676 http://home.schmorp.de/
813 2677
814=cut 2678=cut
815 2679
8161 26801
817 2681

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