AnyEvent-MP/MP/Intro.pod

=head1 Message Passing for the Non-Blocked Mind

=head1 Introduction and Terminology

This is a tutorial about how to get the swing of the new L<AnyEvent::MP>
module, which allows programs to transparently pass messages within the
process and to other processes on the same or a different host.

What kind of messages? Basically a message here means a list of Perl
strings, numbers, hashes and arrays, anything that can be expressed as a
L<JSON> text (as JSON is used by default in the protocol). Here are two
examples:

    write_log => 1251555874, "action was successful.\n"
    123, ["a", "b", "c"], { foo => "bar" }

When using L<AnyEvent::MP> it is customary to use a descriptive string as
first element of a message, that indictes the type of the message. This
element is called a I<tag> in L<AnyEvent::MP>, as some API functions
(C<rcv>) support matching it directly.

Supposedly you want to send a ping message with your current time to
somewhere, this is how such a message might look like (in Perl syntax):

   ping => 1251381636

Now that we know what a message is, to which entities are those
messages being I<passed>? They are I<passed> to I<ports>. A I<port> is
a destination for messages but also a context to execute code: when
a runtime error occurs while executing code belonging to a port, the
exception will be raised on the port and can even travel to interested
parties on other nodes, which makes supervision of distributed processes
easy.

How do these ports relate to things you know? Each I<port> belongs
to a I<node>, and a I<node> is just the UNIX process that runs your
L<AnyEvent::MP> application.

Each I<node> is distinguished from other I<nodes> running on the same or
another host in a network by its I<node ID>. A I<node ID> is simply a
unique string chosen manually or assigned by L<AnyEvent::MP> in some way
(UNIX nodename, random string...).

Here is a diagram about how I<nodes>, I<ports> and UNIX processes relate
to each other. The setup consists of two nodes (more are of course
possible): Node C<A> (in UNIX process 7066) with the ports C<ABC> and
C<DEF>. And the node C<B> (in UNIX process 8321) with the ports C<FOO> and
C<BAR>.


  |- PID: 7066 -|                  |- PID: 8321 -|
  |             |                  |             |
  | Node ID: A  |                  | Node ID: B  |
  |             |                  |             |
  |   Port ABC =|= <----\ /-----> =|= Port FOO   |
  |             |        X         |             |
  |   Port DEF =|= <----/ \-----> =|= Port BAR   |
  |             |                  |             |
  |-------------|                  |-------------|

The strings for the I<port IDs> here are just for illustrative
purposes: Even though I<ports> in L<AnyEvent::MP> are also identified by
strings, they can't be choosen manually and are assigned by the system
dynamically. These I<port IDs> are unique within a network and can also be
used to identify senders or as message tags for instance.

The next sections will explain the API of L<AnyEvent::MP> by going through
a few simple examples. Later some more complex idioms are introduced,
which are hopefully useful to solve some real world problems.

=head1 Passing Your First Message

As a start lets have a look at the messaging API. The following example
is just a demo to show the basic elements of message passing with
L<AnyEvent::MP>.

The example should print: C<Ending with: 123>, in a rather complicated
way, by passing some message to a port.

   use AnyEvent;
   use AnyEvent::MP;

   my $end_cv = AnyEvent->condvar;

   my $port = port;

   rcv $port, test => sub {
      my ($data) = @_;
      $end_cv->send ($data);
   };

   snd $port, test => 123;

   print "Ending with: " . $end_cv->recv . "\n";

It already uses most of the essential functions inside
L<AnyEvent::MP>: First there is the C<port> function which will create a
I<port> and will return it's I<port ID>, a simple string.

This I<port ID> can be used to send messages to the port and install
handlers to receive messages on the port. Since it is a simple string
it can be safely passed to other I<nodes> in the network when you want
to refer to that specific port (usually used for RPC, where you need
to tell the other end which I<port> to send the reply to - messages in
L<AnyEvent::MP> have a destination, but no source).

The next function is C<rcv>:

   rcv $port, test => sub { ... };

It installs a receiver callback on the I<port> that specified as the first
argument (it only works for "local" ports, i.e. ports created on the same
node). The next argument, in this example C<test>, specifies a I<tag> to
match. This means that whenever a message with the first element being
the string C<test> is received, the callback is called with the remaining
parts of that message.

Messages can be sent with the C<snd> function, which is used like this in
the example above:

   snd $port, test => 123;

This will send the message C<'test', 123> to the I<port> with the I<port
ID> stored in C<$port>. Since in this case the receiver has a I<tag> match
on C<test> it will call the callback with the first argument being the
number C<123>.

The callback is a typicall AnyEvent idiom: the callback just passes
that number on to the I<condition variable> C<$end_cv> which will then
pass the value to the print. Condition variables are out of the scope
of this tutorial and not often used with ports, so please consult the
L<AnyEvent::Intro> about them.

Passing messages inside just one process is boring. Before we can move on
and do interprocess message passing we first have to make sure some things
have been set up correctly for our nodes to talk to each other.

=head1 System Requirements and System Setup

Before we can start with real IPC we have to make sure some things work on
your system.

First we have to setup a I<shared secret>: for two L<AnyEvent::MP>
I<nodes> to be able to communicate with each other over the network it is
necessary to setup the same I<shared secret> for both of them, so they can
prove their trustworthyness to each other.

The easiest way is to set this up is to use the F<aemp> utility:

   aemp gensecret

This creates a F<$HOME/.perl-anyevent-mp> config file and generates a
random shared secret. You can copy this file to any other system and
then communicate over the network (via TCP) with it. You can also select
your own shared secret (F<aemp setsecret>) and for increased security
requirements you can even create (or configure) a TLS certificate (F<aemp
gencert>), causing connections to not just be securely authenticated, but
also to be encrypted and protected against tinkering.

Connections will only be successfully established when the I<nodes>
that want to connect to each other have the same I<shared secret> (or
successfully verify the TLS certificate of the other side, in which case
no shared secret is required).

B<If something does not work as expected, and for example tcpdump shows
that the connections are closed almost immediately, you should make sure
that F<~/.perl-anyevent-mp> is the same on all hosts/user accounts that
you try to connect with each other!>

Thats is all for now, you will find some more advanced fiddling with the
C<aemp> utility later.


=head1 PART 1: Passing Messages Between Processes

=head2 The Receiver

Lets split the previous example up into two programs: one that contains
the sender and one for the receiver. First the receiver application, in
full:

   use AnyEvent;
   use AnyEvent::MP;
   use AnyEvent::MP::Global;

   configure nodeid => "eg_receiver", binds => ["*:4040"];

   my $port = port;

   AnyEvent::MP::Global::register $port, "eg_receivers";

   rcv $port, test => sub {
      my ($data, $reply_port) = @_;

      print "Received data: " . $data . "\n";
   };

   AnyEvent->condvar->recv;

=head3 AnyEvent::MP::Global

Now, that wasn't too bad, was it? Ok, let's step through the new functions
and modules that have been used.

For starters, there is now an additional module being
used: L<AnyEvent::MP::Global>. This module provides us with a I<global
registry>, which lets us register ports in groups that are visible on all
I<nodes> in a network.

What is this useful for? Well, the I<port IDs> are random-looking strings,
assigned by L<AnyEvent::MP>. We cannot know those I<port IDs> in advance,
so we don't know which I<port ID> to send messages to, especially when the
message is to be passed between different I<nodes> (or UNIX processes). To
find the right I<port> of another I<node> in the network we will need
to communicate this somehow to the sender. And exactly that is what
L<AnyEvent::MP::Global> provides.

Especially in larger, more anonymous networks this is handy: imagine you
have a few database backends, a few web frontends and some processing
distributed over a number of hosts: all of these would simply register
themselves in the appropriate group, and your web frontends can start to
find some database backend.

=head3 C<configure> and the Network

Now, let's have a look at the new function, C<configure>:

   configure nodeid => "eg_receiver", binds => ["*:4040"];

Before we are able to send messages to other nodes we have to initialise
ourself to become a "distributed node". Initialising a node means naming
the node, optionally binding some TCP listeners so that other nodes can
contact it and connecting to a predefined set of seed addresses so the
node can discover the existing network - and the existing network can
discover the node!

All of this (and more) can be passed to the C<configure> function - later
we will see how we can do all this without even passing anything to
C<configure>!

The first parameter, C<nodeid>, specified the node ID (in this case
C<eg_receiver> - the default is to use the node name of the current host,
but for this example we want to be able to run many nodes on the same
machine). Node IDs need to be unique within the network and can be almost
any string - if you don't care, you can specify a node ID of C<anon/>
which will then be replaced by a random node name.

The second parameter, C<binds>, specifies a list of C<address:port> pairs
to bind TCP listeners on. The special "address" of C<*> means to bind on
every local IP address.

The reason to bind on a TCP port is not just that other nodes can connect
to us: if no binds are specified, the node will still bind on a dynamic
port on all local addresses - but in this case we won't know the port, and
cannot tell other nodes to connect to it as seed node.

A I<seed> is a (fixed) TCP address of some other node in the network. To
explain the need for seeds we have to look at the topology of a typical
L<AnyEvent::MP> network. The topology is called a I<fully connected mesh>,
here an example with 4 nodes:

   N1--N2
   | \/ |
   | /\ |
   N3--N4

Now imagine another node - C<N5> - wants to connect itself to that network:

   N1--N2
   | \/ |    N5
   | /\ |
   N3--N4

The new node needs to know the I<binds> of all nodes already
connected. Exactly this is what the I<seeds> are for: Let's assume that
the new node (C<N5>) uses the TCP address of the node C<N2> as seed.  This
cuases it to connect to C<N2>:

   N1--N2____
   | \/ |    N5
   | /\ |
   N3--N4

C<N2> then tells C<N5> about the I<binds> of the other nodes it is
connected to, and C<N5> creates the rest of the connections:

    /--------\
   N1--N2____|
   | \/ |    N5
   | /\ |   /|
   N3--N4--- |
    \________/

All done: C<N5> is now happily connected to the rest of the network.

Of course, this process takes time, during which the node is already
running. This also means it takes time until the node is fully connected,
and global groups and other information is available. The best way to deal
with this is to either retry regularly until you found the resource you
were looking for, or to only start services on demand after a node has
become available.

=head3 Registering the Receiver

Coming back to our example, we have now introduced the basic purpose of
L<AnyEvent::MP::Global> and C<configure> and its use of profiles. We
also set up our profiles for later use and now we will finally continue
talking about the receiver.

Let's look at the next line(s):

   my $port = port;
   AnyEvent::MP::Global::register $port, "eg_receivers";

The C<port> function has already been discussed. It simply creates a new
I<port> and returns the I<port ID>. The C<register> function, however,
is new: The first argument is the I<port ID> that we want to add to a
I<global group>, and its second argument is the name of that I<global
group>.

You can choose the name of such a I<global group> freely (prefixing your
package name is highly recommended!). The purpose of such a group is to
store a set of I<port IDs>. This set is made available throughout the
L<AnyEvent::MP> network, so that each node can see which ports belong to
that group.

Later we will see how the sender looks for the ports in this I<global
group> to send messages to them.

The last step in the example is to set up a receiver callback for those
messages, just as was discussed in the first example. We again match
for the tag C<test>. The difference is that this time we don't exit the
application after receiving the first message. Instead we continue to wait
for new messages indefinitely.

=head2 The Sender

Ok, now let's take a look at the sender code:

   use AnyEvent;
   use AnyEvent::MP;
   use AnyEvent::MP::Global;

   configure nodeid => "eg_sender", seeds => ["*:4040"];

   my $find_timer =
      AnyEvent->timer (after => 0, interval => 1, cb => sub {
         my $ports = AnyEvent::MP::Global::find "eg_receivers"
            or return;

         snd $_, test => time
            for @$ports;
      });

   AnyEvent->condvar->recv;

It's even less code. The C<configure> serves the same purpose as in the
receiver, but instead of specifying binds we specify a list of seeds -
which happens to be the same as the binds used by the receiver, which
becomes our seed node.

Next we set up a timer that repeatedly (every second) calls this chunk of
code:

   my $ports = AnyEvent::MP::Global::find "eg_receivers"
      or return;

   snd $_, test => time
      for @$ports;

The only new function here is the C<find> function of
L<AnyEvent::MP::Global>. It searches in the global group named
C<eg_receivers> for ports. If none are found, it returns C<undef>, which
makes our code return instantly and wait for the next round, as nobody is
interested in our message.

As soon as the receiver application has connected and the information
about the newly added port in the receiver has propagated to the sender
node, C<find> returns an array reference that contains the I<port ID> of
the receiver I<port(s)>.

We then just send a message with a tag and the current time to every
I<port> in the global group.

=head3 Splitting Network Configuration and Application Code

Ok, so far, this works. In the real world, however, the person configuring
your application to run on a specific network (the end user or network
administrator) is often different to the person coding the application.

Or to put it differently: the arguments passed to configure are usually
provided not by the programmer, but by whoever is deploying the program.

To make this easy, AnyEvent::MP supports a simple configuration database,
using profiles, which can be managed using the F<aemp> command-line
utility (yes, this section is about the advanced tinkering we mentioned
before).

When you change both programs above to simply call

   configure;

then AnyEvent::MP tries to look up a profile using the current node name
in its configuration database, falling back to some global default.

You can run "generic" nodes using the F<aemp> utility as well, and we will
exploit this in the following way: we configure a profile "seed" and run
a node using it, whose sole purpose is to be a seed node for our example
programs.

We bind the seed node to port 4040 on all interfaces:

   aemp profile seed binds "*:4040"

And we configure all nodes to use this as seed node (this only works when
running on the same host, for multiple machines you would provide the IP
address or hostname of the node running the seed), and use a random name
(because we want to start multiple nodes on the same host):

   aemp seeds "*:4040" nodeid anon/

Then we run the seed node:

   aemp run profile seed

After that, we can start as many other nodes as we want, and they will all
use our generic seed node to discover each other.

In fact, starting many receivers nicely illustrates that the time sender
can have multiple receivers.

That's all for now - next we will teach you about monitoring by writing a
simple chat client and server :)

=head1 PART 2: Monitoring, Supervising, Exception Handling and Recovery

That's a mouthful, so what does it mean? Our previous example is what one
could call "very loosely coupled" - the sender doesn't care about whether
there are any receivers, and the receivers do not care if there is any
sender.

This can work fine for simple services, but most real-world applications
want to ensure that the side they are expecting to be there is actually
there. Going one step further: most bigger real-world applications even
want to ensure that if some component is missing, or has crashed, it will
still be there, by recovering and restarting the service.

AnyEvent::MP supports this by catching exceptions and network problems,
and notifying interested parties of this.

=head2 Exceptions, Network Errors and Monitors

=head3 Exceptions

Exceptions are handled on a per-port basis: receive callbacks are executed
in a special context, the port-context, and code that throws an uncaught
exception will cause the port to be C<kil>led. Killed ports are destroyed
automatically (killing ports is the only way to free ports, incidentally).

Ports can be monitored, even from a different host, and when a port is
killed any entity monitoring it will be notified.

Here is a simple example:

  use AnyEvent::MP;

  # create a port, it always dies
  my $port = port { die "oops" };

  # monitor it
  mon $port, sub {
     warn "$port was killed (with reason @_)";
  };

  # now send it some message, causing it to die:
  snd $port;

It first creates a port whose only action is to throw an exception,
and the monitors it with the C<mon> function. Afterwards it sends it a
message, causing it to die and call the monitoring callback:

   anon/6WmIpj.a was killed (with reason die oops at xxx line 5.) at xxx line 9.

The callback was actually passed two arguments: C<die> (to indicate it did
throw an exception as opposed to, say, a network error) and the exception
message itself.

What happens when a port is killed before we have a chance to monitor
it? Granted, this is highly unlikely in our example, but when you program
in a network this can easily happen due to races between nodes.

  use AnyEvent::MP;

  my $port = port { die "oops" };

  snd $port;

  mon $port, sub {
     warn "$port was killed (with reason @_)";
  };

This time we will get something like:

   anon/zpX.a was killed (with reason no_such_port cannot monitor nonexistent port)

Since the port was already gone, the kill reason is now C<no_such_port>
with some descriptive (we hope) error message.

In fact, the kill reason is usually some identifier as first argument
and a human-readable error message as second argument, but can be about
anything (it's a list) or even nothing - which is called a "normal" kill.

You can kill ports manually using the C<kil> function, which will be
treated like an error when any reason is specified:

   kil $port, custom_error => "don't like your steenking face";

And a clean kill without any reason arguments:
  
   kil $port;

By now you probably wonder what this "normal" kill business is: A common
idiom is to not specify a callback to C<mon>, but another port, such as
C<$SELF>:

   mon $port, $SELF;

This basically means "monitor $port and kill me when it crashes". And a
"normal" kill does not count as a crash. This way you can easily link
ports together and make them crash together on errors (but allow you to
remove a port silently).

=head3 Network Errors and the AEMP Guarantee

I mentioned another important source of monitoring failures: network
problems. When a node loses connection to another node, it will invoke all
monitoring actions as if the port was killed, even if it is possible that
the port still lives happily on another node (not being able to talk to a
node means we have no clue what's going on with it, it could be crashed,
but also still running without knowing we lost the connection).

So another way to view monitors is "notify me when some of my messages
couldn't be delivered". AEMP has a guarantee about message delivery to a
port:  After starting a monitor, any message sent to a port will either
be delivered, or, when it is lost, any further messages will also be lost
until the monitoring action is invoked. After that, further messages
I<might> get delivered again.

This doesn't sound like a very big guarantee, but it is kind of the best
you can get while staying sane: Specifically, it means that there will
be no "holes" in the message sequence: all messages sent are delivered
in order, without any missing in between, and when some were lost, you
I<will> be notified of that, so you can take recovery action.

=head3 Supervising

Ok, so what is this crashing-everything-stuff going to make applications
I<more> stable? Well in fact, the goal is not really to make them more
stable, but to make them more resilient against actual errors and
crashes. And this is not done by crashing I<everything>, but by crashing
everything except a supervisor.

A supervisor is simply some code that ensures that an application (or a
part of it) is running, and if it crashes, is restarted properly.

To show how to do all this we will create a simple chat server that can
handle many chat clients. Both server and clients can be killed and
restarted, and even crash, to some extent.

=head2 Chatting, the Resilient Way

Without further ado, here is the chat server (to run it, we assume the
set-up explained earlier, with a separate F<aemp run> seed node):

   use common::sense;
   use AnyEvent::MP;
   use AnyEvent::MP::Global;

   configure;

   my %clients;

   sub msg {
      print "relaying: $_[0]\n";
      snd $_, $_[0]
         for values %clients;
   }

   our $server = port;

   rcv $server, join => sub {
      my ($client, $nick) = @_;

      $clients{$client} = $client;

      mon $client, sub {
         delete $clients{$client};
         msg "$nick (quits, @_)";
      };
      msg "$nick (joins)";
   };

   rcv $server, privmsg => sub {
      my ($nick, $msg) = @_;
      msg "$nick: $msg";
   };

   AnyEvent::MP::Global::register $server, "eg_chat_server";

   warn "server ready.\n";

   AnyEvent->condvar->recv;

Looks like a lot, but it is actually quite simple: after your usual
preamble (this time we use common sense), we define a helper function that
sends some message to every registered chat client:

   sub msg {
      print "relaying: $_[0]\n";
      snd $_, $_[0]
         for values %clients;
   }

The clients are stored in the hash C<%client>. Then we define a server
port and install two receivers on it, C<join>, which is sent by clients
to join the chat, and C<privmsg>, that clients use to send actual chat
messages.

C<join> is most complicated. It expects the client port and the nickname
to be passed in the message, and registers the client in C<%clients>.

   rcv $server, join => sub {
      my ($client, $nick) = @_;

      $clients{$client} = $client;

The next step is to monitor the client. The monitoring action removes the
client and sends a quit message with the error to all remaining clients.

      mon $client, sub {
         delete $clients{$client};
         msg "$nick (quits, @_)";
      };

And finally, it creates a join message and sends it to all clients.

      msg "$nick (joins)";
   };

The C<privmsg> callback simply broadcasts the message to all clients:

   rcv $server, privmsg => sub {
      my ($nick, $msg) = @_;
      msg "$nick: $msg";
   };

And finally, the server registers itself in the server group, so that
clients can find it:

   AnyEvent::MP::Global::register $server, "eg_chat_server";

Well, well... and where is this supervisor stuff? Well... we cheated,
it's not there. To not overcomplicate the example, we only put it into
the..... CLIENT!

=head3 The Client, and a Supervisor!

Again, here is the client, including supervisor, which makes it a bit
longer:

   use common::sense;
   use AnyEvent::MP;
   use AnyEvent::MP::Global;

   my $nick = shift;

   configure;

   my ($client, $server);

   sub server_connect {
      my $servernodes = AnyEvent::MP::Global::find "eg_chat_server"
         or return after 1, \&server_connect;

      print "\rconnecting...\n";

      $client = port { print "\r  \r@_\n> " };
      mon $client, sub {
         print "\rdisconnected @_\n";
         &server_connect;
      };

      $server = $servernodes->[0];
      snd $server, join => $client, $nick;
      mon $server, $client;
   }

   server_connect;

   my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => *STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
      chomp (my $line = <STDIN>);
      print "> ";
      snd $server, privmsg => $nick, $line
        if $server;
   });

   $| = 1;
   print "> ";
   AnyEvent->condvar->recv;

The first thing the client does is to store the nick name (which is
expected as the only command line argument) in C<$nick>, for further
usage.

The next relevant thing is... finally... the supervisor:

   sub server_connect {
      my $servernodes = AnyEvent::MP::Global::find "eg_chat_server"
         or return after 1, \&server_connect;

This looks up the server in the C<eg_chat_server> global group. If it
cannot find it (which is likely when the node is just starting up),
it will wait a second and then retry. This "wait a bit and retry"
is an important pattern, as distributed programming means lots of
things are going on asynchronously. In practise, one should use a more
intelligent algorithm, to possibly warn after an excessive number of
retries. Hopefully future versions of AnyEvent::MP will offer some
predefined supervisors, for now you will have to code it on your own.

Next it creates a local port for the server to send messages to, and
monitors it. When the port is killed, it will print "disconnected" and
tell the supervisor function to retry again.

      $client = port { print "\r  \r@_\n> " };
      mon $client, sub {
         print "\rdisconnected @_\n";
         &server_connect;
      };

Then everything is ready: the client will send a C<join> message with it's
local port to the server, and start monitoring it:

      $server = $servernodes->[0];
      snd $server, join => $client, $nick;
      mon $server, $client;
   }

The monitor will ensure that if the server crashes or goes away, the
client will be killed as well. This tells the user that the client was
disconnected, and will then start to connect the server again.

The rest of the program deals with the boring details of actually invoking
the supervisor function to start the whole client process and handle the
actual terminal input, sending it to the server.

You should now try to start the server and one or more clients in different
terminal windows (and the seed node):

   perl eg/chat_client nick1
   perl eg/chat_client nick2
   perl eg/chat_server
   aemp run profile seed

And then you can experiment with chatting, killing one or more clients, or
stopping and restarting the server, to see the monitoring in action.

The crucial point you should understand from this example is that
monitoring is usually symmetric: when you monitor some other port,
potentially on another node, that other port usually should monitor you,
too, so when the connection dies, both ports get killed, or at least both
sides can take corrective action. Exceptions are "servers" that serve
multiple clients at once and might only wish to clean up, and supervisors,
who of course should not normally get killed (unless they, too, have a
supervisor).

If you often think in object-oriented terms, then treat a port as an
object, C<port> is the constructor, the receive callbacks set by C<rcv>
act as methods, the C<kil> function becomes the explicit destructor and
C<mon> installs a destructor hook. Unlike conventional object oriented
programming, it can make sense to exchange ports more freely (for example,
to monitor one port from another).

There is ample room for improvement: the server should probably remember
the nickname in the C<join> handler instead of expecting it in every chat
message, it should probably monitor itself, and the client should not try
to send any messages unless a server is actually connected.

=head1 PART 3: TIMTOWTDI: Virtual Connections

#TODO

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<AnyEvent>

L<AnyEvent::Handle>

L<AnyEvent::MP>

L<AnyEvent::MP::Global>

=head1 AUTHOR

  Robin Redeker <elmex@ta-sa.org>
  Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>

Revision:	1.33
Committed:	Mon Aug 31 15:12:49 2009 UTC (17 years ago) by root
Branch:	MAIN
Changes since 1.32:	+16 -0 lines
Log Message:	* empty log message *