Popping messages from Ruby Queue in a proper way - ruby

Here is my code to send messages from Queue:
def initialize
#messages = Queue.new
end
def send_messages_from_queue
while msg = #messages.pop(true)
#Pushing data through websocket
end
rescue ThreadError
#raised if queue is empty
end
It works but has one drawback: if there are no channel subscribers the message is not being sent but still taken out of the Queue and therefore goes lost.
How to take last message from Queue but not delete it from there until it is sent?
I could expose the inner queue:
#messages.class.module_eval { attr_reader :que }
or
#messages.define_singleton_method(:first_message) do
#que.first
end
but it is not the right way and also has it's own drawback:
when I take a message out of Queue in one thread using pop, it won't be available for other thread few milliseconds later, but when I use the custom first_message method, the message will be available for any other thread until I call pop.

Related

Rails 5 ActionCable receive not called

I have an ActionCable channel that is working well in terms of Subscribing and receiving data. Everything works, except the receive(data) method is not being called when messages are being sent down the channel. Does anyone know why?
My cable channel:
class MyChannel < ApplicationCable::Channel
def connect
end
def subscribed
current_user = #authorized_user
stream_for current_user
end
def receive(data)
Rails.logger.error "received: #{data.inspect}"
puts "received: #{data.inspect}"
end
def unsubscribed
# Any cleanup needed when channel is unsubscribed
end
end
When I call the broadcast_to method, my consumer correctly receives the message, this all works fine:
MyChannel.broadcast_to User.find(4), "test"
But my receive(data) method is never called (can't see my logging anywhere). As far as the Rails documentation goes, this should just work, but when I look at the Cable channel methods, I can't see receive at all. What am I missing?
Figured it out!
You can specify the Channel action you wish to hit within the Cable message itself. In my example, if I wished my data to hit the "receive" method, my cable message would look like this:
{
"command": "message",
"identifier": "{\"channel\":\"MyChannel\"}",
"data": "{\"someinfo\":\"hello world this is a test\",\"action\":\"receive\"}"
}

How do you keep a ruby thread alive

Running this
# in initialize
#queue = Queue.new
#threads = Array.new(NUM_THREADS) do
Thread.new do
until #queue.empty?
puts #queue.shift
end
end
end
# later in another method, calling
#threads.each { |t| puts t.alive? } # puts false
#queue.push('something else')
# new item is not processed by thread
How do I keep a Ruby thread alive so it can keep accepting stuff from a queue?
The issue is you initialize the threads before adding anything to the queue. The threads start and die before the #queue.push line is run.
If you want to keep alive the thread even if there is nothing in the queue, you can change the logic of the thread so it loops forever:
Thread.new do
loop do
if val = #queue.shift
puts val
end
end
end
You could decrease the CPU consumption by putting a sleep call inside the thread's loop, say it sleeps 0.1 seconds each iteration and thus it could process a max of 10 items per second. For example running the following in my Ruby REPL raises the process' CPU consumption from around 0 to 25% (which is undesirably high)
100.times { Thread.new { loop { } } }
But the following uses less than 1%:
100.times { Thread.new { loop { sleep 0.1 } } }
There are other ways to manage CPU consumption of background processes other than putting arbitrary sleep numbers in there: for example eventmachine, resque, or sidekiq.
You probably want to use Queue from Ruby core library.
Methods pop, deq and shift can be used to retrieve data from the queue.
With these methods, according to the documentation
If the queue is empty, the calling thread is suspended until data is
pushed onto the queue.
With Queue, your code snippet would look like so
#queue = Queue.new
#threads = Array.new(NUM_THREADS) do
Thread.new do
while (item = #queue.shift)
puts item
end
end
end
# later in another method
#threads.each { |t| puts t.alive? } # true
#queue.push('something else') # is printed out
Queue#shift keeps the thread waiting, until something is pushed into the queue. You still need the loop, so that after handling the item, the thread will stay alive, suspended, waiting for the next item.

Handle exceptions in concurrent-ruby thread pool

How to handle exceptions in concurrent-ruby thread pools (http://ruby-concurrency.github.io/concurrent-ruby/file.thread_pools.html)?
Example:
pool = Concurrent::FixedThreadPool.new(5)
pool.post do
raise 'something goes wrong'
end
# how to rescue this exception here
Update:
Here is simplified version of my code:
def process
pool = Concurrent::FixedThreadPool.new(5)
products.each do |product|
new_product = generate_new_product
pool.post do
store_in_db(new_product) # here exception is raised, e.g. connection to db failed
end
end
pool.shutdown
pool.wait_for_terminaton
end
So what I want to achive, is to stop processing (break loop) in case of any exception.
This exception is also rescued at higher level of application and there are executed some cleaning jobs (like setting state of model to failure and sending some notifications).
The following answer is from jdantonio from here https://github.com/ruby-concurrency/concurrent-ruby/issues/616
"
Most applications should not use thread pools directly. Thread pools are a low-level abstraction meant for internal use. All of the high-level abstractions in this library (Promise, Actor, etc.) all post jobs to the global thread pool and all provide exception handling. Simply pick the abstraction that best fits your use case and use it.
If you feel the need to configure your own thread pool rather than use the global thread pool, you can still use the high-level abstractions. They all support an :executor option which allows you to inject your custom thread pool. You can then use the exception handling provided by the high-level abstraction.
If you absolutely insist on posting jobs directly to a thread pool rather than using our high-level abstractions (which I strongly discourage) then just create a job wrapper. You can find examples of job wrappers in all our high-level abstractions, Rails ActiveJob, Sucker Punch, and other libraries which use our thread pools."
So how about an implementation with Promises ?
http://ruby-concurrency.github.io/concurrent-ruby/Concurrent/Promise.html
In your case it would look something like this:
promises = []
products.each do |product|
new_product = generate_new_prodcut
promises << Concurrent::Promise.execute do
store_in_db(new_product)
end
end
# .value will wait for the Thread to finish.
# The ! means, that all exceptions will be propagated to the main thread
# .zip will make one Promise which contains all other promises.
Concurrent::Promise.zip(*promises).value!
There may be a better way, but this does work. You will want to change the error handling within wait_for_pool_to_finish.
def process
pool = Concurrent::FixedThreadPool.new(10)
errors = Concurrent::Array.new
10_000.times do
pool.post do
begin
# do the work
rescue StandardError => e
errors << e
end
end
end
wait_for_pool_to_finish(pool, errors)
end
private
def wait_for_pool_to_finish(pool, errors)
pool.shutdown
until pool.shutdown?
if errors.any?
pool.kill
fail errors.first
end
sleep 1
end
pool.wait_for_termination
end
I've created an issue #634. Concurrent thread pool can support abortable worker without any problems.
require "concurrent"
Concurrent::RubyThreadPoolExecutor.class_eval do
# Inspired by "ns_kill_execution".
def ns_abort_execution aborted_worker
#pool.each do |worker|
next if worker == aborted_worker
worker.kill
end
#pool = [aborted_worker]
#ready.clear
stopped_event.set
nil
end
def abort_worker worker
synchronize do
ns_abort_execution worker
end
nil
end
def join
shutdown
# We should wait for stopped event.
# We couldn't use timeout.
stopped_event.wait nil
#pool.each do |aborted_worker|
# Rubinius could receive an error from aborted thread's "join" only.
# MRI Ruby doesn't care about "join".
# It will receive error anyway.
# We can "raise" error in aborted thread and than "join" it from this thread.
# We can "join" aborted thread from this thread and than "raise" error in aborted thread.
# The order of "raise" and "join" is not important. We will receive target error anyway.
aborted_worker.join
end
#pool.clear
nil
end
class AbortableWorker < self.const_get :Worker
def initialize pool
super
#thread.abort_on_exception = true
end
def run_task pool, task, args
begin
task.call *args
rescue StandardError => error
pool.abort_worker self
raise error
end
pool.worker_task_completed
nil
end
def join
#thread.join
nil
end
end
self.send :remove_const, :Worker
self.const_set :Worker, AbortableWorker
end
class MyError < StandardError; end
pool = Concurrent::FixedThreadPool.new 5
begin
pool.post do
sleep 1
puts "we shouldn't receive this message"
end
pool.post do
puts "raising my error"
raise MyError
end
pool.join
rescue MyError => error
puts "received my error, trace: \n#{error.backtrace.join("\n")}"
end
sleep 2
Output:
raising my error
received my error, trace:
...
This patch works fine for any version of MRI Ruby and Rubinius. JRuby is not working and I don't care. Please patch JRuby executor if you want to support it. It should be easy.

EventMachine and em-websocket - reading from a queue and pushing to a channel

I'm using eventmachine to read from a HornetQ topic, push to a Channel which is subscribed to by EM websocket connections. I need to prevent the #topic.receive loop from blocking, so have created a proc and am calling EventMachine.defer with no callback. This will run indefinitely. This works fine. I could also have just used Thread.new.
My question is, is this the correct way to read from a stream/queue and pass the data to the channel and is there a better/any other way to do this?
require 'em-websocket'
require 'torquebox-messaging'
class WebsocketServer
def initialize
#channel = EM::Channel.new
#topic = TorqueBox::Messaging::Topic.new('/topics/mytopic')
end
def start
EventMachine.run do
topic_to_channel = proc do
while true
msg = #topic.receive
#channel.push msg
end
end
EventMachine.defer(topic_to_channel)
EventMachine::WebSocket.start(:host => "127.0.0.1", :port => 8081, :debug => false) do |connection|
connection.onopen do
sid = #channel.subscribe { |msg| connection.send msg }
connection.onclose do
#channel.unsubscribe(sid)
end
end
end
end
end
end
WebsocketServer.new.start
This is ok, but EM.defer will spawn 20 threads, so I would avoid it for your use case. In general I would avoid EM entirely, especially the Java reactor as we never finished it.
The Torquebox has a native stomp over websockets solution that would be a much better way to go in this context, and solves a bunch of other encapsulation challenges for you.
If you really want to stick with EM for this, then I'd use Thread.new instead of defer, so as to avoid having 19 idle threads taking up extra ram for no reason.

How does thin asynch app example buffer response to the body?

Hi I have been going through the documentation on Thin and I am reasonably new to eventmachine but I am aware of how Deferrables work. My goal is to understand how Thin works when the body is deferred and streamed part by part.
The following is the example that I'm working with and trying to get my head around.
class DeferrableBody
include EventMachine::Deferrable
def call(body)
body.each do |chunk|
#body_callback.call(chunk)
end
# #body_callback.call()
end
def each &blk
#body_callback = blk
end
end
class AsyncApp
# This is a template async response. N.B. Can't use string for body on 1.9
AsyncResponse = [-1, {}, []].freeze
puts "Aysnc testing #{AsyncResponse.inspect}"
def call(env)
body = DeferrableBody.new
# Get the headers out there asap, let the client know we're alive...
EventMachine::next_tick do
puts "Next tick running....."
env['async.callback'].call [200, {'Content-Type' => 'text/plain'}, body]
end
# Semi-emulate a long db request, instead of a timer, in reality we'd be
# waiting for the response data. Whilst this happens, other connections
# can be serviced.
# This could be any callback based thing though, a deferrable waiting on
# IO data, a db request, an http request, an smtp send, whatever.
EventMachine::add_timer(2) do
puts "Timer started.."
body.call ["Woah, async!\n"]
EventMachine::add_timer(5) {
# This could actually happen any time, you could spawn off to new
# threads, pause as a good looking lady walks by, whatever.
# Just shows off how we can defer chunks of data in the body, you can
# even call this many times.
body.call ["Cheers then!"]
puts "Succeed Called."
body.succeed
}
end
# throw :async # Still works for supporting non-async frameworks...
puts "Async REsponse sent."
AsyncResponse # May end up in Rack :-)
end
end
# The additions to env for async.connection and async.callback absolutely
# destroy the speed of the request if Lint is doing it's checks on env.
# It is also important to note that an async response will not pass through
# any further middleware, as the async response notification has been passed
# right up to the webserver, and the callback goes directly there too.
# Middleware could possibly catch :async, and also provide a different
# async.connection and async.callback.
# use Rack::Lint
run AsyncApp.new
The part which I don't clearly understand is what happens within the DeferrableBody class in the call and the each methods.
I get that the each receives chunks of data once the timer fires as blocks stored in #body_callback and when succeed is called on the body it sends the body but when is yield or call called on those blocks how does it become a single message when sent.
I feel I don't understand closures enough to understand whats happening. Would appreciate any help on this.
Thank you.
Ok I think I figured out how the each blocks works.
Thin on post_init seems to be generating a #request and #response object when the connection comes in. The response object needs to respond to an each method. This is the method we override.
The env['async.callback'] is a closure that is assigned to a method called post_process in the connection.rb class method where the data is actually sent to connection which looks like this
#response.each do |chunk|
trace { chunk }
puts "-- [THIN] sending data #{chunk} ---"
send_data chunk
end
How the response object's each is defined
def each
yield head
if #body.is_a?(String)
yield #body
else
#body.each { |chunk| yield chunk }
end
end
So our env['async.callback'] is basically a method called post_process defined in the connection.rb class accessed via method(:post_process) allowing our method to be handled like a closure, which contains access to the #response object. When the reactor starts it first sends the header data in the next_tick where it yields the head, but the body is empty at this point so nothing gets yielded.
After this our each method overrides the old implementation owned by the #response object so when the add_timers fire the post_process which gets triggered sends the data that we supply using the body.call(["Wooah..."]) to the browser (or wherever)
Completely in awe of macournoyer and the team committing to thin. Please correct my understanding if you feel this is not how it works.

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