Writing to channel in a loop - for-loop

I have to send a lot of data to I client connected to my server in small blocks.
So, I have something like:
for(;;) {
messageEvent.getChannel().write("Hello World");
}
The problem is that, for some reason, client is receiving dirty data, like Netty buffer is not clear at each iteration, so we got something like "Hello WorldHello".
If I make a little change in my code putting a thread sleep everything works fine:
for(;;) {
messageEvent.getChannel().write("Hello World");
Thread.sleep(1000);
}

As MRAB said, if the server is sending multiple messages on a channel without indicating the end of each message, then client can not always read the messages correctly. By adding sleep time after writing a message, will not solve the root cause of the problem either.
To fix this problem, have to mark the end of each message in a way that other party can identify, if client and server both are using Netty, you can add LengthFieldPrepender and LengthFieldBasedFrameDecoder before your json handlers.
String encodedMsg = new Gson().toJson(
sendToClient,newTypeToken<ArrayList<CoordinateVO>>() {}.getType());
By default, Gson uses html escaping for content, sometime this will lead to wired encoding, you can disable this if required by using a Gson factory
final static GsonBuilder gsonBuilder = new GsonBuilder().disableHtmlEscaping();
....
String encodedMsg = gsonBuilder.create().toJson(object);

In neither case are you sending anything to indicate where one item ends and the next begins, or how long each item is.
In the second case the sleep is getting the channel time out and flush, so the client sees a 'break', which it interprets as the end of the item.

The client should never see this "dirty data". If thats really the case then its a bug. But to be hornest I can't think of anything that could lead to this in netty. As every Channel.write(..) event will be added to a queue which then get written to the client when possible. So every data that is passed in the write(..) method will just get written. There is no "concat" of the data.
Do you maybe have some custom Encoder in the pipeline that buffers the data before sending it to the client ?
It would also help if you could show the complete code that gives this behavoir so we see what handlers are in the pipeline etc.

Related

Start processing Flux response from server before completion: is it possible?

I have 2 Spring-Boot-Reactive apps, one server and one client; the client calls the server like so:
Flux<Thing> things = thingsApi.listThings(5);
And I want to have this as a list for later use:
// "extractContent" operation takes 1.5s per "thing"
List<String> thingsContent = things.map(ThingConverter::extractContent)
.collect(Collectors.toList())
.block()
On the server side, the endpoint definition looks like this:
#Override
public Mono<ResponseEntity<Flux<Thing>>> listThings(
#NotNull #Valid #RequestParam(value = "nbThings") Integer nbThings,
ServerWebExchange exchange
) {
// "getThings" operation takes 1.5s per "thing"
Flux<Thing> things = thingsService.getThings(nbThings);
return Mono.just(new ResponseEntity<>(things, HttpStatus.OK));
}
The signature comes from the Open-API generated code (Spring-Boot server, reactive mode).
What I observe: the client jumps to things.map immediately but only starts processing the Flux after the server has finished sending all the "things".
What I would like: the server should send the "things" as they are generated so that the client can start processing them as they arrive, effectively halving the processing time.
Is there a way to achieve this? I've found many tutorials online for the server part, but none with a java client. I've heard of server-sent events, but can my goal be achieved using a "classic" Open-API endpoint definition that returns a Flux?
The problem seemed too complex to fit a minimal viable example in the question body; full code available for reference on Github.
EDIT: redirect link to main branch after merge of the proposed solution
I've got it running by changing 2 points:
First: I've changed the content type of the response of your /things endpoint, to:
content:
text/event-stream
Don't forget to change also the default response, else the client will expect the type application/json and will wait for the whole response.
Second point: I've changed the return of ThingsService.getThings to this.getThingsFromExistingStream (the method you comment out)
I pushed my changes to a new branch fix-flux-response on your Github, so you can test them directly.

How does ktor websocket flow api works?

I'm using ktor for server side development with websockets.
Documentations shows us this example of using incoming channel:
for (frame in incoming.mapNotNull { it as? Frame.Text }) {
// some
}
But mapNotNull is marked as deprecated in favor of Flow. How should I use this API and what problems could be there? For example, the Flow is a cold stream. It means that the producer function will be called on each collect. How does it work in context of websocket. Will it be reopened on second collect call, or maybe old messages will be delivered once after the next collect? How can I collect N messages, then stop collecting, then collect again?
Thanks in advance :)
How should I use this API and what problems could be there?
What I am using and what I have seen in one of the examples somewhere in the docs is the consumeAsFlow() method called on ReceiveChannel. Here is the entire snippet:
webSocket("/websocket") { //this: DefaultWebSocketServerSession
incoming
.consumeAsFlow()
.map { receive(it) }
.collect()
}
Haven't seen major issues with this approach. One thing you should be aware of (but that goes for the non-flow approach as well) is that if you throw inside your flow, then it will break the WebSocket connection, which is usually not something you'd like to do. It might be worth considering wrapping the entire thing in a try-catch.
Will it be reopened on second collect call, or maybe old messages will be delivered once after the next collect?
You open the websocket before you even start consuming the messages from the flow. You can see that inside webSocket() {} you are in the context of DefaultWebSocketServerSession. This is your connection management. Inside your flow you are simply receiving messages one by one as they arrive (after the connection has been established). If the connection breaks, then you're out of the flow. It needs to be re-established before you can process your messages. This establishing bit is done by the Route.webSocket() method. I do recommend taking a look at its Javadoc.
If you wish to add some clean up after the connection is closed you can add a finally block like so:
webSocket("/chat") {
try {
incoming
.consumeAsFlow()
.map { receive(it, client) }
.collect()
} finally {
// cleanup
}
}
In short: collect is called once per received message. If there is no connection (or it was broken) then collect won't be called.
How can I collect N messages, then stop collecting, then collect again?
What is the use case for this? I don't think you should be doing this with any flow. You can of course take(n) items from a flow, but you won't be able to take any more from it again.

Boost async_receive_from makes std::cin crash with buffer overflow

while coding a server supporting both TCP and UDP with the boost library, I encountered a strange problem: After the server receives any UDP message, a call of std::cin (or std::getline) will crash if I try to put the input into a string.
This does only happen after at least one UDP message was received. I have no idea what happens here, because I hardly do anything when receiving a message. I broke the important code down:
void AsynchronousServer::DoReceiveUDP()
{
m_udp_socket.async_receive_from(boost::asio::buffer(m_udp_receive_buffer,
m_udp_receive_buffer.size()),
udp::endpoint(), [this](boost::system::error_code error, std::size_t
bytes_transferred)
{
});
}
The DoReceiveUDP() method is called right when the server is up and before io_service.run(). Usually it does a bit more (e.g. call itself again), but for testing purposes I commented everything out so that it really does nothing more than receive once. m_udp_receive_buffer is an
std::array<char, 8196>
, an attribute of the AsynchronousServer class that is not used anywhere else.
In the main thread, this is all I really do after setting up the server:
while(true)
{
std::string message;
std::getline(std::cin, message); //On this line the program crashes
//server.SendMessageTCP(1, message);
}
Now as I said, the crash (debug message says buffer overflow) only happens after a message was received via UDP. My server also reads TCP messages via async_read. This does not provoke the error though.
I also tested this with storing the getline-input in an constant sized array, which works fine. But I cant really do that since I dont know how long the message is then, which means the buffer is filled with a lot of useless characters when I send the message. Besides, I dont really feel safe anyway with strange stuff like that happening and would rather solve the problem than bypass it.
Do any of you have some ideas on what could be the problem here? If you need more code, just ask, but I think I already posted everything relevant. :)
EDIT: I commented out the error code and bytes transferred too, but it is in the "full" version. I don't get any errors and bytes transferred is exactly the length of the message.
After some more tests I can at least guess a little more. The problem seems to occur if I am expected to enter input via cin and during this, a message is received.
E.g. if I do this:
while(true)
{
std::string message;
boost::this_thread::sleep(boost::posix_time::seconds(3));
std::getline(std::cin, message);
}
and the client sends a UDP message within this three seconds the thread sleeps, everything goes fine. If the three seconds pass and THEN the message is received, it crashes as before.
However, there is one really strange behaviour: After I sended a UDP message within these three seconds, the program won't crash anymore at all - even if I wait with the next message until the thread has reached getline again. I have no idea why that happens...
Alright so I found a "solution" for this problem. I still don't know why it happens and if that is really a solution at all or whether I'll run into other problems later.
Also, I have no idea, why this solution works. :D
Anyway, it works if the buffer is not a member function but created anew for every call of ReceiveUDP:
void AsynchronousServer::DoReceiveUDP()
{
std::shared_ptr<std::array<char, 8192>> udp_receive_buffer;
m_udp_socket.async_receive_from(boost::asio::buffer(*udp_receive_buffer, udp_receive_buffer->size()),
udp::endpoint(), boost::bind<void>([this](boost::system::error_code error, std::size_t bytes_transferred,
std::shared_ptr<std::array<char, 8192>> udp_receive_buffer)
{
}, boost::asio::placeholders::error, boost::asio::placeholders::bytes_transferred, udp_receive_buffer));
}

File upload progress bar using RestTemplate.postForLocation

I have a Java desktop client application that uploads files to a REST service.
All calls to the REST service are handled using the Spring RestTemplate class.
I'm looking to implement a progress bar and cancel functionality as the files being uploaded can be quite big.
I've been looking for a way to implement this on the web but have had no luck.
I tried implementing my own ResourceHttpMessageConverter and substituting the writeInternal() method but this method seems to be called during some sort of buffered operation prior to actually posting the request (so the stream is read all in one go before sending takes place).
I've even tried overriding the CommonsClientHttpRequestFactory.createRequest() method and implementing my own RequestEntity class with a special writeRequest() method but the same issue occurs (stream is all read before actually sending the post).
Am I looking in the wrong place? Has anyone done something similar.
A lot of the stuff I've read on the web about implementing progress bars talks about staring the upload off and then using separate AJAX requests to poll the web server for progress which seems like an odd way to go about it.
Any help or tips greatly appreciated.
This is an old question but it is still relevant.
I tried implementing my own ResourceHttpMessageConverter and substituting the writeInternal() method but this method seems to be called during some sort of buffered operation prior to actually posting the request (so the stream is read all in one go before sending takes place).
You were on the right track. Additionally, you also needed to disable request body buffering on the RestTemplate's HttpRequestFactory, something like this:
HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory clientHttpRequestFactory = new HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory();
clientHttpRequestFactory.setBufferRequestBody(false);
RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate(clientHttpRequestFactory);
Here's a working example for tracking file upload progress with RestTemplate.
There was not much detail about what this app is, or how it works so this response is vague but I believe you can do something like this to track your upload progress.
If this really is a Java Client App (i.e. Not HTML/JavaScript but a java program) and you really are having it upload a file as a stream then you should be able to track your upload progress by counting the bytes in the array being transmitted in the stream buffer and comparing that to the total byte count from the file object.
When you get the file get its size.
Integer totalFile = file.getTotalSpace();
Where ever you are transmitting as a stream you are presumably adding bytes to a output buffer of some kind
byte[] bytesFromSomeFileReader = [whatEverYouAreUsingToReadTheFile];
ByteArrayOutputStream byteStreamToServer = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
Integer bytesTransmitted = 0;
for (byte fileByte : bytesFromSomeFileReader) {
byteStreamToServer.write(fileByte);
//
// Update your progress bar every killo-byte sent.
//
bytesTransmitted++;
if( (bytesTransmitted % 1000) = 0) {
someMethodToUpdateProgressBar();
}
}

Uploading a file using post() method of QNetworkAccessManager

I'm having some trouble with a Qt application; specifically with the QNetworkAccessManager class. I'm attempting to perform a simple HTTP upload of a binary file using the post() method of the QNetworkAccessManager. The documentation states that I can give a pointer to a QIODevice to post(), and that the class will transmit the data found in the QIODevice. This suggests to me that I ought to be able to give post() a pointer to a QFile. For example:
QFile compressedFile("temp");
compressedFile.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly);
netManager.post(QNetworkRequest(QUrl("http://mywebsite.com/upload") ), &compressedFile);
What seems to happen on the Windows system where I'm developing this is that my Qt application pushes the data from the QFile, but then doesn't complete the request; it seems to be sitting there waiting for more data to show up from the file. The post request isn't "closed" until I manually kill the application, at which point the whole file shows up at my server end.
From some debugging and research, I think this is happening because the read() operation of QFile doesn't return -1 when you reach the end of the file. I think that QNetworkAccessManager is trying to read from the QIODevice until it gets a -1 from read(), at which point it assumes there is no more data and closes the request. If it keeps getting a return code of zero from read(), QNetworkAccessManager assumes that there might be more data coming, and so it keeps waiting for that hypothetical data.
I've confirmed with some test code that the read() operation of QFile just returns zero after you've read to the end of the file. This seems to be incompatible with the way that the post() method of QNetworkAccessManager expects a QIODevice to behave. My questions are:
Is this some sort of limitation with the way that QFile works under Windows?
Is there some other way I should be using either QFile or QNetworkAccessManager to push a file via post()?
Is this not going to work at all, and will I have to find some other way to upload my file?
Any suggestions or hints would be appreciated.
Update: It turns out that I had two different problems: one on the client side and one on the server side. On the client side, I had to ensure that my QFile object stayed around for the duration of the network transaction. The post() method of QNetworkAccessManager returns immediately but isn't actually finished immediately. You need to attach a slot to the finished() signal of QNetworkAccessManager to determine when the POST is actually finished. In my case it was easy enough to keep the QFile around more or less permanently, but I also attached a slot to the finished() signal in order to check for error responses from the server.
I attached the signal to the slot like this:
connect(&netManager, SIGNAL(finished(QNetworkReply*) ), this, SLOT(postFinished(QNetworkReply*) ) );
When it was time to send my file, I wrote the post code like this (note that compressedFile is a member of my class and so does not go out of scope after this code):
compressedFile.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly);
netManager.post(QNetworkRequest(QUrl(httpDestination.getCString() ) ), &compressedFile);
The finished(QNetworkReply*) signal from QNetworkAccessManager triggers my postFinished(QNetworkReply*) method. When this happens, it's safe for me to close compressedFile and to delete the data file represented by compressedFile. For debugging purposes I also added a few printf() statements to confirm that the transaction is complete:
void CL_QtLogCompressor::postFinished(QNetworkReply* reply)
{
QByteArray response = reply->readAll();
printf("response: %s\n", response.data() );
printf("reply error %d\n", reply->error() );
reply->deleteLater();
compressedFile.close();
compressedFile.remove();
}
Since compressedFile isn't closed immediately and doesn't go out of scope, the QNetworkAccessManager is able to take as much time as it likes to transmit my file. Eventually the transaction is complete and my postFinished() method gets called.
My other problem (which also contributed to the behavior I was seeing where the transaction never completed) was that the Python code for my web server wasn't fielding the POST correctly, but that's outside the scope of my original Qt question.
You're creating compressedFile on the stack, and passing a pointer to it to your QNetworkRequest (and ultimately your QNetworkAccessManager). As soon as you leave the method you're in, compressedFile is going out of scope. I'm surprised it's not crashing on you, though the behavior is undefined.
You need to create the QFile on the heap:
QFile *compressedFile = new QFile("temp");
You will of course need to keep track of it and then delete it once the post has completed, or set it as the child of the QNetworkReply so that it it gets destroyed when the reply gets destroyed later:
QFile *compressedFile = new QFile("temp");
compressedFile->open(QIODevice::ReadOnly);
QNetworkReply *reply = netManager.post(QNetworkRequest(QUrl("http://mywebsite.com/upload") ), compressedFile);
compressedFile->setParent(reply);
You can also schedule automatic deletion of a heap-allocated file using signals/slots
QFile* compressedFile = new QFile(...);
QNetworkReply* reply = Manager.post(...);
// This is where the tricks is
connect(reply, SIGNAL(finished()), reply, SLOT(deleteLater());
connect(reply, SIGNAL(destroyed()), compressedFile, SLOT(deleteLater());
IMHO, it is much more localized and encapsulated than having to keep around your file in the outer class.
Note that you must remove the first connect() if you have your postFinished(QNetworkReply*) slot, in which you must then not forget to call reply->deleteLater() inside it for the above to work.

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