I want to know how the engine in node.js know when to call and execute the queued operation. I understand that node.js is single threaded and uses asynchronous non-blocking to execute operations.
But let's say you are calling something from the database and node.js queues the operation and doesn't wait for this to execute further lines of code. Being single thread it stores the data in channels(if I am not wrong). But how does the server know that the network isn't busy and it is the right time to execute the queued operation.
Or it executes the queued operation at the end of the program. This can't be the case. So I am curious to know what happens under the hood and how does the node server know when to execute the queued operation.
It's not clear what you mean by "channels" as that is not a built-in node.js concept or a term that is used internally to describe how node.js works. The tutorial you reference in your comment is talking about the Java language, not the Javascript language so it has absolutely nothing to do with node.js. The concept of "channels" in that tutorial is something that that specific NIO library implements in Java.
But, if you're really just asking how async operations work in node.js, I can explain that generaly concept.
node.js works off an event queue. The node.js interpreter grabs the next event in the event queue and executes it (typically that involves calling a callback function). That callback function runs (single threaded) until it returns. When it returns, the node.js interpreter then looks in the event queue for the next event. If there are any, it grabs that next event and calls the callback associated with it. If there are not events currently in the event queue, then it waits for an event to be put in the event queue (with nothing to do expect perhaps runs some garbage collection).
Now, when you runs some sort of asynchronous operation in your Javascript (such as a DB query), you can your db query function, that initiates the query (by sending the query off to the database) and then immediately returns. This allows your piece of Javascript that started that query to then return and give control back to node.js.
Meanwhile, some native code is managing the connection to your database. When the response comes back from the database, an event is added to the internal node.js event queue.
Whenever the node.js interpreter has finished running other Javascript, it looks in the event queue and pulls out the next event and calls the callback associated with that. In that way, your DB query result gets processed by your code. In all cases here, an asynchronous operation has some sort of callback associated with it that the interpreter can call when it finds the event in the event queue.
Being single thread it stores the data in channels(if I am not wrong).
node.js doesn't have a "channels" concept so I'm not sure what you meant by that.
Or it executes the queued operation at the end of the program.
When the result comes back from the database, some native code managing that will insert an event into the node.js event queue. The Javascript interpreter will service that event, then next time it gets back to the event loop (other Javascript has finished running and it's time to check for the next event to process).
It's important to understand that initiating an asynchronous operation is non-blocking so you get this:
console.log("1");
callSomeAsyncFunction(someData, (err, data) => {
// this callback gets called later when the async operation finishes
// and node.js gets a chance to process the event that was put
// in the event queue by the code that managed the async operation
console.log("2");
});
// right here there is nothing else to do so the interpreter returns back
// to the system, allowing it to process other events
console.log("3");
Because of the non-blocking nature of things, this will log:
1
3
2
Some other references on the topic:
How does JavaScript handle AJAX responses in the background?
Where is the node.js event queue?
Understanding Call backs
Why does a while loop block the node event loop?
Node internally uses the underlying operating systems non-blocking io API-s. See overlapped io, WSAEventSelect for Windows, select for Linux.
Related
Which process handles async or simultaneous work to happen in node js. Is there any specific api that takes care of all these events to happen in queue?
Is there any specific api that takes care of all these events to happen in queue?
No, not accessible from Javascript. The event queue is completely under the covers. You don't access it directly.
The implementation of asynchronous operations is all handled in native code. When an async operation completes, its native code calls an internal C++ API that inserts the completion event into the node.js event queue. If no Javascript is currently running in node.js at that moment, then inserting the item in the event queue will trigger it to get pulled out of the queue and the callback associated with it will be run. If Javascript is running at the moment, it will stay in the event queue until the current piece of running Javascript finishes at which point the interpreter will check the event queue, see there is an event in there and will pull that event out and run the callback associated with that event.
Which process handles async or simultaneous work to happen in node js.
It is not entirely clear what you mean by this. Each node.js function that is asynchronous has its own implementation. Networking uses OS-level event driven networking (not threads). Async file I/O uses a native thread pool. Timers use OS level timers. Some other asynchronous operation will have its own implementation and do it some other way as it completely depends upon what the async operation is for who it will accomplish its work.
The only three ways (I know of) for you to write your own asynchronous operation are:
Compose your own operation entirely using existing asynchronous operations such as request this data from another server, then write it to this file.
Use native code to write your own node.js add-on that can expose an asynchronous interface and use native code to implement that asynchronous interface in whatever manner is most appropriate for your operation.
Run some other process and communicate back the result from that other process. This can be some other program written in any language or it can be Javascript that you run in another node.js process.
Now, there are a few ways you can influence the event queue timing of some things from Javascript. For example, setTimeout(fn, t), process.nextTick(fn) and setImmediate(fn) all have slightly different ways they insert your callback function into the event queue that determines what (that is already in the event queue) they run before or after. But, these by themselves just schedule a callback sometime in the future - they don't actually implement an asynchronous operation that accomplishes some tasks in a non-blocking way.
You may want to read some of these references:
The Node.js Event Loop, Timers, and process.nextTick()
setImmediate() vs nextTick() vs setTimeout(fn,0) – in depth explanation
Demystifying Asynchronous Programming Part 1: Node.js Event Loop
You might be thinking of child_process.spawn().
From the NodeJS documentation
The child_process.spawn(), child_process.fork(), child_process.exec(),
and child_process.execFile() methods all follow the idiomatic
asynchronous programming pattern typical of other Node.js APIs.
Each of the methods returns a ChildProcess instance. These objects
implement the Node.js EventEmitter API, allowing the parent process to
register listener functions that are called when certain events occur
during the life cycle of the child process.
The child_process.exec() and child_process.execFile() methods
additionally allow for an optional callback function to be specified
that is invoked when the child process terminates.
I want to know that even though the callbacks are done. How will the callbacks and other process on main thread can be executed parallely if the node is single threaded model.
First off, callbacks are not executed in parallel. There is only ever one thread of Javascript execution at a time so there is no actual parallel execution of Javascript code. You can have multiple asynchronous native code operations in-flight at the same time, but when it comes time for them to run some sort of Javascript completion callback, those are run one at a time, not in parallel.
Javascript is an event driven language which means that things like timers, callbacks from asynchronous disk I/O, callbacks from network operations, etc... use an event queue. When the JS engine finishes executing a piece of Javascript and control is returned back to the system, the JS engine pulls the next event off the event queue and executes it. Native code operations can signal that they are complete and want to run a callback by inserting an event into the event queue.
For an async operation like an HTTP request such as http.get(), here's basically what happens:
Your javascript calls http.get()
That call sends the http request and then returns immediately. Whatever callback you passed to http.get() is stored internally by the http module and is associated with that particular network request.
Your javascript code after the http.get() continues to execute until it is done and returns control back to the system.
Then, some time later, the response from the previous HTTP request comes back to the TCP engine. That causes the http module to insert an event in the Javascript event queue to call your completion callback that you previously sent with http.get().
If the Javascript engine is not doing anything else at the moment, then your callback is executed and passed the result response data.
If the Javascript engine is doing something at the moment, then the event sits in the event queue until the current piece of Javascript that is executing finishes and returns control back to the system. At that point, the JS engine checks the event queue and pulls the next event off the queue and executes it. If that is your callback, then you callback is called at that point.
So, various operations such as async disk I/O, network operations, etc... can run in the background because they are being controlled by native code (not by the Javascript engine). That native code has the ability to use threads if required. The fs module uses threads, the net module does not because the native OS already supports asynchronous networking operations.
Assume I have an array of items and each GET call make a change on this array (may be add/remove/shift)
Would that be "thread-safe"? I know that Node.js is a single-threaded, yet is there a possibility that two GET requests would be handled "simultaneously"?
As node is single-threaded only one piece of code is ever being executed at any time. A callback (such as the callback from a remote HTTP GET request) will be added to the end of the event loop's message queue. When there are no more functions on the stack, the program waits for a message to be added to the queue, and runs the message's function (in this case, the request callback function).
If you are making parallel requests to a remote server then you won't get the requests completed in the same order each time unless you run the requests in series. The callback functions will never run at the same time, however - only one function can ever be executed at once.
It would be thread safe because all operation on arrays are blocking. The only operations in node.js that are not blocking are I/Os.
Since you don't have any async operation, there is no problem with your situation. (Except if you need to do something like an access to a database or such ?)
I'm new to nodeJS and was wondering about the single-instance model of Node.
In a simple nodeJs application, when some blocking operation is asynchronously handled with callbacks, does the main thread running the nodeJs handle the callback as well?.
If the request is to get some data off the database, and there are 100s of concurrent users, and each db operation takes couple of seconds, when the callback is finally fired (for each of the connections), is the main thread accepting these requests used for executing the callback as well? If so, how does nodeJs scale and how does it respond so fast?.
Each instance of nodejs runs in a single thread. Period. When you make an async call to, say, a network request, it doesn't wait around for it, not in your code or anywhere else. It has an event loop that runs through. When the response is ready, it invokes your callback.
This can be incredibly performant, because it doesn't need lots of threads and all the memory overhead, but it means you need to be careful not to do synchronous blocking stuff.
There is a pretty decent explanation of the event loop at http://blog.mixu.net/2011/02/01/understanding-the-node-js-event-loop/ and the original jsconf presentation by Ryan Dahl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY is worth watching. Ever seen an engineer get a standing ovation for a technical presentation?
I don't understand several things about nodejs. Every information source says that node.js is more scalable than standard threaded web servers due to the lack of threads locking and context switching, but I wonder, if node.js doesn't use threads how does it handle concurrent requests in parallel? What does event I/O model means?
Your help is much appreciated.
Thanks
Node is completely event-driven. Basically the server consists of one thread processing one event after another.
A new request coming in is one kind of event. The server starts processing it and when there is a blocking IO operation, it does not wait until it completes and instead registers a callback function. The server then immediately starts to process another event (maybe another request). When the IO operation is finished, that is another kind of event, and the server will process it (i.e. continue working on the request) by executing the callback as soon as it has time.
So the server never needs to create additional threads or switch between threads, which means it has very little overhead. If you want to make full use of multiple hardware cores, you just start multiple instances of node.js
Update
At the lowest level (C++ code, not Javascript), there actually are multiple threads in node.js: there is a pool of IO workers whose job it is to receive the IO interrupts and put the corresponding events into the queue to be processed by the main thread. This prevents the main thread from being interrupted.
Although Question is already explained before a long time, I'm putting my thoughts on the same.
Node.js is single threaded JavaScript runtime environment. Basically it's creator Ryan Dahl concern was that parallel processing using multiple threads is not the right way or too complicated.
if Node.js doesn't use threads how does it handle concurrent requests in parallel
Ans: It's completely wrong sentence when you say it doesn't use threads, Node.js use threads but in a smart way. It uses single thread to serve all the HTTP requests & multiple threads in thread pool(in libuv) for handling any blocking operation
Libuv: A library to handle asynchronous I/O.
What does event I/O model means?
Ans: The right term is non-blocking I/O. It almost never blocks as Node.js official site says. When any request goes to node server it never queues the request. It take request and start executing if it's blocking operation then it's been sent to working threads area and registered a callback for the same as soon as code execution get finished, it trigger the same callback and goes to event queue and processed by event loop again after that create response and send to the respective client.
Useful link:
click here
Node JS is a JavaScript runtime environment. Both browser and Node JS run on V8 JavaScript engine. Node JS uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient. Node JS applications uses single threaded event loop architecture to handle concurrent clients. Actually its' main event loop is single threaded but most of the I/O works on separate threads, because the I/O APIs in Node JS are asynchronous/non-blocking by design, in order to accommodate the main event loop. Consider a scenario where we request a backend database for the details of user1 and user2 and then print them on the screen/console. The response to this request takes time, but both of the user data requests can be carried out independently and at the same time. When 100 people connect at once, rather than having different threads, Node will loop over those connections and fire off any events your code should know about. If a connection is new it will tell you .If a connection has sent you data, it will tell you .If the connection isn’t doing anything ,it will skip over it rather than taking up precision CPU time on it. Everything in Node is based on responding to these events. So we can see the result, the CPU stay focused on that one process and doesn’t have a bunch of threads for attention.There is no buffering in Node.JS application it simply output the data in chunks.
Though its been answered , i would like to just share my understandings in simple terms
Nodejs uses a library called Libuv , so this Libuv is written in C
language which uses the concept of threads . These threads are called
as workers and these workers take care of the multiple requests from client.
Parallel processing in nodejs is achieved with the help of 2 concepts
Asynchronous
Non blocking IO