I'd like to create a program that runs a function on an interval. I'm still very new to Elixir and do not know really where to start with this. My idea is that since we can use GenServer to create a program to sit and wait in a loop for messages, I could provide it a message (maybe :kick) and when it receives this message it would run the function.
However, that leaves one problem - how do I kick it without a cron job? Can I fire up a thread and run a timer that kicks it on an interval? If the main thread dies - is there an easy way to be notified and restart it?
Thank you!
You can use timer:send_interval/2 with a GenServer. You'll need to call the function from the init/1 callback and then handle the tick messages from the handle_info callback. Here's an example that prints 0, 1, 2, ... every second:
defmodule A do
use GenServer
def init(_) do
:timer.send_interval(1000, :tick)
{:ok, 0}
end
def handle_info(:tick, state) do
IO.inspect state
{:noreply, state + 1}
end
end
iex(1)> GenServer.start_link(A, [])
{:ok, #PID<0.94.0>}
0
1
2
3
4
...
If the main thread dies - is there an easy way to be notified and restart it?
You should look into Supervisors. The GenServer above can be added as a "worker" to a Supervisor. The Supervisor can handle restarting the GenServer if it exits for any reason.
#Dogbert mentionned using using the send_interval function from Erlang, which would be used like so : :timer.send_interval(milliseconds, process, message).
A quick Google search however, netted me the quantum-elixir library which appears to be capable of cron like scheduling, as well as scheduling tasks at runtime.
Related
I have the same situation like this: stop thread started by qtconcurrent::run
I need to close child thread (started with QtConcurrent::run) on closeEvent in QMainWindow.
But my function in child thread use code from *.dll: I can`t use loop because all that I do - is calling the external dll like
QFuture<void> = QtConcurrent::run(obj->useDllfunc_with_longTermJob());
And when I close the app with x-button my gui is closed, but second thread with_longTermJob() still worked and when is finished I have an error.
I know some decisions for this:
using other functions like map() or something else with
QFuture.cancel/stop functionality, not QtConcurrent::run().But I need only one function call. run() is what I need.
or use QThread instead Concurrent.But it`s not good for me.
What method more simple and better and how can I implement this? Is there a method that I don`t listed?
Could you provide small code sample for decision. Thx!
QtConcurrent::run isn't a problem here. You must have means of stopping the dllFuncWithLongTermJob. If you don't have such means, then the API you're using is broken, and you're out of luck. There's nothing you can do that'd be generally safe. Forcibly terminating a thread can leave the heap in an inconsistent state, etc. - if you need to terminate a thread, you need to immediately abort the application.
Hopefully, you can call something like stopLongTermJob that sets some flag that interrupts the dllFuncWithLongTermJob.
Then:
auto obj = new Worker;
auto objFuture = QtConcurrent::run([=]{obj->dllFuncWithLongTermJob();});
To interrupt:
obj->stopLongTermJob(); // must be thread-safe, sets a flag
objFuture.waitForFinished();
So I have been working with coroutines for a little while and I'm sort of having trouble trying to make what I want. I want a class that I can access objectivley creating objects as tasks or processes. I think showing you code would be irrelevant and its not what I want either. So I'm just going to show you how i want the functionality
local task1 = Tasker.newTask(function()
while true do
print("task 1")
end
end)
local task2 = Tasker.newTask(function()
while true do
print("task 2")
end
end)
task1:start()
task2:start()
This way I can run multiple tasks at once, I want to be able to add new tasks when ever during runtime. Also I would like a way to stop the tasks also for example:
task2:stop()
But I don't want the stop command to entirely delete the task instance, only stop the task itself so I can invoke
task2:start()
Then maybe I could use a command to delete it.
task2:delete()
This would be very helpful and thank you for help if you need more info please ask. Also i posted this on my phone so there may be typos and formatting issues
Lua doesn't natively support operating system threads, i.e. preemptive multitasking.
You can use coroutines to implement your own cooperative "threads", but each thread must relinquish control before another can do anything.
local task1 = Tasker.newTask(function()
while true do
print("task 1")
coroutine.yield()
end
end)
local task2 = Tasker.newTask(function()
while true do
print("task 2")
coroutine.yield()
end
end)
Your Tasker class must take the task function and wrap it in a coroutine, then take care of calling coroutine.resume on them. Operations like stop and start would set flags on the task that tell Tasker whether or not to resume that particular coroutine in the main loop.
You can do this via C. You might be able to use LuaLanes and Linda objects.
I have read that a forever process like daemon should run with a sleep() in their while(1) or for(;;) loop. They say, it is required because otherwise this process will always be in a run queue and the kernel will always run it. This will block the other process. I don't agree that it will block the other process completely. If there is a time slicing, then it will execute other process. But, certainly it will steal a time from others. Making a delay for other process since this process is always in the run state. By default, the Linux runs as a round-robin. The first task is swapd, then other tasks . This is a circular link list with first task as swapd(process-id is 0) and then other tasks. I believe this is still based as time sliced. A particular time for each process. These tasks are nothing but the process-descriptor. I believe this link list is maintained by the init process. Please do correct me here If I am wrong. Other question is if we need to give a sleep() then what should be its value? How can we determine the sleep value to get the best results?
If your program has useful things to do, don't throttle it. A program can move out of the run queue by doing blocking stuff like IO and waiting.
If you are writing a polling loop that can spin an arbitrary number of times you probably want to throttle it a bit with sleep because spinning too often has little value.
That said, polling loops are a means of last resort. Normally, programs perform useful work with every instruction, so they don't sleep at all.
Sleep is almost certainly the wrong solution.
Usually what you do it call a blocking function which wakes you up when there's something for you to do.
For example, if you're a network service you'd want to remain inactive until a request arrives.
In other words, the core of your daemon should not look like this:
while(1)
{
if (checkIfSomethingToDo())
doSomething();
else
sleep(1);
}
but rather a little like this:
while(1)
{
int ret = poll(fds, nfds, -1);
if (ret > 0)
doSomething();
}
Have the kernel put you to sleep until there's actual work to do. It's not hard to implement, you'd be a lot more efficient (not stealing CPU time from others, only to waste it doing no actual work) and your response latency will go down too.
A sleep forces the os to pass execution to another thread and therefore is helpfull, or at least fair. Start with sleep one. Should be ok.
Hi need some help on my lua script. I have a script here that will run a server like application (infinite loop). Problem here is it doesn't execute the second coroutine.
Could you tell me whats wrong Thank you.
function startServer()
print( "...Running server" )
--run a server like application infinite loop
os.execute( "server.exe" )
end
function continue()
print("continue")
end
co = coroutine.create( startServer() )
co1 = coroutine.create( continue() )
Lua have cooperative multithreading. Threads are not swtiched automatically, but must yield to others. When one thread is running, every other thread is waiting for it to finish or yield. Your first thread in this example seems to run server.exe, which, I assume, never finishes until interrupted. Thus second thread never gets its turn to run.
You also run threads wrong. In your example you're not running any threads at all. You execute function and then would try to create coroutine with its output, which naturally would fail. But since you never get back from server.exe you didn't notice this problem yet. Remove those brackets after startServer and continue to fix it.
As already noted, there are several issues with the script that prevent you from getting what you want:
os.execute("...") is blocked until the command is completed and in your case it doesn't complete (as it runs an infinite loop). Solution: you need to detach that process from yours by using something like io.popen() instead of os.execute()
co = coroutine.create( startServer() ) doesn't create a coroutine in your case. coroutine.create call accepts a function reference and you pass it the result of startServer call, which is nil. Solution: use co = coroutine.create( startServer ) (note that parenthesis are dropped, so it's not a function call anymore).
You are not yielding from your coroutines; if you want several coroutines to work together, they need to be cooperating by giving control to each other when appropriate. That's what yield command is for and that's why it's called non-preemptive multithreading. Solution: you need to use a combination of resume and yield calls after you create your coroutine.
startServer doesn't need to be a coroutine as you are not giving control back to it; its only purpose is to start the server.
In your case, the solution may not even need coroutines as all you need to do is: (1) start the server and let it detach from your process (for example, using popen) and (2) work with your process using whatever communication protocol it requires (pipes, sockets, etc.).
There are more complex and complete solutions (like LuaLanes) and also several good descriptions on creating simple coroutine dispatchers.
Your coroutine is not yielding
I'm looking for some exit code that will be run from a thread but will be able to kill the main script. It's in Jython but I can't use java.lang.System.exit() because I still want the Java app I'm in to run, and sys.exit() isn't working. Ideally I would like to output a message then exit.
My code uses the threading.Timer function to run a function after a certain period of time. Here I'm using it to end a for loop that is executing for longer than 1 sec. Here is my code:
import threading
def exitFunct():
#exit code here
t = threading.Timer(1.0, exitFunct)
t.start()
for i in range(1, 2000):
print i
Well, if you had to, you could call mainThread.stop(). But you shouldn't.
This article explains why what you're trying to do is considered a bad idea.
If you want to kill the current process and you don't care about flushing IO buffers or reseting the terminal, you can use os._exit().
I don't know why they made this so hard.