basichttpclient execute throws "SingleClientConnManager: connection still allocated" why? - multithreading

I know related questions are asked in other places but mine is different :)
I'm using BasicHttpClient and a HttpPoster to send stuff to a thirdparty service. I'm using this in a scenario where i have JMS listeners using a single bean to post stuff. I didn't think this was a problem since the BasicHttpclient uses SingleClientConnectionManager and the javadoc says
This connection manager maintains only one active connection at a time. Even though this class is thread-safe it ought to be used by one execution thread only.
(thread-safe is key here) But, when i have two simultaneous requests i get the classic
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Invalid use of SingleClientConnManager: connection still allocated.
Why do i get that? I don't clean up anything since the basicclient does that according to the docs.
my bean constructor:
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
params.setParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.CONNECTION_TIMEOUT, SMS_SOCKET_TIMEOUT);
params.setParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.SO_TIMEOUT, SMS_SOCKET_TIMEOUT);
params.setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.HTTP_CONTENT_CHARSET,
encoding);
params.setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.HTTP_ELEMENT_CHARSET,
encoding);
httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(params);
poster = new HttpPost(mtUrl);
poster.setHeader("Content-type", contentType);
responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();
my code to run a post call:
public String[] sendMessage(MtMessage mess) throws MtSendException, MtHandlingException {
StringEntity input;
try {
String postBody = assembleMessagePostBody(mess);
input = new StringEntity(postBody);
poster.setEntity(input);
ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();
String response = httpclient.execute(poster, responseHandler);
return new String[]{extractResponseMessageId(response)};
} catch(HttpResponseException ee){
throw new MtSendException(ee.getStatusCode(), ee.getMessage(), false);
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new MtSendException(0, e.getMessage(), false);
} finally{
}
}
I thought that although the "sendMessage" could be called from multiple JMS listener threads at once, it would be thread safe, since the connectionhandler is thread safe. I guess i could just make the sendMessage() method synchronized perhaps.
If anyone has any input, i'd be most thankful.

SingleClientConnectionManager is fully thread safe in the sense that when used by multiple execution threads its internal state is synchronized and is always consistent. This does not change the fact that it can dispense a single connection only. So, if two threads attempt to lease a connection, only one can succeed, while the other is likely to get 'java.lang.IllegalStateException: Invalid use of SingleClientConnManager'
You should be using a pooling connection manager if your application needs to execute requests concurrently.

Related

Redis Connections May Not be Closing with c#

I'm connecting to Azure Redis and they show me the number of open connections to my redis server. I've got the following c# code that encloses all my Redis sets and gets. Should this be leaking connections?
using (var connectionMultiplexer = ConnectionMultiplexer.Connect(connectionString))
{
lock (Locker)
{
redis = connectionMultiplexer.GetDatabase();
}
var o = CacheSerializer.Deserialize<T>(redis.StringGet(cacheKeyName));
if (o != null)
{
return o;
}
lock (Locker)
{
// get lock but release if it takes more than 60 seconds to complete to avoid deadlock if this app crashes before release
//using (redis.AcquireLock(cacheKeyName + "-lock", TimeSpan.FromSeconds(60)))
var lockKey = cacheKeyName + "-lock";
if (redis.LockTake(lockKey, Environment.MachineName, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10)))
{
try
{
o = CacheSerializer.Deserialize<T>(redis.StringGet(cacheKeyName));
if (o == null)
{
o = func();
redis.StringSet(cacheKeyName, CacheSerializer.Serialize(o),
TimeSpan.FromSeconds(cacheTimeOutSeconds));
}
redis.LockRelease(lockKey, Environment.MachineName);
return o;
}
finally
{
redis.LockRelease(lockKey, Environment.MachineName);
}
}
return o;
}
}
}
You can keep connectionMultiplexer in a static variable and not create it for every get/set. That will keep one connection to Redis always opening and proceed your operations faster.
Update:
Please, have a look at StackExchange.Redis basic usage:
https://github.com/StackExchange/StackExchange.Redis/blob/master/Docs/Basics.md
"Note that ConnectionMultiplexer implements IDisposable and can be disposed when no longer required, but I am deliberately not showing using statement usage, because it is exceptionally rare that you would want to use a ConnectionMultiplexer briefly, as the idea is to re-use this object."
It works nice for me, keeping single connection to Azure Redis (sometimes, create 2 connections, but this by design). Hope it will help you.
I was suggesting try using Close (or CloseAsync) method explicitly. In a test setting you may be using different connections for different test cases and not want to share a single multiplexer. A search for public code using Redis client shows a pattern of Close followed by Dispose calls.
Noting in the XML method documentation of Redis client that close method is described as doing more:
//
// Summary:
// Close all connections and release all resources associated with this object
//
// Parameters:
// allowCommandsToComplete:
// Whether to allow all in-queue commands to complete first.
public void Close(bool allowCommandsToComplete = true);
//
// Summary:
// Close all connections and release all resources associated with this object
//
// Parameters:
// allowCommandsToComplete:
// Whether to allow all in-queue commands to complete first.
[AsyncStateMachine(typeof(<CloseAsync>d__183))]
public Task CloseAsync(bool allowCommandsToComplete = true);
...
//
// Summary:
// Release all resources associated with this object
public void Dispose();
And then I looked up the code for the client, found it here:
https://github.com/StackExchange/StackExchange.Redis/blob/master/src/StackExchange.Redis/ConnectionMultiplexer.cs
And we can see Dispose method calling Close (not the usual override-able protected Dispose(bool)), further more with the wait for connections to close set to true. It appears to be an atypical dispose pattern implementation in that by trying all the closure and waiting on them it is chancing to run into exception while Dispose method contract is supposed to never throw one.

When calling a WCF channel from multiple threads some threads might get stuck for a long time

I have encountered a weird problem in one of my projects. I am creating one WCF channel and trying to consume it from multiple threads. The service I am targeting is shut down so I except to get an exception after the "Open timeout" (30 seconds in my case) at most. But what I have seen is that the first two calls to the channel are finished (with exception) really quickly. all the other calls are finished after 20 minutes (My receive timeout).
I am using the same channel because I don't want to wait for the channel to open for each request (Can take a few seconds in case of security and high latency). I have read that a channel is thread safe so I didn't think it should be a problem.
I am using dot net 4
Code sample:
EndpointAddress address = new EndpointAddress("net.tcp://localhost:9000/SomeService");
var netTcpBinding = new NetTcpBinding();
var channelFactory = new ChannelFactory<IService>(netTcpBinding, address);
IService channel = channelFactory.CreateChannel();
Parallel.For(0, 10, new ParallelOptions{MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 10}, i =>
{
try
{
channel.SomeOperation();
}
catch
{
}
});
I have tried to Close/Abort/Dispose the channel in the catch block but it didn't help.
Does anyone have any idea why this happens and how to fix it?
A Channel only has one connection, so even if it is thread-safe, you won't get the asynchronous benefits of using Parallel. Create a channel per loop and ensure that you close the channel after each request or you'll exhaust the connection pool on your machine from undisposed connections retained by the Channel.
Didn't find a standard solution but what I did find is that when I use async calls the problem doesn't happen (tested it several time with a 100 iterations loop.
Parallel.For(0, 10, new ParallelOptions{MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 10}, i =>
{
try
{
var result = channel.BeginSomeOperation();
channel.EndSomeOperation(result);
}
catch
{
}
});
Try this instead.
var tasks = from i in Enumerable.Range(0, 10)
select TaskEx.FromAsync(channel.BeginSomeOperation, channel.EndSomeOperation, null);
var results = from t in TaskEx.WhenAll(tasks)
select t.Result;
PS TaskEx is in the Async targeting pack.

Async Logger. Can I lose/delay log entries?

I'm implementing my own logging framework. Following is my BaseLogger which receives the log entries and push it to the actual Logger which implements the abstract Log method.
I use the C# TPL for logging in an Async manner. I use Threads instead of TPL. (TPL task doesn't hold a real thread. So if all threads of the application end, tasks will stop as well, which will cause all 'waiting' log entries to be lost.)
public abstract class BaseLogger
{
// ... Omitted properties constructor .etc. ... //
public virtual void AddLogEntry(LogEntry entry)
{
if (!AsyncSupported)
{
// the underlying logger doesn't support Async.
// Simply call the log method and return.
Log(entry);
return;
}
// Logger supports Async.
LogAsync(entry);
}
private void LogAsync(LogEntry entry)
{
lock (LogQueueSyncRoot) // Make sure we ave a lock before accessing the queue.
{
LogQueue.Enqueue(entry);
}
if (LogThread == null || LogThread.ThreadState == ThreadState.Stopped)
{ // either the thread is completed, or this is the first time we're logging to this logger.
LogTask = new new Thread(new ThreadStart(() =>
{
while (true)
{
LogEntry logEntry;
lock (LogQueueSyncRoot)
{
if (LogQueue.Count > 0)
{
logEntry = LogQueue.Dequeue();
}
else
{
break;
// is it possible for a message to be added,
// right after the break and I leanve the lock {} but
// before I exit the loop and task gets 'completed' ??
}
}
Log(logEntry);
}
}));
LogThread.Start();
}
}
// Actual logger implimentations will impliment this method.
protected abstract void Log(LogEntry entry);
}
Note that AddLogEntry can be called from multiple threads at the same time.
My question is, is it possible for this implementation to lose log entries ?
I'm worried that, is it possible to add a log entry to the queue, right after my thread exists the loop with the break statement and exits the lock block, and which is in the else clause, and the thread is still in the 'Running' state.
I do realize that, because I'm using a queue, even if I miss an entry, the next request to log, will push the missed entry as well. But this is not acceptable, specially if this happens for the last log entry of the application.
Also, please let me know whether and how I can implement the same, but using the new C# 5.0 async and await keywords with a cleaner code. I don't mind requiring .NET 4.5.
Thanks in Advance.
While you could likely get this to work, in my experience, I'd recommend, if possible, use an existing logging framework :) For instance, there are various options for async logging/appenders with log4net, such as this async appender wrapper thingy.
Otherwise, IMHO since you're going to be blocking a threadpool thread during your logging operation anyway, I would instead just start a dedicated thread for your logging. You seem to be kind-of going for that approach already, just via Task so that you'd not hold a threadpool thread when nothing is logging. However, the simplification in implementation I think benefits just having the dedicated thread.
Once you have a dedicated logging thread, you then only need have an intermediate ConcurrentQueue. At that point, your log method just adds to the queue and your dedicated logging thread just does that while loop you already have. You can wrap with BlockingCollection if you need blocking/bounded behavior.
By having the dedicated thread as the only thing that writes, it eliminates any possibility of having multiple threads/tasks pulling off queue entries and trying to write log entries at the same time (painful race condition). Since the log method is now just adding to a collection, it doesn't need to be async and you don't need to deal with the TPL at all, making it simpler and easier to reason about (and hopefully in the category of 'obviously correct' or thereabouts :)
This 'dedicated logging thread' approach is what I believe the log4net appender I linked to does as well, FWIW, in case that helps serve as an example.
I see two race conditions off the top of my head:
You can spin up more than one Thread if multiple threads call AddLogEntry. This won't cause lost events but is inefficient.
Yes, an event can be queued while the Thread is exiting, and in that case it would be "lost".
Also, there's a serious performance issue here: unless you're logging constantly (thousands of times a second), you're going to be spinning up a new Thread for each log entry. That will get expensive quickly.
Like James, I agree that you should use an established logging library. Logging is not as trivial as it seems, and there are already many solutions.
That said, if you want a nice .NET 4.5-based approach, it's pretty easy:
public abstract class BaseLogger
{
private readonly ActionBlock<LogEntry> block;
protected BaseLogger(int maxDegreeOfParallelism = 1)
{
block = new ActionBlock<LogEntry>(
entry =>
{
Log(entry);
},
new ExecutionDataflowBlockOptions
{
MaxDegreeOfParallelism = maxDegreeOfParallelism,
});
}
public virtual void AddLogEntry(LogEntry entry)
{
block.Post(entry);
}
protected abstract void Log(LogEntry entry);
}
Regarding the loosing waiting messages on app crush because of unhandled exception, I've bound a handler to the event AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DomainUnload. Goes like this:
protected ManualResetEvent flushing = new ManualResetEvent(true);
protected AsyncLogger() // ctor of logger
{
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DomainUnload += CurrentDomain_DomainUnload;
}
protected void CurrentDomain_DomainUnload(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!IsEmpty)
{
flushing.WaitOne();
}
}
Maybe not too clean, but works.

How to ensure unique local state among threads for email queue processing

THE SCENARIO:
I want to ask this question regarding Parallel.For(or any other multithreading approach in C#.Net). I have to build a MultiThreaded Mailer Windows service that will send mails to all the recipients as fast as it can. I get the serialized rows from the database that contains the email message and SmtpDetails and then deSerialize them in code.
An emails may have 1000 reciepients and so on a Dual Core machine ( development machine) at least 2 threads can run simultaneously. So i use parallel.For in order ro do this. I have read about the LocalInit delegate that runs once for every thread.
THE CODE:
int itemCount = serMailObj.ReceipientList.Count;
Parallel.For(0, itemCount, () =>
{
return new ThreadLocalStateCache()
{
Receipient = serMailObj.ReceipientList.Dequeue(),
mail = serMailObj.Email,
SerializableSmtpDetails = serSmtpObj
};
}
, doWork, (x) => { });
private static ThreadLocalStateCache doWork(int instance, ParallelLoopState state, ThreadLocalStateCache threadInstance)
{
KeyValuePair<string, string> kvp = threadInstance.Receipient;
SerializableSmtpDetails serSmtpObj = threadInstance.SerializableSmtpDetails;
MailMessage email = threadInstance.mail;
email.To.Add(new MailAddress(kvp.Key, kvp.Value));
SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient();
client.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential(serSmtpObj.UserName, serSmtpObj.Password);
client.Host = serSmtpObj.Host;
client.Port = serSmtpObj.Port;
client.EnableSsl = serSmtpObj.EnableSSL;
try
{
client.Send(email);
Console.WriteLine("sending mail....");
}
catch (Exception)
{
throw;
}
return null;
}
public class ThreadLocalStateCache
{
public KeyValuePair<string, string> Receipient { get; set; }
public MailMessage mail { get; set; }
public SerializableSmtpDetails SerializableSmtpDetails { get; set; }
}
The above code is pretty straight forward. The localInit delegate constructs a local object foreach thread. and then the doWork tries to process the queue.
THE PROBLEMS:
I am getting multiple mails for each recipient. seems as if the email object is being shared among threads.
getting failure sending mail sometimes.
Kindly explain as to how i can isolate the mail and smtpclient objects in each thread. and process the queue.
EDIT 1: If the multithreading gurus would help me please tell that is there any way for every thread to have a unique copy of its local variables and not shared ones. Since the MailMessage object is not immutable i cannot create a clone of it also. apart from deseralizing it in each thread(which would ensure a new object is created) is there any magic way to achieve this?
There might be problems due to doWork() returning null. As I learned when answering your recent comment here, the thread local object should be passed between subsequent invocations of the Parallel.For body at the same thread, because it is supposed to work as an accumulator; see the usage example at MSDN. It's unclear what happens when you return null, but I would fix that and see whether it makes difference.
below might be the issue:
serMailObj.ReceipientList.Dequeue()
Try using ConcurrentQueue (.NET 4) or put locks around so that one thread at a time can Dequeue it.
also make to sure Concurrent classes or locks anywhere yo uhave access to shared resource from threads.
A Queue <(Of <(T >)>) can support
multiple readers concurrently, as long
as the collection is not modified.
Even so, enumerating through a
collection is intrinsically not a
thread-safe procedure. To guarantee
thread safety during enumeration, you
can lock the collection during the
entire enumeration. To allow the
collection to be accessed by multiple
threads for reading and writing, you
must implement your own
synchronization.

TcpClient and StreamReader blocks on Read

Here's my situation:
I'm writing a chat client to connect to a chat server. I create the connection using a TcpClient and get a NetworkStream object from it. I use a StreamReader and StreamWriter to read and write data back and forth.
Here's what my read looks like:
public string Read()
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
try
{
int tmp;
while (true)
{
tmp = StreamReader.Read();
if (tmp == 0)
break;
else
sb.Append((char)tmp);
Thread.Sleep(1);
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// log exception
}
return sb.ToString();
}
That works fine and dandy. In my main program I create a thread that continually calls this Read method to see if there is data. An example is below.
private void Listen()
{
try
{
while (IsShuttingDown == false)
{
string data = Read();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(data))
{
// do stuff
}
}
}
catch (ThreadInterruptedException ex)
{
// log it
}
}
...
Thread listenThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(Listen));
listenThread.Start();
This works just fine. The problem comes when I want to shut down the application. I receive a shut down command from the UI, and tell the listening thread to stop listening (that is, stop calling this read function). I call Join and wait for this child thread to stop running. Like so:
// tell the thread to stop listening and wait for a sec
IsShuttingDown = true;
Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.00));
// if we've reach here and the thread is still alive
// interrupt it and tell it to quit
if (listenThread.IsAlive)
listenThread.Interrupt();
// wait until thread is done
listenThread.Join();
The problem is it never stops running! I stepped into the code and the listening thread is blocking because the Read() method is blocking. Read() just sits there and doesn't return. Hence, the thread never gets a chance to sleep that 1 millisecond and then get interrupted.
I'm sure if I let it sit long enough I'd get another packet and get a chance for the thread to sleep (if it's an active chatroom or a get a ping from the server). But I don't want to depend on that. If the user says shut down I want to shut it down!!
One alternative I found is to use the DataAvailable method of NetworkStream so that I could check it before I called StreamReader.Read(). This didn't work because it was undependable and I lost data when reading from packets from the server. (Because of that I wasn't able to login correctly, etc, etc)
Any ideas on how to shutdown this thread gracefully? I'd hate to call Abort() on the listening thread...
Really the only answer is to stop using Read and switch to using asynchronous operations (i.e. BeginRead). This is a harder model to work with, but means no thread is blocked (and you don't need to dedicate a thread—a very expensive resource—to each client even if the client is not sending any data).
By the way, using Thread.Sleep in concurrent code is a bad smell (in the Refactoring sense), it usually indicates deeper problems (in this case, should be doing asynchronous, non-blocking, operations).
Are you actually using System.IO.StreamReader and System.IO.StreamWriter to send and receive data from the socket? I wasn't aware this was possible. I've only ever used the Read() and Write() methods on the NetworkStream object returned by the TcpClient's GetStream() method.
Assuming this is possible, StreamReader returns -1 when the end of the stream is reached, not 0. So it looks to me like your Read() method is in an infinite loop.

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