1AnyEvent::Intro(3)    User Contributed Perl Documentation   AnyEvent::Intro(3)
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4

NAME

6       AnyEvent::Intro - an introductory tutorial to AnyEvent
7

Introduction to AnyEvent

9       This is a tutorial that will introduce you to the features of AnyEvent.
10
11       The first part introduces the core AnyEvent module (after swamping you
12       a bit in evangelism), which might already provide all you ever need: If
13       you are only interested in AnyEvent's event handling capabilities, read
14       no further.
15
16       The second part focuses on network programming using sockets, for which
17       AnyEvent offers a lot of support you can use, and a lot of workarounds
18       around portability quirks.
19

What is AnyEvent?

21       If you don't care for the whys and want to see code, skip this section!
22
23       AnyEvent is first of all just a framework to do event-based
24       programming. Typically such frameworks are an all-or-nothing thing: If
25       you use one such framework, you can't (easily, or even at all) use
26       another in the same program.
27
28       AnyEvent is different - it is a thin abstraction layer on top of other
29       event loops, just like DBI is an abstraction of many different database
30       APIs. Its main purpose is to move the choice of the underlying
31       framework (the event loop) from the module author to the program author
32       using the module.
33
34       That means you can write code that uses events to control what it does,
35       without forcing other code in the same program to use the same
36       underlying framework as you do - i.e. you can create a Perl module that
37       is event-based using AnyEvent, and users of that module can still
38       choose between using Gtk2, Tk, Event (or run inside Irssi or rxvt-
39       unicode) or any other supported event loop. AnyEvent even comes with
40       its own pure-perl event loop implementation, so your code works
41       regardless of other modules that might or might not be installed. The
42       latter is important, as AnyEvent does not have any hard dependencies to
43       other modules, which makes it easy to install, for example, when you
44       lack a C compiler. No matter what environment, AnyEvent will just cope
45       with it.
46
47       A typical limitation of existing Perl modules such as Net::IRC is that
48       they come with their own event loop: In Net::IRC, a program which uses
49       it needs to start the event loop of Net::IRC. That means that one
50       cannot integrate this module into a Gtk2 GUI for instance, as that
51       module, too, enforces the use of its own event loop (namely Glib).
52
53       Another example is LWP: it provides no event interface at all. It's a
54       pure blocking HTTP (and FTP etc.) client library, which usually means
55       that you either have to start another process or have to fork for a
56       HTTP request, or use threads (e.g. Coro::LWP), if you want to do
57       something else while waiting for the request to finish.
58
59       The motivation behind these designs is often that a module doesn't want
60       to depend on some complicated XS-module (Net::IRC), or that it doesn't
61       want to force the user to use some specific event loop at all (LWP),
62       out of fear of severly limiting the usefulness of the module: If your
63       module requires Glib, it will not run in a Tk program.
64
65       AnyEvent solves this dilemma, by not forcing module authors to either:
66
67       - write their own event loop (because it guarantees the availability of
68       an event loop everywhere - even on windows with no extra modules
69       installed).
70       - choose one specific event loop (because AnyEvent works with most
71       event loops available for Perl).
72
73       If the module author uses AnyEvent for all his (or her) event needs (IO
74       events, timers, signals, ...) then all other modules can just use his
75       module and don't have to choose an event loop or adapt to his event
76       loop. The choice of the event loop is ultimately made by the program
77       author who uses all the modules and writes the main program. And even
78       there he doesn't have to choose, he can just let AnyEvent choose the
79       most efficient event loop available on the system.
80
81       Read more about this in the main documentation of the AnyEvent module.
82

Introduction to Event-Based Programming

84       So what exactly is programming using events? It quite simply means that
85       instead of your code actively waiting for something, such as the user
86       entering something on STDIN:
87
88          $| = 1; print "enter your name> ";
89
90          my $name = <STDIN>;
91
92       You instead tell your event framework to notify you in the event of
93       some data being available on STDIN, by using a callback mechanism:
94
95          use AnyEvent;
96
97          $| = 1; print "enter your name> ";
98
99          my $name;
100
101          my $wait_for_input = AnyEvent->io (
102             fh   => \*STDIN, # which file handle to check
103             poll => "r",     # which event to wait for ("r"ead data)
104             cb   => sub {    # what callback to execute
105                $name = <STDIN>; # read it
106             }
107          );
108
109          # do something else here
110
111       Looks more complicated, and surely is, but the advantage of using
112       events is that your program can do something else instead of waiting
113       for input (side note: combining AnyEvent with a thread package such as
114       Coro can recoup much of the simplicity, effectively getting the best of
115       two worlds).
116
117       Waiting as done in the first example is also called "blocking" the
118       process because you "block"/keep your process from executing anything
119       else while you do so.
120
121       The second example avoids blocking by only registering interest in a
122       read event, which is fast and doesn't block your process. The callback
123       will be called only when data is available and can be read without
124       blocking.
125
126       The "interest" is represented by an object returned by "AnyEvent->io"
127       called a "watcher" object - thus named because it "watches" your file
128       handle (or other event sources) for the event you are interested in.
129
130       In the example above, we create an I/O watcher by calling the
131       "AnyEvent->io" method. A lack of further interest in some event is
132       expressed by simply forgetting about its watcher, for example by
133       "undef"-ing the only variable it is stored in. AnyEvent will
134       automatically clean up the watcher if it is no longer used, much like
135       Perl closes your file handles if you no longer use them anywhere.
136
137       A short note on callbacks
138
139       A common issue that hits people is the problem of passing parameters to
140       callbacks. Programmers used to languages such as C or C++ are often
141       used to a style where one passes the address of a function (a function
142       reference) and some data value, e.g.:
143
144          sub callback {
145             my ($arg) = @_;
146
147             $arg->method;
148          }
149
150          my $arg = ...;
151
152          call_me_back_later \&callback, $arg;
153
154       This is clumsy, as the place where behaviour is specified (when the
155       callback is registered) is often far away from the place where
156       behaviour is implemented. It also doesn't use Perl syntax to invoke the
157       code. There is also an abstraction penalty to pay as one has to name
158       the callback, which often is unnecessary and leads to nonsensical or
159       duplicated names.
160
161       In Perl, one can specify behaviour much more directly by using
162       closures. Closures are code blocks that take a reference to the
163       enclosing scope(s) when they are created. This means lexical variables
164       in scope when a closure is created can be used inside the closure:
165
166          my $arg = ...;
167
168          call_me_back_later sub { $arg->method };
169
170       Under most circumstances, closures are faster, use fewer resources and
171       result in much clearer code than the traditional approach. Faster,
172       because parameter passing and storing them in local variables in Perl
173       is relatively slow. Fewer resources, because closures take references
174       to existing variables without having to create new ones, and clearer
175       code because it is immediately obvious that the second example calls
176       the "method" method when the callback is invoked.
177
178       Apart from these, the strongest argument for using closures with
179       AnyEvent is that AnyEvent does not allow passing parameters to the
180       callback, so closures are the only way to achieve that in most cases
181       :->
182
183       A little hint to catch mistakes
184
185       AnyEvent does not check the parameters you pass in, at least not by
186       default. to enable checking, simply start your program with
187       "AE_STRICT=1" in the environment, or put "use AnyEvent::Strict" near
188       the top of your program:
189
190          AE_STRICT=1 perl myprogram
191
192       You can find more info on this and additional debugging aids later in
193       this introduction.
194
195   Condition Variables
196       Back to the I/O watcher example: The code is not yet a fully working
197       program, and will not work as-is. The reason is that your callback will
198       not be invoked out of the blue; you have to run the event loop first.
199       Also, event-based programs need to block sometimes too, such as when
200       there is nothing to do, and everything is waiting for new events to
201       arrive.
202
203       In AnyEvent, this is done using condition variables. Condition
204       variables are named "condition variables" because they represent a
205       condition that is initially false and needs to be fulfilled.
206
207       You can also call them "merge points", "sync points", "rendezvous
208       ports" or even callbacks and many other things (and they are often
209       called these names in other frameworks). The important point is that
210       you can create them freely and later wait for them to become true.
211
212       Condition variables have two sides - one side is the "producer" of the
213       condition (whatever code detects and flags the condition), the other
214       side is the "consumer" (the code that waits for that condition).
215
216       In our example in the previous section, the producer is the event
217       callback and there is no consumer yet - let's change that right now:
218
219          use AnyEvent;
220
221          $| = 1; print "enter your name> ";
222
223          my $name;
224
225          my $name_ready = AnyEvent->condvar;
226
227          my $wait_for_input = AnyEvent->io (
228             fh   => \*STDIN,
229             poll => "r",
230             cb   => sub {
231                $name = <STDIN>;
232                $name_ready->send;
233             }
234          );
235
236          # do something else here
237
238          # now wait until the name is available:
239          $name_ready->recv;
240
241          undef $wait_for_input; # watcher no longer needed
242
243          print "your name is $name\n";
244
245       This program creates an AnyEvent condvar by calling the
246       "AnyEvent->condvar" method. It then creates a watcher as usual, but
247       inside the callback it "send"s the $name_ready condition variable,
248       which causes whoever is waiting on it to continue.
249
250       The "whoever" in this case is the code that follows, which calls
251       "$name_ready->recv": The producer calls "send", the consumer calls
252       "recv".
253
254       If there is no $name available yet, then the call to
255       "$name_ready->recv" will halt your program until the condition becomes
256       true.
257
258       As the names "send" and "recv" imply, you can actually send and receive
259       data using this, for example, the above code could also be written like
260       this, without an extra variable to store the name in:
261
262          use AnyEvent;
263
264          $| = 1; print "enter your name> ";
265
266          my $name_ready = AnyEvent->condvar;
267
268          my $wait_for_input = AnyEvent->io (
269             fh => \*STDIN, poll => "r",
270             cb => sub { $name_ready->send (scalar <STDIN>) }
271          );
272
273          # do something else here
274
275          # now wait and fetch the name
276          my $name = $name_ready->recv;
277
278          undef $wait_for_input; # watcher no longer needed
279
280          print "your name is $name\n";
281
282       You can pass any number of arguments to "send", and every subsequent
283       call to "recv" will return them.
284
285   The "main loop"
286       Most event-based frameworks have something called a "main loop" or
287       "event loop run function" or something similar.
288
289       Just like in "recv" AnyEvent, these functions need to be called
290       eventually so that your event loop has a chance of actually looking for
291       the events you are interested in.
292
293       For example, in a Gtk2 program, the above example could also be written
294       like this:
295
296          use Gtk2 -init;
297          use AnyEvent;
298
299          ############################################
300          # create a window and some label
301
302          my $window = new Gtk2::Window "toplevel";
303          $window->add (my $label = new Gtk2::Label "soon replaced by name");
304
305          $window->show_all;
306
307          ############################################
308          # do our AnyEvent stuff
309
310          $| = 1; print "enter your name> ";
311
312          my $wait_for_input = AnyEvent->io (
313             fh => \*STDIN, poll => "r",
314             cb => sub {
315                # set the label
316                $label->set_text (scalar <STDIN>);
317                print "enter another name> ";
318             }
319          );
320
321          ############################################
322          # Now enter Gtk2's event loop
323
324          main Gtk2;
325
326       No condition variable anywhere in sight - instead, we just read a line
327       from STDIN and replace the text in the label. In fact, since nobody
328       "undef"s $wait_for_input you can enter multiple lines.
329
330       Instead of waiting for a condition variable, the program enters the
331       Gtk2 main loop by calling "Gtk2->main", which will block the program
332       and wait for events to arrive.
333
334       This also shows that AnyEvent is quite flexible - you didn't have to do
335       anything to make the AnyEvent watcher use Gtk2 (actually Glib) - it
336       just worked.
337
338       Admittedly, the example is a bit silly - who would want to read names
339       from standard input in a Gtk+ application? But imagine that instead of
340       doing that, you make an HTTP request in the background and display its
341       results. In fact, with event-based programming you can make many HTTP
342       requests in parallel in your program and still provide feedback to the
343       user and stay interactive.
344
345       And in the next part you will see how to do just that - by implementing
346       an HTTP request, on our own, with the utility modules AnyEvent comes
347       with.
348
349       Before that, however, let's briefly look at how you would write your
350       program using only AnyEvent, without ever calling some other event
351       loop's run function.
352
353       In the example using condition variables, we used those to start
354       waiting for events, and in fact, condition variables are the solution:
355
356          my $quit_program = AnyEvent->condvar;
357
358          # create AnyEvent watchers (or not) here
359
360          $quit_program->recv;
361
362       If any of your watcher callbacks decide to quit (this is often called
363       an "unloop" in other frameworks), they can just call
364       "$quit_program->send". Of course, they could also decide not to and
365       call "exit" instead, or they could decide never to quit (e.g. in a
366       long-running daemon program).
367
368       If you don't need some clean quit functionality and just want to run
369       the event loop, you can do this:
370
371          AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
372
373       And this is, in fact, the closest to the idea of a main loop run
374       function that AnyEvent offers.
375
376   Timers and other event sources
377       So far, we have used only I/O watchers. These are useful mainly to find
378       out whether a socket has data to read, or space to write more data. On
379       sane operating systems this also works for console windows/terminals
380       (typically on standard input), serial lines, all sorts of other
381       devices, basically almost everything that has a file descriptor but
382       isn't a file itself. (As usual, "sane" excludes windows - on that
383       platform you would need different functions for all of these,
384       complicating code immensely - think "socket only" on windows).
385
386       However, I/O is not everything - the second most important event source
387       is the clock. For example when doing an HTTP request you might want to
388       time out when the server doesn't answer within some predefined amount
389       of time.
390
391       In AnyEvent, timer event watchers are created by calling the
392       "AnyEvent->timer" method:
393
394          use AnyEvent;
395
396          my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
397
398          my $wait_one_and_a_half_seconds = AnyEvent->timer (
399             after => 1.5,  # after how many seconds to invoke the cb?
400             cb    => sub { # the callback to invoke
401                $cv->send;
402             },
403          );
404
405          # can do something else here
406
407          # now wait till our time has come
408          $cv->recv;
409
410       Unlike I/O watchers, timers are only interested in the amount of
411       seconds they have to wait. When (at least) that amount of time has
412       passed, AnyEvent will invoke your callback.
413
414       Unlike I/O watchers, which will call your callback as many times as
415       there is data available, timers are normally one-shot: after they have
416       "fired" once and invoked your callback, they are dead and no longer do
417       anything.
418
419       To get a repeating timer, such as a timer firing roughly once per
420       second, you can specify an "interval" parameter:
421
422          my $once_per_second = AnyEvent->timer (
423             after => 0,    # first invoke ASAP
424             interval => 1, # then invoke every second
425             cb    => sub { # the callback to invoke
426                $cv->send;
427             },
428          );
429
430       More esoteric sources
431
432       AnyEvent also has some other, more esoteric event sources you can tap
433       into: signal, child and idle watchers.
434
435       Signal watchers can be used to wait for "signal events", which means
436       your process was sent a signal (such as "SIGTERM" or "SIGUSR1").
437
438       Child-process watchers wait for a child process to exit. They are
439       useful when you fork a separate process and need to know when it exits,
440       but you do not want to wait for that by blocking.
441
442       Idle watchers invoke their callback when the event loop has handled all
443       outstanding events, polled for new events and didn't find any, i.e.,
444       when your process is otherwise idle. They are useful if you want to do
445       some non-trivial data processing that can be done when your program
446       doesn't have anything better to do.
447
448       All these watcher types are described in detail in the main AnyEvent
449       manual page.
450
451       Sometimes you also need to know what the current time is:
452       "AnyEvent->now" returns the time the event toolkit uses to schedule
453       relative timers, and is usually what you want. It is often cached
454       (which means it can be a bit outdated). In that case, you can use the
455       more costly "AnyEvent->time" method which will ask your operating
456       system for the current time, which is slower, but also more up to date.
457

Network programming and AnyEvent

459       So far you have seen how to register event watchers and handle events.
460
461       This is a great foundation to write network clients and servers, and
462       might be all that your module (or program) ever requires, but writing
463       your own I/O buffering again and again becomes tedious, not to mention
464       that it attracts errors.
465
466       While the core AnyEvent module is still small and self-contained, the
467       distribution comes with some very useful utility modules such as
468       AnyEvent::Handle, AnyEvent::DNS and AnyEvent::Socket. These can make
469       your life as a non-blocking network programmer a lot easier.
470
471       Here is a quick overview of these three modules:
472
473   AnyEvent::DNS
474       This module allows fully asynchronous DNS resolution. It is used mainly
475       by AnyEvent::Socket to resolve hostnames and service ports for you, but
476       is a great way to do other DNS resolution tasks, such as reverse
477       lookups of IP addresses for log files.
478
479   AnyEvent::Handle
480       This module handles non-blocking IO on (socket-, pipe- etc.) file
481       handles in an event based manner. It provides a wrapper object around
482       your file handle that provides queueing and buffering of incoming and
483       outgoing data for you.
484
485       It also implements the most common data formats, such as text lines, or
486       fixed and variable-width data blocks.
487
488   AnyEvent::Socket
489       This module provides you with functions that handle socket creation and
490       IP address magic. The two main functions are "tcp_connect" and
491       "tcp_server". The former will connect a (streaming) socket to an
492       internet host for you and the later will make a server socket for you,
493       to accept connections.
494
495       This module also comes with transparent IPv6 support, this means: If
496       you write your programs with this module, you will be IPv6 ready
497       without doing anything special.
498
499       It also works around a lot of portability quirks (especially on the
500       windows platform), which makes it even easier to write your programs in
501       a portable way (did you know that windows uses different error codes
502       for all socket functions and that Perl does not know about these? That
503       "Unknown error 10022" (which is "WSAEINVAL") can mean that our
504       "connect" call was successful? That unsuccessful TCP connects might
505       never be reported back to your program? That "WSAEINPROGRESS" means
506       your "connect" call was ignored instead of being in progress?
507       AnyEvent::Socket works around all of these Windows/Perl bugs for you).
508
509   Implementing a parallel finger client with non-blocking connects and
510       AnyEvent::Socket
511       The finger protocol is one of the simplest protocols in use on the
512       internet. Or in use in the past, as almost nobody uses it anymore.
513
514       It works by connecting to the finger port on another host, writing a
515       single line with a user name and then reading the finger response, as
516       specified by that user. OK, RFC 1288 specifies a vastly more complex
517       protocol, but it basically boils down to this:
518
519          # telnet freebsd.org finger
520          Trying 8.8.178.135...
521          Connected to freebsd.org (8.8.178.135).
522          Escape character is '^]'.
523          larry
524          Login: lile                             Name: Larry Lile
525          Directory: /home/lile                   Shell: /usr/local/bin/bash
526          No Mail.
527          Mail forwarded to: lile@stdio.com
528          No Plan.
529
530       So let's write a little AnyEvent function that makes a finger request:
531
532          use AnyEvent;
533          use AnyEvent::Socket;
534
535          sub finger($$) {
536             my ($user, $host) = @_;
537
538             # use a condvar to return results
539             my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
540
541             # first, connect to the host
542             tcp_connect $host, "finger", sub {
543                # the callback receives the socket handle - or nothing
544                my ($fh) = @_
545                   or return $cv->send;
546
547                # now write the username
548                syswrite $fh, "$user\015\012";
549
550                my $response;
551
552                # register a read watcher
553                my $read_watcher; $read_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
554                   fh   => $fh,
555                   poll => "r",
556                   cb   => sub {
557                      my $len = sysread $fh, $response, 1024, length $response;
558
559                      if ($len <= 0) {
560                         # we are done, or an error occured, lets ignore the latter
561                         undef $read_watcher; # no longer interested
562                         $cv->send ($response); # send results
563                      }
564                   },
565                );
566             };
567
568             # pass $cv to the caller
569             $cv
570          }
571
572       That's a mouthful! Let's dissect this function a bit, first the overall
573       function and execution flow:
574
575          sub finger($$) {
576             my ($user, $host) = @_;
577
578             # use a condvar to return results
579             my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
580
581             # first, connect to the host
582             tcp_connect $host, "finger", sub {
583                ...
584             };
585
586             $cv
587          }
588
589       This isn't too complicated, just a function with two parameters that
590       creates a condition variable $cv, initiates a TCP connect to $host, and
591       returns $cv. The caller can use the returned $cv to receive the finger
592       response, but one could equally well pass a third argument, a callback,
593       to the function.
594
595       Since we are programming event'ish, we do not wait for the connect to
596       finish - it could block the program for a minute or longer!
597
598       Instead, we pass "tcp_connect" a callback to invoke when the connect is
599       done. The callback is called with the socket handle as its first
600       argument if the connect succeeds, and no arguments otherwise. The
601       important point is that it will always be called as soon as the outcome
602       of the TCP connect is known.
603
604       This style of programming is also called "continuation style": the
605       "continuation" is simply the way the program continues - normally at
606       the next line after some statement (the exception is loops or things
607       like "return"). When we are interested in events, however, we instead
608       specify the "continuation" of our program by passing a closure, which
609       makes that closure the "continuation" of the program.
610
611       The "tcp_connect" call is like saying "return now, and when the
612       connection is established or the attempt failed, continue there".
613
614       Now let's look at the callback/closure in more detail:
615
616                # the callback receives the socket handle - or nothing
617                my ($fh) = @_
618                   or return $cv->send;
619
620       The first thing the callback does is to save the socket handle in $fh.
621       When there was an error (no arguments), then our instinct as expert
622       Perl programmers would tell us to "die":
623
624                my ($fh) = @_
625                   or die "$host: $!";
626
627       While this would give good feedback to the user (if he happens to watch
628       standard error), our program would probably stop working here, as we
629       never report the results to anybody, certainly not the caller of our
630       "finger" function, and most event loops continue even after a "die"!
631
632       This is why we instead "return", but also call "$cv->send" without any
633       arguments to signal to the condvar consumer that something bad has
634       happened. The return value of "$cv->send" is irrelevant, as is the
635       return value of our callback. The "return" statement is used for the
636       side effect of, well, returning immediately from the callback.
637       Checking for errors and handling them this way is very common, which is
638       why this compact idiom is so handy.
639
640       As the next step in the finger protocol, we send the username to the
641       finger daemon on the other side of our connection (the kernel.org
642       finger service doesn't actually wait for a username, but the net is
643       running out of finger servers fast):
644
645                syswrite $fh, "$user\015\012";
646
647       Note that this isn't 100% clean socket programming - the socket could,
648       for whatever reasons, not accept our data. When writing a small amount
649       of data like in this example it doesn't matter, as a socket buffer is
650       almost always big enough for a mere "username", but for real-world
651       cases you might need to implement some kind of write buffering - or use
652       AnyEvent::Handle, which handles these matters for you, as shown in the
653       next section.
654
655       What we do have to do is implement our own read buffer - the response
656       data could arrive late or in multiple chunks, and we cannot just wait
657       for it (event-based programming, you know?).
658
659       To do that, we register a read watcher on the socket which waits for
660       data:
661
662                my $read_watcher; $read_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
663                   fh   => $fh,
664                   poll => "r",
665
666       There is a trick here, however: the read watcher isn't stored in a
667       global variable, but in a local one - if the callback returns, it would
668       normally destroy the variable and its contents, which would in turn
669       unregister our watcher.
670
671       To avoid that, we refer to the watcher variable in the watcher
672       callback.  This means that, when the "tcp_connect" callback returns,
673       perl thinks (quite correctly) that the read watcher is still in use -
674       namely inside the inner callback - and thus keeps it alive even if
675       nothing else in the program refers to it anymore (it is much like Baron
676       Münchhausen keeping himself from dying by pulling himself out of a
677       swamp).
678
679       The trick, however, is that instead of:
680
681          my $read_watcher = AnyEvent->io (...
682
683       The program does:
684
685          my $read_watcher; $read_watcher = AnyEvent->io (...
686
687       The reason for this is a quirk in the way Perl works: variable names
688       declared with "my" are only visible in the next statement. If the whole
689       "AnyEvent->io" call, including the callback, would be done in a single
690       statement, the callback could not refer to the $read_watcher variable
691       to "undef"ine it, so it is done in two statements.
692
693       Whether you'd want to format it like this is of course a matter of
694       style.  This way emphasizes that the declaration and assignment really
695       are one logical statement.
696
697       The callback itself calls "sysread" for as many times as necessary,
698       until "sysread" returns either an error or end-of-file:
699
700                   cb   => sub {
701                      my $len = sysread $fh, $response, 1024, length $response;
702
703                      if ($len <= 0) {
704
705       Note that "sysread" has the ability to append data it reads to a scalar
706       if we specify an offset, a feature which we make use of in this
707       example.
708
709       When "sysread" indicates we are done, the callback "undef"ines the
710       watcher and then "send"s the response data to the condition variable.
711       All this has the following effects:
712
713       Undefining the watcher destroys it, as our callback was the only one
714       still having a reference to it. When the watcher gets destroyed, it
715       destroys the callback, which in turn means the $fh handle is no longer
716       used, so that gets destroyed as well. The result is that all resources
717       will be nicely cleaned up by perl for us.
718
719       Using the finger client
720
721       Now, we could probably write the same finger client in a simpler way if
722       we used "IO::Socket::INET", ignored the problem of multiple hosts and
723       ignored IPv6 and a few other things that "tcp_connect" handles for us.
724
725       But the main advantage is that we can not only run this finger function
726       in the background, we even can run multiple sessions in parallel, like
727       this:
728
729          my $f1 = finger "kuriyama", "freebsd.org";
730          my $f2 = finger "icculus?listarchives=1", "icculus.org";
731          my $f3 = finger "mikachu", "icculus.org";
732
733          print "kuriyama's gpg key\n"    , $f1->recv, "\n";
734          print "icculus' plan archive\n" , $f2->recv, "\n";
735          print "mikachu's plan zomgn\n"  , $f3->recv, "\n";
736
737       It doesn't look like it, but in fact all three requests run in
738       parallel. The code waits for the first finger request to finish first,
739       but that doesn't keep it from executing them parallel: when the first
740       "recv" call sees that the data isn't ready yet, it serves events for
741       all three requests automatically, until the first request has finished.
742
743       The second "recv" call might either find the data is already there, or
744       it will continue handling events until that is the case, and so on.
745
746       By taking advantage of network latencies, which allows us to serve
747       other requests and events while we wait for an event on one socket, the
748       overall time to do these three requests will be greatly reduced,
749       typically all three are done in the same time as the slowest of the
750       three requests.
751
752       By the way, you do not actually have to wait in the "recv" method on an
753       AnyEvent condition variable - after all, waiting is evil - you can also
754       register a callback:
755
756          $f1->cb (sub {
757             my $response = shift->recv;
758             # ...
759          });
760
761       The callback will be invoked only when "send" is called. In fact,
762       instead of returning a condition variable you could also pass a third
763       parameter to your finger function, the callback to invoke with the
764       response:
765
766          sub finger($$$) {
767             my ($user, $host, $cb) = @_;
768
769       How you implement it is a matter of taste - if you expect your function
770       to be used mainly in an event-based program you would normally prefer
771       to pass a callback directly. If you write a module and expect your
772       users to use it "synchronously" often (for example, a simple http-get
773       script would not really care much for events), then you would use a
774       condition variable and tell them "simply "->recv" the data".
775
776       Problems with the implementation and how to fix them
777
778       To make this example more real-world-ready, we would not only implement
779       some write buffering (for the paranoid, or maybe denial-of-service
780       aware security expert), but we would also have to handle timeouts and
781       maybe protocol errors.
782
783       Doing this quickly gets unwieldy, which is why we introduce
784       AnyEvent::Handle in the next section, which takes care of all these
785       details for you and lets you concentrate on the actual protocol.
786
787   Implementing simple HTTP and HTTPS GET requests with AnyEvent::Handle
788       The AnyEvent::Handle module has been hyped quite a bit in this document
789       so far, so let's see what it really offers.
790
791       As finger is such a simple protocol, let's try something slightly more
792       complicated: HTTP/1.0.
793
794       An HTTP GET request works by sending a single request line that
795       indicates what you want the server to do and the URI you want to act it
796       on, followed by as many "header" lines ("Header: data", same as e-mail
797       headers) as required for the request, followed by an empty line.
798
799       The response is formatted very similarly, first a line with the
800       response status, then again as many header lines as required, then an
801       empty line, followed by any data that the server might send.
802
803       Again, let's try it out with "telnet" (I condensed the output a bit -
804       if you want to see the full response, do it yourself).
805
806          # telnet www.google.com 80
807          Trying 209.85.135.99...
808          Connected to www.google.com (209.85.135.99).
809          Escape character is '^]'.
810          GET /test HTTP/1.0
811
812          HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found
813          Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:05:54 GMT
814          Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
815
816          <html><head>
817          [...]
818          Connection closed by foreign host.
819
820       The "GET ..." and the empty line were entered manually, the rest of the
821       telnet output is google's response, in this case a "404 not found" one.
822
823       So, here is how you would do it with "AnyEvent::Handle":
824
825          sub http_get {
826             my ($host, $uri, $cb) = @_;
827
828             # store results here
829             my ($response, $header, $body);
830
831             my $handle; $handle = new AnyEvent::Handle
832                connect  => [$host => 'http'],
833                on_error => sub {
834                   $cb->("HTTP/1.0 500 $!");
835                   $handle->destroy; # explicitly destroy handle
836                },
837                on_eof   => sub {
838                   $cb->($response, $header, $body);
839                   $handle->destroy; # explicitly destroy handle
840                };
841
842             $handle->push_write ("GET $uri HTTP/1.0\015\012\015\012");
843
844             # now fetch response status line
845             $handle->push_read (line => sub {
846                my ($handle, $line) = @_;
847                $response = $line;
848             });
849
850             # then the headers
851             $handle->push_read (line => "\015\012\015\012", sub {
852                my ($handle, $line) = @_;
853                $header = $line;
854             });
855
856             # and finally handle any remaining data as body
857             $handle->on_read (sub {
858                $body .= $_[0]->rbuf;
859                $_[0]->rbuf = "";
860             });
861          }
862
863       And now let's go through it step by step. First, as usual, the overall
864       "http_get" function structure:
865
866          sub http_get {
867             my ($host, $uri, $cb) = @_;
868
869             # store results here
870             my ($response, $header, $body);
871
872             my $handle; $handle = new AnyEvent::Handle
873                ... create handle object
874
875             ... push data to write
876
877             ... push what to expect to read queue
878          }
879
880       Unlike in the finger example, this time the caller has to pass a
881       callback to "http_get". Also, instead of passing a URL as one would
882       expect, the caller has to provide the hostname and URI - normally you
883       would use the "URI" module to parse a URL and separate it into those
884       parts, but that is left to the inspired reader :)
885
886       Since everything else is left to the caller, all "http_get" does is
887       initiate the connection by creating the AnyEvent::Handle object (which
888       calls "tcp_connect" for us) and leave everything else to its callback.
889
890       The handle object is created, unsurprisingly, by calling the "new"
891       method of AnyEvent::Handle:
892
893             my $handle; $handle = new AnyEvent::Handle
894                connect  => [$host => 'http'],
895                on_error => sub {
896                   $cb->("HTTP/1.0 500 $!");
897                   $handle->destroy; # explicitly destroy handle
898                },
899                on_eof   => sub {
900                   $cb->($response, $header, $body);
901                   $handle->destroy; # explicitly destroy handle
902                };
903
904       The "connect" argument tells AnyEvent::Handle to call "tcp_connect" for
905       the specified host and service/port.
906
907       The "on_error" callback will be called on any unexpected error, such as
908       a refused connection, or unexpected end-of-file while reading headers.
909
910       Instead of having an extra mechanism to signal errors, connection
911       errors are signalled by crafting a special "response status line", like
912       this:
913
914          HTTP/1.0 500 Connection refused
915
916       This means the caller cannot distinguish (easily) between locally-
917       generated errors and server errors, but it simplifies error handling
918       for the caller a lot.
919
920       The error callback also destroys the handle explicitly, because we are
921       not interested in continuing after any errors. In AnyEvent::Handle
922       callbacks you have to call "destroy" explicitly to destroy a handle.
923       Outside of those callbacks you can just forget the object reference and
924       it will be automatically cleaned up.
925
926       Last but not least, we set an "on_eof" callback that is called when the
927       other side indicates it has stopped writing data, which we will use to
928       gracefully shut down the handle and report the results. This callback
929       is only called when the read queue is empty - if the read queue expects
930       some data and the handle gets an EOF from the other side this will be
931       an error - after all, you did expect more to come.
932
933       If you wanted to write a server using AnyEvent::Handle, you would use
934       "tcp_accept" and then create the AnyEvent::Handle with the "fh"
935       argument.
936
937       The write queue
938
939       The next line sends the actual request:
940
941          $handle->push_write ("GET $uri HTTP/1.0\015\012\015\012");
942
943       No headers will be sent (this is fine for simple requests), so the
944       whole request is just a single line followed by an empty line to signal
945       the end of the headers to the server.
946
947       The more interesting question is why the method is called "push_write"
948       and not just write. The reason is that you can always add some write
949       data without blocking, and to do this, AnyEvent::Handle needs some
950       write queue internally - and "push_write" pushes some data onto the end
951       of that queue, just like Perl's "push" pushes data onto the end of an
952       array.
953
954       The deeper reason is that at some point in the future, there might be
955       "unshift_write" as well, and in any case, we will shortly meet
956       "push_read" and "unshift_read", and it's usually easiest to remember if
957       all those functions have some symmetry in their name. So "push" is used
958       as the opposite of "unshift" in AnyEvent::Handle, not as the opposite
959       of "pull" - just like in Perl.
960
961       Note that we call "push_write" right after creating the
962       AnyEvent::Handle object, before it has had time to actually connect to
963       the server. This is fine, pushing the read and write requests will
964       queue them in the handle object until the connection has been
965       established. Alternatively, we could do this "on demand" in the
966       "on_connect" callback.
967
968       If "push_write" is called with more than one argument, then you can do
969       formatted I/O. For example, this would JSON-encode your data before
970       pushing it to the write queue:
971
972          $handle->push_write (json => [1, 2, 3]);
973
974       This pretty much summarises the write queue, there is little else to
975       it.
976
977       Reading the response is far more interesting, because it involves the
978       more powerful and complex read queue:
979
980       The read queue
981
982       The response consists of three parts: a single line with the response
983       status, a single paragraph of headers ended by an empty line, and the
984       request body, which is the remaining data on the connection.
985
986       For the first two, we push two read requests onto the read queue:
987
988          # now fetch response status line
989          $handle->push_read (line => sub {
990             my ($handle, $line) = @_;
991             $response = $line;
992          });
993
994          # then the headers
995          $handle->push_read (line => "\015\012\015\012", sub {
996             my ($handle, $line) = @_;
997             $header = $line;
998          });
999
1000       While one can just push a single callback to parse all the data on the
1001       queue, formatted I/O really comes to our aid here, since there is a
1002       ready-made "read line" read type. The first read expects a single line,
1003       ended by "\015\012" (the standard end-of-line marker in internet
1004       protocols).
1005
1006       The second "line" is actually a single paragraph - instead of reading
1007       it line by line we tell "push_read" that the end-of-line marker is
1008       really "\015\012\015\012", which is an empty line. The result is that
1009       the whole header paragraph will be treated as a single line and read.
1010       The word "line" is interpreted very freely, much like Perl itself does
1011       it.
1012
1013       Note that push read requests are pushed immediately after creating the
1014       handle object - since AnyEvent::Handle provides a queue we can push as
1015       many requests as we want, and AnyEvent::Handle will handle them in
1016       order.
1017
1018       There is, however, no read type for "the remaining data". For that, we
1019       install our own "on_read" callback:
1020
1021          # and finally handle any remaining data as body
1022          $handle->on_read (sub {
1023             $body .= $_[0]->rbuf;
1024             $_[0]->rbuf = "";
1025          });
1026
1027       This callback is invoked every time data arrives and the read queue is
1028       empty - which in this example will only be the case when both response
1029       and header have been read. The "on_read" callback could actually have
1030       been specified when constructing the object, but doing it this way
1031       preserves logical ordering.
1032
1033       The read callback adds the current read buffer to its $body variable
1034       and, most importantly, empties the buffer by assigning the empty string
1035       to it.
1036
1037       Given these instructions, AnyEvent::Handle will handle incoming data -
1038       if all goes well, the callback will be invoked with the response data;
1039       if not, it will get an error.
1040
1041       In general, you can implement pipelining (a semi-advanced feature of
1042       many protocols) very easily with AnyEvent::Handle: If you have a
1043       protocol with a request/response structure, your request
1044       methods/functions will all look like this (simplified):
1045
1046          sub request {
1047
1048             # send the request to the server
1049             $handle->push_write (...);
1050
1051             # push some response handlers
1052             $handle->push_read (...);
1053          }
1054
1055       This means you can queue as many requests as you want, and while
1056       AnyEvent::Handle goes through its read queue to handle the response
1057       data, the other side can work on the next request - queueing the
1058       request just appends some data to the write queue and installs a
1059       handler to be called later.
1060
1061       You might ask yourself how to handle decisions you can only make after
1062       you have received some data (such as handling a short error response or
1063       a long and differently-formatted response). The answer to this problem
1064       is "unshift_read", which we will introduce together with an example in
1065       the coming sections.
1066
1067       Using "http_get"
1068
1069       Finally, here is how you would use "http_get":
1070
1071          http_get "www.google.com", "/", sub {
1072             my ($response, $header, $body) = @_;
1073
1074             print
1075                $response, "\n",
1076                $body;
1077          };
1078
1079       And of course, you can run as many of these requests in parallel as you
1080       want (and your memory supports).
1081
1082       HTTPS
1083
1084       Now, as promised, let's implement the same thing for HTTPS, or more
1085       correctly, let's change our "http_get" function into a function that
1086       speaks HTTPS instead.
1087
1088       HTTPS is a standard TLS connection (Transport Layer Security is the
1089       official name for what most people refer to as "SSL") that contains
1090       standard HTTP protocol exchanges. The only other difference to HTTP is
1091       that by default it uses port 443 instead of port 80.
1092
1093       To implement these two differences we need two tiny changes, first, in
1094       the "connect" parameter, we replace "http" by "https" to connect to the
1095       https port:
1096
1097                connect  => [$host => 'https'],
1098
1099       The other change deals with TLS, which is something AnyEvent::Handle
1100       does for us if the Net::SSLeay module is available. To enable TLS with
1101       AnyEvent::Handle, we pass an additional "tls" parameter to the call to
1102       "AnyEvent::Handle::new":
1103
1104                tls      => "connect",
1105
1106       Specifying "tls" enables TLS, and the argument specifies whether
1107       AnyEvent::Handle is the server side ("accept") or the client side
1108       ("connect") for the TLS connection, as unlike TCP, there is a clear
1109       server/client relationship in TLS.
1110
1111       That's all.
1112
1113       Of course, all this should be handled transparently by "http_get" after
1114       parsing the URL. If you need this, see the part about exercising your
1115       inspiration earlier in this document. You could also use the
1116       AnyEvent::HTTP module from CPAN, which implements all this and works
1117       around a lot of quirks for you too.
1118
1119       The read queue - revisited
1120
1121       HTTP always uses the same structure in its responses, but many
1122       protocols require parsing responses differently depending on the
1123       response itself.
1124
1125       For example, in SMTP, you normally get a single response line:
1126
1127          220 mail.example.net Neverusesendmail 8.8.8 <mailme@example.net>
1128
1129       But SMTP also supports multi-line responses:
1130
1131          220-mail.example.net Neverusesendmail 8.8.8 <mailme@example.net>
1132          220-hey guys
1133          220 my response is longer than yours
1134
1135       To handle this, we need "unshift_read". As the name (we hope) implies,
1136       "unshift_read" will not append your read request to the end of the read
1137       queue, but will prepend it to the queue instead.
1138
1139       This is useful in the situation above: Just push your response-line
1140       read request when sending the SMTP command, and when handling it, you
1141       look at the line to see if more is to come, and "unshift_read" another
1142       reader callback if required, like this:
1143
1144          my $response; # response lines end up in here
1145
1146          my $read_response; $read_response = sub {
1147             my ($handle, $line) = @_;
1148
1149             $response .= "$line\n";
1150
1151             # check for continuation lines ("-" as 4th character")
1152             if ($line =~ /^...-/) {
1153                # if yes, then unshift another line read
1154                $handle->unshift_read (line => $read_response);
1155
1156             } else {
1157                # otherwise we are done
1158
1159                # free callback
1160                undef $read_response;
1161
1162                print "we are don reading: $response\n";
1163             }
1164          };
1165
1166          $handle->push_read (line => $read_response);
1167
1168       This recipe can be used for all similar parsing problems, for example
1169       in NNTP, the response code to some commands indicates that more data
1170       will be sent:
1171
1172          $handle->push_write ("article 42");
1173
1174          # read response line
1175          $handle->push_read (line => sub {
1176             my ($handle, $status) = @_;
1177
1178             # article data following?
1179             if ($status =~ /^2/) {
1180                # yes, read article body
1181
1182                $handle->unshift_read (line => "\012.\015\012", sub {
1183                   my ($handle, $body) = @_;
1184
1185                   $finish->($status, $body);
1186                });
1187
1188             } else {
1189                # some error occured, no article data
1190
1191                $finish->($status);
1192             }
1193          }
1194
1195       Your own read queue handler
1196
1197       Sometimes your protocol doesn't play nice, and uses lines or chunks of
1198       data not formatted in a way handled out of the box by AnyEvent::Handle.
1199       In this case you have to implement your own read parser.
1200
1201       To make up a contorted example, imagine you are looking for an even
1202       number of characters followed by a colon (":"). Also imagine that
1203       AnyEvent::Handle has no "regex" read type which could be used, so you'd
1204       have to do it manually.
1205
1206       To implement a read handler for this, you would "push_read" (or
1207       "unshift_read") a single code reference.
1208
1209       This code reference will then be called each time there is (new) data
1210       available in the read buffer, and is expected to either successfully
1211       eat/consume some of that data (and return true) or to return false to
1212       indicate that it wants to be called again.
1213
1214       If the code reference returns true, then it will be removed from the
1215       read queue (because it has parsed/consumed whatever it was supposed to
1216       consume), otherwise it stays in the front of it.
1217
1218       The example above could be coded like this:
1219
1220          $handle->push_read (sub {
1221             my ($handle) = @_;
1222
1223             # check for even number of characters + ":"
1224             # and remove the data if a match is found.
1225             # if not, return false (actually nothing)
1226
1227             $handle->{rbuf} =~ s/^( (?:..)* ) ://x
1228                or return;
1229
1230             # we got some data in $1, pass it to whoever wants it
1231             $finish->($1);
1232
1233             # and return true to indicate we are done
1234             1
1235          });
1236

Debugging aids

1238       Now that you have seen how to use AnyEvent, here's what to use when you
1239       don't use it correctly, or simply hit a bug somewhere and want to debug
1240       it:
1241
1242       Enable strict argument checking during development
1243           AnyEvent does not, by default, do any argument checking. This can
1244           lead to strange and unexpected results especially if you are just
1245           trying to find your way with AnyEvent.
1246
1247           AnyEvent supports a special "strict" mode - off by default - which
1248           does very strict argument checking, at the expense of slowing down
1249           your program. During development, however, this mode is very useful
1250           because it quickly catches the msot common errors.
1251
1252           You can enable this strict mode either by having an environment
1253           variable "AE_STRICT" with a true value in your environment:
1254
1255              AE_STRICT=1 perl myprog
1256
1257           Or you can write "use AnyEvent::Strict" in your program, which has
1258           the same effect (do not do this in production, however).
1259
1260       Increase verbosity, configure logging
1261           AnyEvent, by default, only logs critical messages. If something
1262           doesn't work, maybe there was a warning about it that you didn't
1263           see because it was suppressed.
1264
1265           So during development it is recommended to push up the logging
1266           level to at least warn level (5):
1267
1268              AE_VERBOSE=5 perl myprog
1269
1270           Other levels that might be helpful are debug (8) or even trace (9).
1271
1272           AnyEvent's logging is quite versatile - the AnyEvent::Log manpage
1273           has all the details.
1274
1275       Watcher wrapping, tracing, the shell
1276           For even more debugging, you can enable watcher wrapping:
1277
1278             AE_DEBUG_WRAP=2 perl myprog
1279
1280           This will have the effect of wrapping every watcher into a special
1281           object that stores a backtrace of when it was created, stores a
1282           backtrace when an exception occurs during watcher execution, and
1283           stores a lot of other information. If that slows down your program
1284           too much, then "AE_DEBUG_WRAP=1" avoids the costly backtraces.
1285
1286           Here is an example of what of information is stored:
1287
1288              59148536 DC::DB:472(Server::run)>io>DC::DB::Server::fh_read
1289              type:    io watcher
1290              args:    poll r fh GLOB(0x35283f0)
1291              created: 2011-09-01 23:13:46.597336 +0200 (1314911626.59734)
1292              file:    ./blib/lib/Deliantra/Client/private/DC/DB.pm
1293              line:    472
1294              subname: DC::DB::Server::run
1295              context:
1296              tracing: enabled
1297              cb:      CODE(0x2d1fb98) (DC::DB::Server::fh_read)
1298              invoked: 0 times
1299              created
1300              (eval 25) line 6        AnyEvent::Debug::Wrap::__ANON__('AnyEvent','fh',GLOB(0x35283f0),'poll','r','cb',CODE(0x2d1fb98)=DC::DB::Server::fh_read)
1301              DC::DB line 472         AE::io(GLOB(0x35283f0),'0',CODE(0x2d1fb98)=DC::DB::Server::fh_read)
1302              bin/deliantra line 2776 DC::DB::Server::run()
1303              bin/deliantra line 2941 main::main()
1304
1305           There are many ways to get at this data - see the AnyEvent::Debug
1306           and AnyEvent::Log manpages for more details.
1307
1308           The most interesting and interactive way is to create a debug
1309           shell, for example by setting "AE_DEBUG_SHELL":
1310
1311             AE_DEBUG_WRAP=2 AE_DEBUG_SHELL=$HOME/myshell ./myprog
1312
1313             # while myprog is running:
1314             socat readline $HOME/myshell
1315
1316           Note that anybody who can access $HOME/myshell can make your
1317           program do anything he or she wants, so if you are not the only
1318           user on your machine, better put it into a secure location ($HOME
1319           might not be secure enough).
1320
1321           If you don't have "socat" (a shame!) and care even less about
1322           security, you can also use TCP and "telnet":
1323
1324             AE_DEBUG_WRAP=2 AE_DEBUG_SHELL=127.0.0.1:1234 ./myprog
1325
1326             telnet 127.0.0.1 1234
1327
1328           The debug shell can enable and disable tracing of watcher
1329           invocations, can display the trace output, give you a list of
1330           watchers and lets you investigate watchers in detail.
1331
1332       This concludes our little tutorial.
1333

Where to go from here?

1335       This introduction should have explained the key concepts of AnyEvent -
1336       event watchers and condition variables, AnyEvent::Socket - basic
1337       networking utilities, and AnyEvent::Handle - a nice wrapper around
1338       sockets.
1339
1340       You could either start coding stuff right away, look at those manual
1341       pages for the gory details, or roam CPAN for other AnyEvent modules
1342       (such as AnyEvent::IRC or AnyEvent::HTTP) to see more code examples (or
1343       simply to use them).
1344
1345       If you need a protocol that doesn't have an implementation using
1346       AnyEvent, remember that you can mix AnyEvent with one other event
1347       framework, such as POE, so you can always use AnyEvent for your own
1348       tasks plus modules of one other event framework to fill any gaps.
1349
1350       And last not least, you could also look at Coro, especially
1351       Coro::AnyEvent, to see how you can turn event-based programming from
1352       callback style back to the usual imperative style (also called
1353       "inversion of control" - AnyEvent calls you, but Coro lets you call
1354       AnyEvent).
1355

Authors

1357       Robin Redeker "<elmex at ta-sa.org>", Marc Lehmann
1358       <schmorp@schmorp.de>.
1359
1360
1361
1362perl v5.36.0                      2022-07-22                AnyEvent::Intro(3)
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