Proper way to implement async function in Qt/DBus adaptor - c++

As described in D-Bus documentation, all IPC calls considered as asynchronous. When Qt calls remote D-Bus object through QDBusAbstractInterface, there's QBusPendingCall<T> which is fully async and provide signalling when call ran to completion.
In my application design I want to implement async call on my object adaptor, but current Qt/DBus implementation assumes, that all method calls are blocking.
So, there's a question: is there proper way to implement handling D-Bus method call asynchronously?

This is explained pretty well in Declaring Slots in D-Bus Adaptors.
We do this by writing a slot that stores the request data in a persistent structure, indicating to the caller using QDBusMessage::setDelayedReply(true) that the response will be sent later.
struct RequestData
{
QString request;
QString processedData;
QDBusMessage reply;
};
QString processRequest(const QString &request, const QDBusMessage &message)
{
RequestData *data = new RequestData;
data->request = request;
message.setDelayedReply(true);
data->reply = message.createReply();
QDBusConnection::sessionBus().send(data->reply);
appendRequest(data);
return QString();
}
The use of QDBusConnection::sessionBus().send(data->reply) is needed to explicitly inform the caller that the response will be delayed. In this case, the return value is unimportant; we return an arbitrary value to satisfy the compiler.
When the request is processed and a reply is available, it should be sent using the QDBusMessage object that was obtained. In our example, the reply code could be something as follows:
void sendReply(RequestData *data)
{
// data->processedData has been initialized with the request's reply
QDBusMessage &reply = &data->reply;
// send the reply over D-Bus:
reply << data->processedData;
QDBusConnection::sessionBus().send(reply);
// dispose of the transaction data
delete data;
}
As can be seen in the example, when a delayed reply is in place, the return value(s) from the slot will be ignored by Qt D-Bus. They are used only to determine the slot's signature when communicating the adaptor's description to remote applications, or in case the code in the slot decides not to use a delayed reply.
The delayed reply itself is requested from Qt D-Bus by calling QDBusMessage::reply() on the original message. It then becomes the responsibility of the called code to eventually send a reply to the caller.
Warning: When a caller places a method call and waits for a reply, it will only wait for a limited amount of time. Slots intending to take a long time to complete should make that fact clear in documentation so that callers properly set higher timeouts.

Related

freediameter - how to handle request messages outside of dispatch function

So, I've advertised for DCCA application in my extension via fd_disp_register and I can parse and prepare the response message and at the end sending them from my callback function with no issue.
This always works if the answer message is prepared inside of callback function. But what if i want to reply the request message outside of my callback function ?
So, I tried it with a sample code. I changed the callback function logic so there were no sending message from it and instead another thread tries to fetch some information and send out the response.
This absolutely failed, because as soon as callback returns (with 0), the next action gonna take place (according to disp_action value) which is not in my favor.
So, I'd like to ask what is your solution to handle such case, I mean sending out the response messages outside of the callback function ?
Thanks.
I'm not sure I've ever done this before, but looking at libfdproto.h...
enum disp_action {
DISP_ACT_CONT, /* The next handler should be called, unless *msg == NULL. */
DISP_ACT_SEND, /* The updated message must be sent. No further callback is called. */
DISP_ACT_ERROR /* An error must be created and sent as a reply -- not valid for callbacks, only for fd_msg_dispatch. */
};
...it sounds like you want to set *act = DISP_ACT_CONT; and *msg = NULL; (because you've taken ownership of the message).
Does that work?

Future in akka message

good day,everyone.
i have some question about how bad is setting CompletableFuture in mesage from one actor to another and use get() to wait for it compleation. i have code example that i think is too complex to use in practice, but cant find any sutable arguments to advice to refactor it
code that send msg with future
private void onSomeSignal(SomeMsg smsg){
MessageToActor msg = new MessageToActor()
future = new CompletableFuture<>();
msg.setFuture(future);
actortRef.tell(msg, null);
response = future.get(2, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
/* do something with responce*/
}
code that complete future (in another actor)
private void onSomeSignal(MessageToActor msg){
response = responseService.getResponse();
msg.getFuture().complete(response);
}
is something wrong here , except that future.get() is blocking operation
Yes, doing that will come back and bite you: with this pattern you block one actor until some other actor responds, which means that if you use that elsewhere in your program there is a high risk of running into a deadlock (i.e. your whole program stops and cannot continue).
Instead of using a Future to send back a response, actors are made for sending messages. In “another actor”, you should use getContext().getSender().tell(response), and in the first actor you should handle that response as a normal message instead of the future.get() call.

POCO WebSocket - sending data from another class

I'm trying to create a WebSocket Server.
I can establish a connection and everything works fine so far.
In this GitHub example the data is send within the handleRequest() method that is called when a client connects.
But can I send data to the client from another class using the established WebSocket connection?
How can I archieve this? Is this even possible?
Thank you.
It is, of course, possible. In the example you referred, you should have a member pointer to WebSocket in the RequestHandlerFactory, eg.:
class RequestHandlerFactory: public HTTPRequestHandlerFactory
{
//...
private:
shared_ptr<WebSocket> _pwebSocket;
};
pass it to the WebSocketRequestHandler constructor:
return new WebSocketRequestHandler(_pwebSocket);
and WebSocketRequestHandler should look like this:
class WebSocketRequestHandler: public HTTPRequestHandler
{
public:
WebSocketRequestHandler(shared_ptr<WebSocket> pWebSocket) :_pWebSocket(pWebSocket)
{}
void handleRequest(HTTPServerRequest& request, HTTPServerResponse& response)
{
// ...
_pWebSocket.reset(make_shared<WebSocket>(request, response));
// ...
}
private:
shared_ptr<WebSocket> _pWebSocket;
}
Now, after the request handler creates it, you will have a pointer to the WebSocket in the factory (which is long lived, unlike RequestHandler, which comes and goes away with every request). Keep in mind that handler executes in its own thread, so you should have some kind of locking or notification mechanism to signal when the WebSocket has actually been created by the handler (bool cast of _pWebSocket will be true after WebSocket was successfully created).
The above example only illustrates the case with a single WebSocket - if you want to have multiple ones, you should have an array or vector of pointers and add/remove them as needed. In any case, the WebSocket pointer(s) need not necessarily reside in the factory - you can either (a) put them elsewhere in your application and propagate them to the factory/handler or (b) have a global facility (with proper multi-thread-access mechanism) holding the WebSocket(s).

understanding RProperty IPC communication

i'm studying this source base. Basically this is an Anim server client for Symbian 3rd edition for the purpose of grabbing input events without consuming them in a reliable way.
If you spot this line of the server, here it is basically setting the RProperty value (apparently to an increasing counter); it seems no actual processing of the input is done.
inside this client line, the client is supposed to be receiving the notification data, but it only calls Attach.
my understanding is that Attach is only required to be called once, but is not clear in the client what event is triggered every time the server sets the RProperty
How (and where) is the client supposed to access the RProperty value?
After Attaching the client will somewhere Subscribe to the property where it passes a TRequestStatus reference. The server will signal the request status property via the kernel when the asynchronous event has happened (in your case the property was changed). If your example source code is implemented in the right way, you will find an active object (AO; CActive derived class) hanging around and the iStatus of this AO will be passed to the RProperty API. In this case the RunL function of the AO will be called when the property has been changed.
It is essential in Symbian to understand the active object framework and quite few people do it actually. Unfortunately I did not find a really good description online (they are explained quite well in Symbian OS Internals book) but this page at least gives you a quick example.
Example
In the ConstructL of your CMyActive subclass of CActive:
CKeyEventsClient* iClient;
RProperty iProperty;
// ...
void CMyActive::ConstructL()
{
RProcess myProcess;
TSecureId propertyCategory = myProcess.SecureId();
// avoid interference with other properties by defining the category
// as a secure ID of your process (perhaps it's the only allowed value)
TUint propertyKey = 1; // whatever you want
iClient = CKeyEventsClient::NewL(propertyCategory, propertyKey, ...);
iClient->OpenNotificationPropertyL(&iProperty);
// ...
CActiveScheduler::Add(this);
iProperty.Subscribe(iStatus);
SetActive();
}
Your RunL will be called when the property has been changed:
void CMyActive::RunL()
{
if (iStatus.Int() != KErrCancel) User::LeaveIfError(iStatus.Int());
// forward the error to RunError
// "To ensure that the subscriber does not miss updates, it should
// re-issue a subscription request before retrieving the current value
// and acting on it." (from docs)
iProperty.Subscribe(iStatus);
TInt value; // this type is passed to RProperty::Define() in the client
TInt err = iProperty.Get(value);
if (err != KErrNotFound) User::LeaveIfError(err);
SetActive();
}

Boost Asio callback doesn't get called

I'm using Boost.Asio for network operations, they have to (and actually, can, there's no complex data structures or anything) remain pretty low level since I can't afford the luxury of serialization overhead (and the libs I found that did offer well enough performance seemed to be badly suited for my case).
The problem is with an async write I'm doing from the client (in QT, but that should probably be irrelevant here). The callback specified in the async_write doesn't get called, ever, and I'm at a complete loss as to why. The code is:
void SpikingMatrixClient::addMatrix() {
std::cout << "entered add matrix" << std::endl;
int action = protocol::Actions::AddMatrix;
int matrixSize = this->ui->editNetworkSize->text().toInt();
std::ostream out(&buf);
out.write(reinterpret_cast<const char*>(&action), sizeof(action));
out.write(reinterpret_cast<const char*>(&matrixSize), sizeof(matrixSize));
boost::asio::async_write(*connection.socket(), buf.data(),
boost::bind(&SpikingMatrixClient::onAddMatrix, this, boost::asio::placeholders::error, boost::asio::placeholders::bytes_transferred));
}
which calls the first write. The callback is
void SpikingMatrixClient::onAddMatrix(const boost::system::error_code& error, size_t bytes_transferred) {
std::cout << "entered onAddMatrix" << std::endl;
if (!error) {
buf.consume(bytes_transferred);
requestMatrixList();
} else {
QString message = QString::fromStdString(error.message());
this->ui->statusBar->showMessage(message, 15000);
}
}
The callback never gets called, even though the server receives all the data. Can anyone think of any reason why it might be doing that?
P.S. There was a wrapper for that connection, and yes there will probably be one again. Ditched it a day or two ago because I couldn't find the problem with this callback.
As suggested, posting a solution I found to be the most suitable (at least for now).
The client application is [being] written in QT, and I need the IO to be async. For the most part, the client receives calculation data from the server application and has to render various graphical representations of them.
Now, there's some key aspects to consider:
The GUI has to be responsive, it should not be blocked by the IO.
The client can be connected / disconnected.
The traffic is pretty intense, data gets sent / refreshed to the client every few secs and it has to remain responsive (as per item 1.).
As per the Boost.Asio documentation,
Multiple threads may call io_service::run() to set up a pool of
threads from which completion handlers may be invoked.
Note that all threads that have joined an io_service's pool are considered equivalent, and the io_service may distribute work across them in an arbitrary fashion.
Note that io_service.run() blocks until the io_service runs out of work.
With this in mind, the clear solution is to run io_service.run() from another thread. The relevant code snippets are
void SpikingMatrixClient::connect() {
Ui::ConnectDialog ui;
QDialog *dialog = new QDialog;
ui.setupUi(dialog);
if (dialog->exec()) {
QString host = ui.lineEditHost->text();
QString port = ui.lineEditPort->text();
connection = TcpConnection::create(io);
boost::system::error_code error = connection->connect(host, port);
if (!error) {
io = boost::shared_ptr<boost::asio::io_service>(new boost::asio::io_service);
work = boost::shared_ptr<boost::asio::io_service::work>(new boost::asio::io_service::work(*io));
io_threads.create_thread(boost::bind(&SpikingMatrixClient::runIo, this, io));
}
QString message = QString::fromStdString(error.message());
this->ui->statusBar->showMessage(message, 15000);
}
}
for connecting & starting IO, where:
work is a private boost::shared_ptr to the boost::asio::io_service::work object it was passed,
io is a private boost::shared_ptr to a boost::asio::io_service,
connection is a boost::shared_ptr to my connection wrapper class, and the connect() call uses a resolver etc. to connect the socket, there's plenty examples of that around
and io_threads is a private boost::thread_group.
Surely it could be shortened with some typedefs if needed.
TcpConnection is my own connection wrapper implementation, which sortof lacks functionality for now, and I suppose I could move the whole thread thing into it when it gets reinstated. This snippet should be enough to get the idea anyway...
The disconnecting part goes like this:
void SpikingMatrixClient::disconnect() {
work.reset();
io_threads.join_all();
boost::system::error_code error = connection->disconnect();
if (!error) {
connection.reset();
}
QString message = QString::fromStdString(error.message());
this->ui->statusBar->showMessage(message, 15000);
}
the work object is destroyed, so that the io_service can run out of work eventually,
the threads are joined, meaning that all work gets finished before disconnecting, thus data shouldn't get corrupted,
the disconnect() calls shutdown() and close() on the socket behind the scenes, and if there's no error, destroys the connection pointer.
Note, that there's no error handling in case of an error while disconnecting in this snippet, but it could very well be done, either by checking the error code (which seems more C-like), or throwing from the disconnect() if the error code within it represents an error after trying to disconnect.
I encountered a similar problem (callbacks not fired) but the circumstances are different from this question (io_service had jobs but still would not fire the handlers ). I will post this anyway and maybe it will help someone.
In my program, I set up an async_connect() then followed by io_service.run(), which blocks as expected.
async_connect() goes to on_connect_handler() as expected, which in turn fires async_write().
on_write_complete_handler() does not fire, even though the other end of the connection has received all the data and has even sent back a response.
I discovered that it is caused by me placing program logic in on_connect_handler(). Specifically, after the connection was established and after I called async_write(), I entered an infinite loop to perform arbitrary logic, not allowing on_connect_handler() to exit. I assume this causes the io_service to not be able to execute other handlers, even if their conditions are met because it is stuck here. ( I had many misconceptions, and thought that io_service would automagically spawn threads for each async_x() call )
Hope that helps.