SDL_PollEvent indepth - c++

Question

Here is a part of SDL2 code
SDL main function
int main(int argc,char *argv[])
{
...
...
bool quit=false;
SDL_Event e;
while(!quit) ///First while (say)
{
while(SDL_PollEvent(&e)) ///Second while (say)
{
if(e.type==SDL_QUIT)
{
quit=true;
}
handleEvent(e) ;///Function for executing certain event
}
...
SDL_RenderPresent((SDL_Renderer)renderer);
}
}
My question is,what does this SDL_PollEvent() actually do ,and suppose an event occur does the execution goes out of the second while() and call the SDL_RenderPresent() or it waits for all the events to take poll and then SDL_RenderPresent() is called , i am totally confused ?

Answer 1

The above is a very common single thread event loop:
Basically the application is constantly inside the outer while loop. To get the smoothest user experience we try to keep this loop under 17ms (for a 60 frames a sec rate)
Every 'frame' starts by responding to all the events that are waiting in the queue (the inner while):
while(SDL_PollEvent(&e)) ///Second while (say)
{
if(e.type==SDL_QUIT)
{
quit=true;
}
handleEvent(e) ;///Function for executing certain event
}
Events are notifications from the operating system that something happened. It might be that the window is closing SDL_QUIT or that the mouse was moved.
You must respond to these events for the application to be responsive. Usually the response is to change the state of the application.
For example we might see a left-mouse is down event we might find what is "under" the mouse button and indicate that it is now selected. This is normally just finding the object and calling a function that will change its state. All that changes is the boolean value that indicates the object is now selected.
Maybe moving the mouse needs to change the point of view of the next frame so we will update the vector that stores the direction we are looking at. So we update the vector in memory.
You may have long stretches where the event queue is empty and the application does not have any events to handle. And there might be flurries of activity (for instance the user moving the mouse) where you will get lots of events to respond to.
SDL_PollEvent will not "wait" for events. If there is an event in the queue you will get the information. If there is no event it will return false.
Handling events should be done quickly (remember we have to be finished in 17ms) don't worry it is quite a lot of time on a PC.
Once you are done with all the events and out of the inner loop you are ready to move on to updating the world and rendering.
At this point you will normally do stuff like AI. Calling physics engine. For instance you might iterate over the objects and change their position based on their velocity.
The next step is to actually do the drawing.
SDL_RenderClear(renderer);
...
SDL_RenderPresent((SDL_Renderer)renderer);
The first call will clear the screen. You then go and based on the state of different objects do the rendering. For instance maybe because we changed the object state to selected we will now draw a glowing border around it.
Your final call is for SDL_RenderPresent(renderer) to present the new screen to the user
If you are using Vsync (quite common) then this final call will hide a small wait time to synch the screen update with the graphics card capabilities. This will produce a smoother graphics. Assuming a 60Hz refresh rate (60 frames per second) and assuming you are running under 16.6 ms in your frame rendering logic the app will wait the remaining time.
Now the application is ready to go back to the start of the loop and check if there are any events in SDL_PollEvent. Since the entire loop typically only takes a few milliseconds the application will always feel responsive.