I have created a (somewhat) simple telnet server, which creates a new thread for each connection:
void TelnetServer::incomingConnection(qintptr socketDescriptor)
{
TelnetConnection *thread = new TelnetConnection(socketDescriptor, this);
connect(thread, SIGNAL(shutdownRequested()), m_controller, SLOT(shutdown()));
connect(thread, SIGNAL(finished()), thread, SLOT(deleteLater()));
thread->start();
}
After I disconnect the telnet client, I expected the deleteLater() slot to be called. However, findchildren of the telnet server shows that my QThread object for the (just disconnected) session still exists. It's as if the finished signal were not emitting.
As an experiment I tied the finished signal to a function that Qdebug's "FINISHED"...and it never appears. Can someone explain why the finished signal is not emitting after I disconnect the telnet client?
I am assuming that calling thread.disconnectClient() terminates the thread...but perhaps that's an incorrect assumption? To I have to quit the exec loop for the thread?
If you disconnect a running thread, and you do not have proper treatment, the finished signal is not supposed to be called, so this is normal.
You could hook up the delete later or the disconnect "signal" that you establish, but you need to make sure to properly quit the thread.
Related
I have two functions which has to be executed after specific interval of time. So I create two threads and each function is executed in separate threads. One of the function "checkForEvent()" has a Event which is waiting for an event to happen.
When the "checkForEvent()" function is waiting for an event the other function "checkServer()" is not being executed even though it is run in a separate thread.
dongleThread = new QThread(this);
checkDongle = new QTimer();
checkDongle->setInterval(DONGLE_CHECK_TIMER);
checkDongle->moveToThread(dongleThread);
connect(checkDongle, SIGNAL(timeout()), this, SLOT(checkForEvent()));
connect(dongleThread, SIGNAL(started()), checkDongle, SLOT(start()));
dongleThread->start();
serverThread = new QThread(this);
checkServer = new QTimer();
checkServer->setInterval(SERVER_CHECK_TIMER);
checkServer->moveToThread(serverThread);
connect(checkServer, SIGNAL(timeout()), this, SLOT(checkServer()));
connect(serverThread, SIGNAL(started()), checkServer, SLOT(start()));
serverThread->start();
checkForEvent() //This function is waiting for an Event
checkServer()
How can I execute both the functions in separate threads ?
Thank you!!
Your connect call uses the default connection type: Qt::AutoConnection. Here is what this means:
Qt::AutoConnection: If the receiver lives in the thread that emits the signal, Qt::DirectConnection is used. Otherwise, Qt::QueuedConnection is used. The connection type is determined when the signal is emitted.
Here your QTimer and this are in a different thread. It means Qt::QueuedConnection will be used.
Qt::QueuedConnection: The slot is invoked when control returns to the event loop of the receiver's thread. The slot is executed in the receiver's thread.
So your two slots are called in the thread of this. If one is blocking, the other one will never run.
One way of fixing the problem is having a worker object moved to its own thread. The worker object would call checkForEvent and emit a signal after the wait is over. This signal can be connected to checkServer in this. With this, you need only one thread. You can look at the documentation of QThread for more information about worker objects.
I've come across the problem, that I might be sending signals from one QThread to another, however I have no way of checking if the thread that is implementing the slot is running. How will the framework handle such a situation while using Qt::QueuedConnection ?
...
WorkerImp* pWorker = new WorkerImp();
QThread worker;
pWorker->moveToThread(&worker);
QObject::connect(&worker, QThread::finished, pWorker, &QObject::deleteLater, Qt::QueuedConnection);
bool connected = QObject::connect(this, &SlaveMaster::requireWork, pWorker, &WorkerImp::doWork, Qt::QueuedConnection);
assert(connected);
// at this point we have connected the signal, thread is not starded.
// however the object that we use to connect still exists and will after we exit the thread.
worker.start();
worker.exit();
worker.wait();
// note that when we exit the QThread we do not destroy the object - it can be start over
emit requireWork();
...
The signal is never handled. A queued connection across threads is posted as an event to the thread, handled by its event loop. If the thread is stopped (and thus its event loop), there is no one to pick up the event and deliver it:
From the Qt Docs Signals and Slots Across Threads:
Queued Connection: The slot is invoked when control returns to the event loop of the receiver's thread. The slot is executed in the receiver's thread.
and Per-Thread Event Loop:
[...] If no event loop is running, events won't be delivered to the object.
Note that a blocking queued connection would dead-lock
I am working on an application where I use QThread to capture frames of camera (OpenCV). I followed the approach described here and moved a worker to the QThread:
m_CameraCaptureThread= new QThread();
m_ProcessingThread= new QThread();
m_CameraCapture= new CCameraCapture();
//Move camera capture object to thread
m_CameraCapture->moveToThread(m_CameraCaptureThread);
//Connect error signal
QObject::connect(m_CameraCapture, SIGNAL(error(QString,QString)), this, SLOT(reportError(QString,QString)));
//Connect the finished signal of the worker class to the thread for quitting the loop
QObject::connect(m_CameraCapture, SIGNAL(finished()), m_CameraCaptureThread, SLOT(quit()));
//This connections guarantees that the *m_CVideoCapture is automatically deleted if the event loop of the thread is terminated. Therefore, m_CVideoCapture does not need to be released manually if the capturing process is stopped.
QObject::connect(m_CameraCaptureThread, SIGNAL(finished()), m_CameraCaptureThread, SLOT(deleteLater()));
QObject::connect(m_CameraCapture, SIGNAL(finished()), m_CameraCapture, SLOT(deleteLater()));
QObject::connect(this, SIGNAL(exitThreads()), m_CameraCapture, SLOT(exitThread()));
This code is part of the constructor of my camera handler class. If the main application is closed I want to exit all threads. Therefore, the destructor of my CCameraHandler is:
CCameraHandler::~CCameraHandler(void)
{
emit exitThreads();
qDebug() << "CCameraHandler deleted";
}
The exit Slot in my camera capture which is called by the signal exitThreads() is:
void CCameraCapture::exitThread(){
//Stop grabbing
stopGrabbing();
//Emit finished signal which should be connected to quit() of QThread and deleteLate of this class;
emit finished();
}
As one can see from the connection setup the emitted finished() signal will quit the event loop of the thread and call deleteLater() of the Worker and the Thread. The destructor of the worker which is called looks like:
CCameraCapture::~CCameraCapture(void)
{
qDebug() << "CCameraCapture deleted";
}
The result is that the Destructor of CCameraCapture is called correctly - it appears only one time in the QDebug stream but at the end of CCameraCapture::~CCameraCapture(void) scope. I get an access violation error from OpenCVs opencv_highgui249d.dll. As I am only using:
cv::VideoCapture m_Cap;
in the class definition of CCameraCapture, the destruction of m_Cap must cause this error. At the moment I really do not know how to solve this issue. Any ideas?
Edit:
The application should close when the main window is closed using
this->setAttribute(Qt::WA_DeleteOnClose);
and
CMainWindow::~CMainWindow(){
m_CameraHandler->deleteLater();
m_ImageWidget->deleteLater();
m_ProcessedImageWidget->deleteLater();
emit windowClosed();
qDebug() << "CMainWindow deleted";
}
If the main application is closed I want to exit all threads.
Without debugging this myself, it looks like a problem here is the emit in the destructor of CCameraHandler.
One reason this is problematic is that if the user closes the application and it quits the main event loop, (started with QApplication's call to exec), any objects that have had deleteLater called may not actually be deleted. In this case, I'm specifically looking at m_CameraCaptureThread.
If we walk through the event handling of signals / slots: -
QApplication::processEvents...
CCameraCapture::exitThread()
emit finished
QThread::quit
QThread::deleteLater
By calling deleteLater, an event is placed in the current thread's event queue to process the delete after the slot function has exited. This occurs when the event loop next processes events.
However, the application is going to quit, so the event loop does not run again and the call to deleteLater is not serviced.
If all objects are running in the same thread, then signal / slot connections are direct, which would be less of an issue. However, with multiple threads, the connections are queued.
I suggest changing the destructor so that you clean up without using an emit signal here and see if the problem still persists.
Finally solved the problem: The application terminated before the threads left their eventloop. The point that a camera capture thread usually never terminates makes it necessary to exit the capturing loop at some point. If this exit is triggered by closing the application one needs to exit the threads before the application closes. I follow this example (see above). However, as the loop never terminates one needs emit a signal from the main thread to terminate. If this is done on close of the application, the signal will not arrive in time. Therefore, I connected the finished() signal of QThread to the deleteLater() of the worker
QObject::connect(m_CameraCaptureThread, SIGNAL(finished()), m_CameraCapture, SLOT(deleteLater()));
QObject::connect(m_CameraCaptureThread, SIGNAL(finished()), m_CameraCaptureThread, SLOT(deleteLater()));
The finished signal will be emitted on exit of the event loop and will delete the QThread and the worker. In the destructor of the class which sets up the QThread and the worker I now use
CCameraHandler::~CCameraHandler(void)
{
emit stopGrabbing();
m_CameraCaptureThread->exit();
m_CameraCaptureThread->wait();
qDebug() << "CCameraHandler deleted";
}
At first I left out the wait and the application still crashed. For me this solved the problem. Thanks for the help to figure out this solution.
After lots of experimentation and learning from stackoverflow, I've create a QObject worker, a QThread, and moved my QObject worker to my QThread, and started the QThread - and it's working!
void TelnetServer::incomingConnection(qintptr socketDescriptor)
{
QThread * TelnetConnectionThread = new QThread(this);
TelnetConnection *worker = new TelnetConnection(socketDescriptor,TelnetConnectionThread);
connect(TelnetConnectionThread, SIGNAL(started()), worker, SLOT(start()));
connect(TelnetConnectionThread, SIGNAL(finished()), worker, SLOT(deleteLater()));
worker->moveToThread(TelnetConnectionThread);
TelnetConnectionThread->start(); // Start the thread running
}
I assume that calling TelnetConnectionThread->start() starts the eventloop within the QThread (since it seems to be running). Now the problem...how do I stop the thread? I tried:
QThread::quit();
but the thread is still running when I shutdown the app. Does this mean the exec loop is not running? Do I have to do something else to stop this thread? Or is it actually stopped but just not deleted?
It's a bad idea to kill running thread, from design and technical points of view.
Usually the thread must own the decision to quit based on "terminate" flag. For example create new flag "stop", if quit() slot is signaled mark the flag true. In a thread function verify the flag periodically and if it's true - exit thread function.
I want to inform an object when a thread has finished running. However, I cannot get the thread to exit properly. I have the following code:
Processor.cpp
thread = new QThread;
tw = new ThreadWorker;
connect(tw, SIGNAL(updateStatus(QString)), this, SLOT(statusUpdate(QString)));
tw->doSetup(thread, strDic);
tw->moveToThread(thread);
thread->start();
while(thread->isRunning())
{
}
qDebug() << "Thread Finished";
ThreadWorker.cpp
void ThreadWorker::doSetup(QThread *thread, const string &path)
{
_strPath = path;
connect(thread, SIGNAL(started()), this, SLOT(run()));
connect(this, SIGNAL(finished()), thread, SLOT(quit())); //tried terminate() also
}
void ThreadWorker::run()
{
DirectorySearch dicSearch;
vector<string> vecFileList = dicSearch.getFileList(_strPath);
emit updateStatus("Directory Fetched");
emit finished();
}
The quit() slot does not seem to stop the thread (QThread::isFinished never returns true). Can someone guide me in the right direction?
(Note: ThreadWorker does not inherit from QThread)
Assuming that Processor.cpp is running in your main thread, the while(thread->isRunning()) loop has your main thread completely tied up. This means that your application's event loop cannot do any processing so the signalupdateStatus() for example, will never get processed. As mentioned in the comments, since the QThread object is created by the main thread, its signals won't work either since they will also require the main event loop to be doing its thing. Besides, if you are waiting in your main thread for your worker thread to do something, why use a worker thread at all? :)
Try removing the while loop, add a slot workDone() (or whatever you want to call it) to Processor.cpp and connect that to your Threadworker's finished() signal.
I had the same problem and found the answer. Here is my question:
What is the use of QThread.wait() function?
To solve your problem, you don't need to run the QCoreApplication::instance()->processEvents() in your while loop, what you need to do is, instead of invoking the quit() which tries to send a signal to your creating thread's event loop (which is now blocked by the while loop), you have to call it directly.
So for your code, drop the line:
connect(this, SIGNAL(finished()), thread, SLOT(quit())); //tried terminate() also
And instead of:
emit finished();
Use:
this->thread()->quit();
Tada... problem solved. Lesson learned: don't try to exit a worker thread by the qt signal-slot mechanism from within it, because your signals do not end up where they are supposed to (your worker thread's event loop), but they end up in the creating thread instead. You never know what that thread is doing, and if its event loop is running or not, and this shouldn't be of business to your worker thread anyways... Instead, call the quit directly.
You can use Qt::DirectConnection:
connect(this, SIGNAL(finished()), thread, SLOT(quit()), Qt::DirectConnection);
This stops the thread.
Instead of doing your 'doSetup' function... before you moveToThread, setup connections between SINGALS on tw's parent and SLOTS in tw.
I would do 4 connections.
First is to the run method in ThreadWorker. Thats simple and self explainatory enough.
Second is from your finished signal to the third SIGNAL connection below. A SIGNAL that quits the thread
Third to a SIGNAL that should call the terminate() slot of the thread. This will effectively close the event loop setup when you connect to the run method (exec is auto called when you do a start()) and since your run method isn't a loop of some sort, will close the thread without issue.
Forth is from the thread's terminated() SIGNAL to a SLOT in tw's parent. This will show you when the thread is dead if you want to do something at that point.
You do the above connections (if you need to pass in the string, add a variable to the run method and corresponding SIGNAL connection and you'll have the data), move to thread, thread start, then do the SIGNAL attached to the run method. Let it do its thing. When its finished, it will do a finished signal that gets tied to another signal that gets tied to the threads terminated slot. This will kill the event loop and exit the thread, pushing a terminated signal out so you can then do something.