I'm writing a program that among other things needs to download a file given its URL. I'm too lazy to implement the Http/Https protocols manually, so that I needed some library/object/function that'll do the job.
Critical requirement: The download must be asynchronous. That is, the thread that issued the download must be able to do something else "while" downloading the file, plus the download must be able to be aborted anytime without any barbaric side effects (such as internal call to TerminateThread).
Nice-to-have requirements:
Should be able to download the file "into memory". Means - read the contents of the file as they arrive, not necessarily save it into some "file system" file.
It'd be nice to have some convenient Win32 progress notification mechanism (waitable event, semahpore, completion port, etc.), rather than just periodically polling the download status.
I've chosen the XmlHttpRequest COM object to do the work. It seemed to work fine enough, plus it supported asynchronous mode.
However I noticed that after some period it just stops working.
That is, after several successful file downloads it stops downloading anything.
I periodically poll it to get its status, it reports "in-progress", but nothing actually happens, and there's no network activity. Moreover, when the same process creates another instance of XmlHttpRequest object to perform new downloads - the effect is the same. The object reports "in progress", whereas it doesn't even try to connect to the server (according to network sniffers and system TCP state).
The only way to make this object work back is to restart the process. This makes me suspect that there's a sort of a bug (sorry, I meant undocumented feature) in the object. Also it's not a bug at the level of an individual object, since the problem persists when the object is destroyed and another one is created. It's probably some global state of the DLL that implements this object.
Does anyone know something about this? Is this a known bug?
I'm pretty sure there's no chance that I have another bug in my code, because of which it seems to me to be the bug is in the XmlHttpRequest. I've done enoughtests and spent time with the debugger to conclude without reasonable doubt that it's just the object stops working.
BTW, while the object should work, I do all the waiting via MsgWaitXXXX API calls. So that if this object needs the message loop to work properly (for instance, it may create a hidden notification window and bind it to a socket via WSAAsyncSelect) - I give it the opportunity.
I know from my own experiences that the Microsoft implementation of the XmlHttpRequest falls short of full compliance with the draft standard. In particular the standard mandates that streamed data should be able to be extracted in ready state '3' (Receiving) which IE deliberately ignores.
Unfortunately I have not seen what you are describing despite using XmlHttpRequest objects extensively for long polling purposes.
Related
I want to invoke CefV8Context::Eval function and get the returned value in browser process's UI thread. But the CEF3 C++ API Docs states that V8 handles can only be accessed from the thread on which they are created. Valid threads for creating a V8 handle include the render process main thread (TID_RENDERER) and WebWorker threads. Is that means I should use the inter-process communication (CefProcessMessage) to invoke that method and get the return value? If so, how to do this in synchronous mode?
Short answer: CefFrame::ExecuteJavaScript for simple requests will work. For more complex ones, you have to give up one level of synchronousness or use a custom message loop.
What I understand you want to do is to execute some Javascript code as part of your native App's UI Thread. There are two possibilities:
It's generic JS code, doesn't really access any variables or functions in your JS, and as such has not context. This means Cef can just spin up a new V8 context and execute your code - see CefFrame::ExecuteJavaScript(). To quote the examples on CEF's JS Integration link:
CefRefPtr browser = ...;
CefRefPtr frame = browser->GetMainFrame();
frame->ExecuteJavaScript("alert('ExecuteJavaScript works!');",
frame->GetURL(), 0);
It's JS code with a context. In this case, read on.
Yes - CEF is designed such that only the RenderProcess has access to the V8 engine, you'll have to use a CefProcessMessage to head over to the Browser and do the evaluation there. You sound like you already know how to do that. I'll link an answer of mine for others who don't and may stumble upon this later: Background process on the native function at Chromium Embedded Framework
The CEFProcessMessage from Browser to Render processes is one place where the request has to be synchronized.
So after your send your logic over to the render process, you'll need to do the actual execution of the javascript code. That, thankfully, is quite easy - the same JS integration link goes on to say:
Native code can execute JS functions by using the ExecuteFunction()
and ExecuteFunctionWithContext() methods
The best part - the execution seems to be synchronous (I say seems to, since I can't find concrete docs on this). The usage in the examples illustrates this:
if (callback_func_->ExecuteFunctionWithContext(callback_context_, NULL, args, retval, exception, false)) {
if (exception.get()) {
// Execution threw an exception.
} else {
// Execution succeeded.
}
}
You'll notice that the second line assumes that the first has finished execution and that the results of said execution are available to it. So, The CefV8Value::ExecuteFunction() call is by nature synchronous.
So the question boils down to - How do I post a CefProcessMessage from Browser to Renderer process synchronously?. Unfortunately, the class itself is not set up to do that. What's more, the IPC Wiki Page explicitly disallows it:
Some messages should be synchronous from the renderer's perspective.
This happens mostly when there is a WebKit call to us that is supposed
to return something, but that we must do in the browser. Examples of
this type of messages are spell-checking and getting the cookies for
JavaScript. Synchronous browser-to-renderer IPC is disallowed to
prevent blocking the user-interface on a potentially flaky renderer.
Is this such a big deal? Well, I don't really know since I've not come across this need - to me, it's ok since the Browser's message loop will keep spinning away waiting for something to do, and receive nothing till your renderer sends a process message with the results of JS. The only way the browser gets something else to do is when some interaction happens, which can't since the renderer is blocking.
If you really definitely need synchronousness, I'd recommend that you use your custom MessageLoop which calls CefDoMessageLoopWork() on every iteration. That way, you can set a flag to suspend loop work until your message is received from renderer. Note that CefDoMessageLoopWork() and CefRunMessageLoop() are mutually exclusive and cannot work with each other - you either manage the loop yourself, or let CEF do it for you.
That was long, and covers most of what you might want to do - hope it helps!
I have a server program which should run full time a day. If I want to change some parameters of it, Is there any way rather than shut down then restart way?
There are quite a few ways of doing this, including, but almost certainly not limited to:
You can maintain the parameters in a separate file so that the program will periodically check that file and update its internal information.
Similar to (1) but you can send some sort of signal to the application to get it to immediately re-read the file.
You can do either (1) or (2) but using shared memory rather than a configuration file.
You can have your program sit at the server end of an IPC conversation, so that a client can open up a connection to it to provide new parameters. Anything from a simple message queue to a full-blown HTTP server and associated pages.
Of course, all of these tend to need a fair amount of work in your program to get it to look for the new information.
You should take that into account when making your decision. By far the quickest solution to implement is to just (cleanly) kill off the process at something like 11:55pm then immediately restart it. It's simpler because your code probably already has the ability to load the information on startup, so this could be a simple cron one-liner.
Some people speak of laziness as a bad thing but that's not always the case :-)
If the Server maintains many alive connections from clients, restarting the server process is the last way you should consider. Except reloading configuration files, inserting a proxy process between clients and server can be another way.
The proxy process is Responsible for 2 things.
a. Maintaining the connection from clients and forwarding packets to Server for handling.
b. Judging weather the current server process(Server A) is alive and if it not, switching to another server(Server B) automatically.
Then you can change parameters by restart server without worrying about interrupting clients since there is always two(or more) servers running.
i know little about pipes but have used one to connect two processes in my code in visual C++. The pipe is working well, but I need to add error handling to the same, hence wanted to know what will happen to a pipe if the server creating it crashed and how do I recognize it from client process?
Also what will happen if the client process tried accessing the same pipe, after the server crash, if no error handling is put in place?
Edit:
What impact will be there on the memory if i keep creating new pipes (say by using system time as pipe name) while the previous was broken because of a server crash? Will these broken pipes be removed from the memory?
IIRC the ReadFile or WriteFile function will return FALSE and GetLastError() will return STATUS_PIPE_DISCONNECTED
I guess this kind of handling is implemented in your code, if not you should better add it ;-)
I just want to throw this out there.
If you want a survivable method for transferring data between two applications, you might consider using MSMQ or even bringing in BizTalk or another message platform.
There are several things to consider:
what happens if the server is rebooted or loses power?
What happens if the server application becomes unresponsive?
What happens if the server application is killed or goes away completely?
What is the appropriate response of a client application in each of the above?
Each of those contexts represent a potential loss of data. If the data loss is unacceptable then named pipes is not the mechanism you should be using. Instead you need to persist the messages somehow.
MSMQ, storing to a database, or even leveraging Biztalk can take care of the survivability of the message itself.
If 1 or 3 happens, then the named pipe goes away and must be recreated by a new instance of your server application. If #2 happens, then the pipe won't go away until someone either reboots the server or kills the server app and starts it again.
Regardless, the client application needs to handle the above issues. They boil down to connection failed problems. Depending on what the client does you might have it move into a wait state and let it ping the server every so often to see if it has come back again.
Without knowing the nature of the data and communication processes involved its hard to recommend a proper approach.
I have two applications running on my machine. One is supposed to hand in the work and other is supposed to do the work. How can I make sure that the first application/process is in wait state. I can verify via the resources its consuming, but that does not guarantee so. What tools should I use?
Your 2 applications shoud communicate. There are a lot of ways to do that:
Send messages through sockets. This way the 2 processes can run on different machines if you use normal network sockets instead of local ones.
If you are using C you can use semaphores with semget/semop/semctl. There should be interfaces for that in other languages.
Named pipes block until there is both a read and a write operation in progress. You can use that for synchronisation.
Signals are also good for this. In C it is called sendmsg/recvmsg.
DBUS can also be used and has bindings for variuos languages.
Update: If you can't modify the processing application then it is harder. You have to rely on some signs that indicate the progress. (I am assuming you processing application reads a file, does some processing then writes the result to an output file.) Do you know the final size the result should be? If so you need to check the size repeatedly (or whenever it changes).
If you don't know the size but you know how the processing works you may be able to use that. For example the processing is done when the output file is closed. You can use strace to see all the system calls including the close. You can replace the close() function with the LD_PRELOAD environment variable (on windows you have to replace dlls). This way you can sort of modify the processing program without actually recompiling or even having access to its source.
you can use named pipes - the first app will read from it but it will be blank and hence it will keep waiting (blocked). The second app will write into it when it wants the first one to continue.
Nothing can guarantee that your application is in waiting state. You have to pass it some work and get back a response. It might be transactions or not - application can confirm that it got the message to process before it starts to process it or after it was processed (successfully or not). If it does not wait, passing a piece of work should fail. Whether when trying to write to a TCP/IP socket or other means, or if timeout occurs. This depends on implementation, what kind of transport you are using and other requirements.
There is actually a way of figuring out if the process (thread) is in blocking state and waiting for data on a socket (or other source), but that means that client should be on the same computer and have access privileges required to do that, but that makes no sense other than debugging, which you can do using any debugger anyway.
Overall, the idea of making sure that application is waiting for data before trying to pass it that data smells bad. Not to mention the racing condition - what if you checked and it was OK, and when you actually tried to send the data, you found out that application is not waiting at that time (even if that is microseconds).
I have a remote server which handles various different commands, one of which is an event fetching method.
The event fetch returns right away if there is 1 or more events listed in the queue ready for processing. If the event queue is empty, this method does not return until a timeout of a few seconds. This way I don't run into any HTTP/socket timeouts. The moment an event becomes available, the method returns right away. This way the client only ever makes connections to the server, and the server does not have to make any connections to the client.
This event mechanism works nicely. I'm using the boost library to handle queues, event notifications, etc.
Here's the problem. While the server is holding back on returning from the event fetch method, during that time, I can't issue any other commands.
In the source code, XmlRpcDispatch.cpp, I'm seeing in the "work" method, a simple loop that uses a blocking call to "select".
Seems like while the handling of a method is busy, no other requests are processed.
Question: am I not seeing something and can XmlRpcpp (xmlrpc++) handle multiple requests asynchronously? Does anyone know of a better xmlrpc library for C++? I don't suppose the Boost library has a component that lets me issue remote commands?
I actually don't care about the XML or over-HTTP feature. I simply need to issue (asynchronous) commands over TCP in any shape or form?
I look forward to any input anyone might offer.
I had some problems with XMLRPC also, and investigated many solutions like GSoap and XMLRPC++, but in the end I gave up and wrote the whole HTTP+XMLRPC from scratch using Boost.ASIO and TinyXML++ (later I swaped TinyXML to expat). It wasn't really that much work; I did it myself in about a week, starting from scratch and ending up with many RPC calls fully implemented.
Boost.ASIO gave great results. It is, as its name says, totally async, and with excellent performance with little overhead, which to me was very important because it was running in an embedded environment (MIPS).
Later, and this might be your case, I changed XML to Google's Protocol-buffers, and was even happier. Its API, as well as its message containers, are all type safe (i.e. you send an int and a float, and it never gets converted to string and back, as is the case with XML), and once you get the hang of it, which doesn't take very long, its very productive solution.
My recomendation: if you can ditch XML, go with Boost.ASIO + ProtobufIf you need XML: Boost.ASIO + Expat
Doing this stuff from scratch is really worth it.