Using Qt, I'm attempting to read the contents of the stdin stream in a non-blocking fashion. I'm using the QSocketNotifier to alert me when the socket has recieved some new data. The setup for the notifier looks like this:
QSocketNotifier *pNot = new QSocketNotifier(STDIN_FILENO, QSocketNotifier::Read, this);
connect(pNot, SIGNAL(activated(int)), this, SLOT(onData()));
pNot->setEnabled(true);
The onData() slot looks like this:
void CIPCListener::onData()
{
qDebug() << Q_FUNC_INFO;
QTextStream stream(stdin, QIODevice::ReadOnly);
QString str;
forever
{
fd_set stdinfd;
FD_ZERO( &stdinfd );
FD_SET( STDIN_FILENO, &stdinfd );
struct timeval tv;
tv.tv_sec = 0;
tv.tv_usec = 0;
int ready = select( 1, &stdinfd, NULL, NULL, &tv );
if( ready > 0 )
{
str += stream.readLine();
}
else
{
break;
}
}
qDebug() << "Recieved data:" << str;
}
As you can see I'm attempting to use the select() system call to tell me when I've run out of data to read. However, in practise what is happening is the select() call returns 0 after I've read the first line of text. So, for example, if I write 5 lines of text to the process's stdin stream, I only ever read the first line.
What could be the problem?
Line buffering.
Default is flushing after a "\n". If you write 5 lines to your process, your slot gets called 5 times. If you want to avoid that, you have to call setbuf(stdin, _IOFBF). But even then it is not guaranteed you can read arbitrarily large amounts of data in one chunk.
Edit: It would probably better to use QTextStream::atEnd() instead of select, since QTextStream has its own internal buffers.
I've found and example in other answer that fits almost to this question and with complete and simple code:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/7389622/721929
I've used it to implement a QT console based app with a textual menu to choose on user selection.
Related
I'm reading CAN-BUS traffic under SocketCAN and C++ in GNU/Linux. I've found that the read call is blocking, and I'm struggling to figure out how to stop my program properly when I don't want to keep reading.
Of course, I could hit Ctrl+C if I've invoked the program from the terminal, but the point is to find a way to do it programmatically when some condition is met (e.g., record for 5 seconds, or when some event happens, like a flag is raised). A timeout could work, or something like a signal, but I don't know how to do it properly.
// Read (blocking)
nbytes = read(s, &frame, sizeof(struct can_frame));
You don't.
Use a method like select or epoll to determine whether the socket has activity before beginning the read. Then it will not actually block.
The select/epoll call is itself blocking, but can be given a timeout so that you always have an escape route (or, in the case of epoll, the lovely epollfd for immediate triggering of a breakout).
Read is always blocking... you want to only read if data is waiting... so consider doing a poll on the socket first to see if data is available and if so THEN read it. You can loop over doing the poll until you no longer want to read anymore...
bool pollIn(int fd)
{
bool returnValue{false};
struct pollfd *pfd;
pfd = calloc(1, sizeof(struct pollfd));
pfd.fd = fd;
pfd.events = POLLIN;
int pollReturn{-1};
pollReturn = poll(pfd, 1, 0);
if (pollReturn > 0)
{
if (pfd.revents & POLLIN)
{
returnValue = true;
}
}
free(pfd);
return(returnValue);
}
The above should return if there is data waiting at the socket file descriptor.
while(!exitCondition)
{
if(pollIn(fd))
{
nbytes = read(fd, &frame, sizeof(struct can_frame));
// other stuff you need to do with your read
}
}
How do you do nonblocking console IO on Linux/OS X in C?
I want to add an example:
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char const *argv[])
{
char buf[20];
fcntl(0, F_SETFL, fcntl(0, F_GETFL) | O_NONBLOCK);
sleep(4);
int numRead = read(0, buf, 4);
if (numRead > 0) {
printf("You said: %s", buf);
}
}
When you run this program you have 4 seconds to provide input to standard in. If no input found, it will not block and will simply return.
2 sample executions:
Korays-MacBook-Pro:~ koraytugay$ ./a.out
fda
You said: fda
Korays-MacBook-Pro:~ koraytugay$ ./a.out
Korays-MacBook-Pro:~ koraytugay$
Like Pete Kirkham, I found cc.byexamples.com, and it worked for me. Go there for a good explanation of the problem, as well as the ncurses version.
My code needed to take an initial command from standard input or a file, then watch for a cancel command while the initial command was processed. My code is C++, but you should be able to use scanf() and the rest where I use the C++ input function getline().
The meat is a function that checks if there is any input available:
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/select.h>
// cc.byexamples.com calls this int kbhit(), to mirror the Windows console
// function of the same name. Otherwise, the code is the same.
bool inputAvailable()
{
struct timeval tv;
fd_set fds;
tv.tv_sec = 0;
tv.tv_usec = 0;
FD_ZERO(&fds);
FD_SET(STDIN_FILENO, &fds);
select(STDIN_FILENO+1, &fds, NULL, NULL, &tv);
return (FD_ISSET(0, &fds));
}
This has to be called before any stdin input function When I used std::cin before using this function, it never returned true again. For example, main() has a loop that looks like this:
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
std::string initialCommand;
if (argc > 1) {
// Code to get the initial command from a file
} else {
while (!inputAvailable()) {
std::cout << "Waiting for input (Ctrl-C to cancel)..." << std::endl;
sleep(1);
}
std::getline(std::cin, initialCommand);
}
// Start a thread class instance 'jobThread' to run the command
// Start a thread class instance 'inputThread' to look for further commands
return 0;
}
In the input thread, new commands were added to a queue, which was periodically processed by the jobThread. The inputThread looked a little like this:
THREAD_RETURN inputThread()
{
while( !cancelled() ) {
if (inputAvailable()) {
std::string nextCommand;
getline(std::cin, nextCommand);
commandQueue.lock();
commandQueue.add(nextCommand);
commandQueue.unlock();
} else {
sleep(1);
}
}
return 0;
}
This function probably could have been in main(), but I'm working with an existing codebase, not against it.
For my system, there was no input available until a newline was sent, which was just what I wanted. If you want to read every character when typed, you need to turn off "canonical mode" on stdin. cc.byexamples.com has some suggestions which I haven't tried, but the rest worked, so it should work.
You don't, really. The TTY (console) is a pretty limited device, and you pretty much don't do non-blocking I/O. What you do when you see something that looks like non-blocking I/O, say in a curses/ncurses application, is called raw I/O. In raw I/O, there's no interpretation of the characters, no erase processing etc. Instead, you need to write your own code that checks for data while doing other things.
In modern C programs, you can simplify this another way, by putting the console I/O into a thread or lightweight process. Then the I/O can go on in the usual blocking fashion, but the data can be inserted into a queue to be processed on another thread.
Update
Here's a curses tutorial that covers it more.
I bookmarked "Non-blocking user input in loop without ncurses" earlier this month when I thought I might need non-blocking, non-buffered console input, but I didn't, so can't vouch for whether it works or not. For my use, I didn't care that it didn't get input until the user hit enter, so just used aio to read stdin.
Here's a related question using C++ -- Cross-platform (linux/Win32) nonblocking C++ IO on stdin/stdout/stderr
Another alternative to using ncurses or threads is to use GNU Readline, specifically the part of it that allows you to register callback functions. The pattern is then:
Use select() on STDIN (among any other descriptors)
When select() tells you that STDIN is ready to read from, call readline's rl_callback_read_char()
If the user has entered a complete line, rl_callback_read_char will call your callback. Otherwise it will return immediately and your other code can continue.
Let`s see how it done in one of Linux utilites. For example, perf/builtin-top.c sources (simplified):
static void *display_thread(void *arg)
{
struct pollfd stdin_poll = { .fd = 0, .events = POLLIN };
struct termios save;
set_term_quiet_input(&save);
while (!done) {
switch (poll(&stdin_poll, 1, delay_msecs)) {
...
}
}
tcsetattr(0, TCSAFLUSH, &save);
}
So, if you want to check if any data available, you can use poll() or select() like this:
#include <sys/poll.h>
...
struct pollfd pfd = { .fd = 0, .events = POLLIN };
while (...) {
if (poll(&pfd, 1, 0)>0) {
// data available, read it
}
...
}
In this case you will receive events not on each key, but on whole line, after [RETURN] key is pressed. It's because terminal operates in canonical mode (input stream is buffered, and buffer flushes when [RETURN] pressed):
In canonical input processing mode, terminal input is processed in
lines terminated by newline ('\n'), EOF, or EOL characters. No input
can be read until an entire line has been typed by the user, and the
read function (see Input and Output Primitives) returns at most a
single line of input, no matter how many bytes are requested.
If you want to read characters immediately, you can use noncanonical mode. Use tcsetattr() to switch:
#include <termios.h>
void set_term_quiet_input()
{
struct termios tc;
tcgetattr(0, &tc);
tc.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO);
tc.c_cc[VMIN] = 0;
tc.c_cc[VTIME] = 0;
tcsetattr(0, TCSANOW, &tc);
}
Simple programm (link to playground):
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/poll.h>
#include <termios.h>
void set_term_quiet_input()
{
struct termios tc;
tcgetattr(0, &tc);
tc.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO);
tc.c_cc[VMIN] = 0;
tc.c_cc[VTIME] = 0;
tcsetattr(0, TCSANOW, &tc);
}
int main() {
struct pollfd pfd = { .fd = 0, .events = POLLIN };
set_term_quiet_input();
while (1) {
if (poll(&pfd, 1, 0)>0) {
int c = getchar();
printf("Key pressed: %c \n", c);
if (c=='q') break;
}
usleep(1000); // Some work
}
}
Not entirely sure what you mean by 'console IO' -- are you reading from STDIN, or is this a console application that reads from some other source?
If you're reading from STDIN, you'll need to skip fread() and use read() and write(), with poll() or select() to keep the calls from blocking. You may be able to disable input buffering, which should cause fread to return an EOF, with setbuf(), but I've never tried it.
I am developing an application in C++, winApi and Qt. What this application does is that it communicates through serial COM ports.
A user can open multiple pairs of ports and an opened port listens other port constantly.
To implement this functionality I use windows threads.There is a method named startRead() that reads from other port constantly and changes the text area.
void SendAndReceive::startRead(){
DWORD numRead = 0;
std::string hex;
while (1)
{
char *buffer = (char *)malloc(sizeof(char) * 500);
BOOL ret = ReadFile(portHandler, buffer, 500, &numRead, 0);
if (!ret)
{
std::string errorMessage = "";
}
buffer[numRead] = '\0';
std::string receivedData(buffer);
QString QData(receivedData.c_str());
if (ui->checkBox->isChecked())
{
std::string receivedData(buffer);
hex= stringToHex(receivedData);
QString QData1(hex.c_str());
emit asHex(QData1);
}
QString QData2(receivedData.c_str()) ;
emit finished(QData2);
free(buffer);
}
}
And there is another thread that writes data periodically to other port. For example , if you enter 2 seconds in a text line , the program writes data to other port at every 2 seconds and this method is writePeriodic().
void SendAndReceive::writePeriodic(){
DWORD numWritten;
while (1 && checkWrite == true )
{
Concurrency::wait(timePeriod*1000);
QString QData = ui->textEdit->toPlainText();
std::string data = QData.toStdString();
WriteFile(portHandler, data.c_str(), strlen(data.c_str()), &numWritten, NULL);
}
}
So when I run this program , program runs smoothly for 2 or 3 minutes and then it crashes and I get errors like "Program has stopped working" , "program closed unexpectedly".When I debug program , it says something like "Qt5Core not loaded" or "Qt5Gui not loaded".
Before I ask here , I did some search on the web . First I did not use emit finished(QString) signal , instead I directly manipulated GUI objects inside startRead() method.(I did something like ui->text_edit->setText(some QString)).But after some search I learn that I can not change GUI objects from another thread so I decided to use signal and slot mechanism and it has not solved my problem so far.I get same error again and again.Please tell me what I am doing wrong . If you need further explanation, I will happily give more details.
I have roughly created the following code to call a child process:
// pipe meanings
const int READ = 0;
const int WRITE = 1;
int fd[2];
// Create pipes
if (pipe(fd))
{
throw ...
}
p_pid = fork();
if (p_pid == 0) // in the child
{
close(fd[READ]);
if (dup2(fd[WRITE], fileno(stdout)) == -1)
{
throw ...
}
close(fd[WRITE]);
// Call exec
execv(argv[0], const_cast<char*const*>(&argv[0]));
_exit(-1);
}
else if (p_pid < 0) // fork has failed
{
throw
}
else // in th parent
{
close(fd[WRITE]);
p_stdout = new std::ifstream(fd[READ]));
}
Now, if the subprocess does not write too much to stdout, I can wait for it to finish and then read the stdout from p_stdout. If it writes too much, the write blocks and the parent waits for it forever.
To fix this, I tried to wait with WNOHANG in the parent, if it is not finished, read all available output from p_stdout using readsome, sleep a bit and try again. Unfortunately, readsome never reads anything:
while (true)
{
if (waitid(P_PID, p_pid, &info, WEXITED | WNOHANG) != 0)
throw ...;
else if (info.si_pid != 0) // waiting has succeeded
break;
char tmp[1024];
size_t sizeRead;
sizeRead = p_stdout->readsome(tmp, 1024);
if (sizeRead > 0)
s_stdout.write(tmp, sizeRead);
sleep(1);
}
The question is: Why does this not work and how can I fix it?
edit: If there is only child, simply using read instead of readsome would probably work, but the process has multiple children and needs to react as soon as one of them terminates.
As sarnold suggested, you need to change the order of your calls. Read first, wait last. Even if your method worked, you might miss the last read. i.e. you exit the loop before you read the last set of bytes that was written.
The problem might be is that ifstream is non-blocking. I've never liked iostreams, even in my C++ projects, I always liked the simplicity of C's stdio functions (i.e. FILE*, fprintf, etc). One way to get around this is to read if the descriptor is readable. You can use select to determine if there is data waiting on that pipe. You're going to need select if you are going to read from multiple children anyway, so might as well learn it now.
As for a quick isreadable function, try something like this (please note I haven't tried compiling this):
bool isreadable(int fd, int timeoutSecs)
{
struct timeval tv = { timeoutSecs, 0 };
fd_set readSet;
FD_ZERO(&readSet);
return select(fds, &readSet, NULL, NULL, &tv) == 1;
}
Then in your parent code, do something like:
while (true) {
if (isreadable(fd[READ], 1)) {
// read fd[READ];
if (bytes <= 0)
break;
}
}
wait(pid);
I'd suggest re-writing the code so that it doesn't call waitpid(2) until after read(2) calls on the pipe return 0 to signify end-of-file. Once you get the end-of-file return from your read calls, you know the child is dead, and you can finally waitpid(2) for it.
Another option is to de-couple the reading from the reaping even further and perform the wait calls in a SIGCHLD signal handler asynchronously to the reading operations.
I would like to connect to a listening server and transmit some data. I looked at the examples available but they seem to have extra functions that do not seem very helpful to me (i.e. connect, fortune, etc.). This is the code I have so far:
QTcpSocket t;
t.connectToHost("127.0.0.1", 9000);
Assuming the server is listening and robust, what do I need to implement to send a data variable with datatype QByteArray?
very simple with QTcpSocket. Begin as you did...
void MainWindow::connectTcp()
{
QByteArray data; // <-- fill with data
_pSocket = new QTcpSocket( this ); // <-- needs to be a member variable: QTcpSocket * _pSocket;
connect( _pSocket, SIGNAL(readyRead()), SLOT(readTcpData()) );
_pSocket->connectToHost("127.0.0.1", 9000);
if( _pSocket->waitForConnected() ) {
_pSocket->write( data );
}
}
void MainWindow::readTcpData()
{
QByteArray data = pSocket->readAll();
}
Be aware, though, that for reading from the TcpSocket you may receive the data in more than one transmission, ie. when the server send you the string "123456" you may receive "123" and "456". It is your responsibility to check whether the transmission is complete. Unfortunately, this almost always results in your class being stateful: the class has to remember what transmission it is expecting, whether it has started already and if it's complete. So far, I haven't figured out an elegant way around that.
In my case I was reading xml data, and sometimes I would not get all in one packet.
Here is an elegant solution. WaitForReadyRead could also have a time out in it and
then some extra error checking in case that timeout is reached. In my case I should never
receive an incomplete xml, but if it did happen this would lock the thread up indefinetly
without the timeout:
while(!xml.atEnd()) {
QXmlStreamReader::TokenType t = xml.readNext();
if(xml.error()) {
if(xml.error() == QXmlStreamReader::PrematureEndOfDocumentError) {
cout << "reading extra data" << endl;
sock->waitForReadyRead();
xml.addData(sock->readAll());
cout << "extra data successful" << endl;
continue;
} else {
break;
}
}
...