[WIP] APIs I expected/wanted on "first contact"

[carver]

Since this is roughly my first real contact with lahja, I wanted to write down my first impressions. I'll leave this open and [WIP] for a bit, as I collect my thoughts.

Custom APIs

An acknowledgment response

I have a request/response pair, but the response is super simple. Basically, I just want to know when it succeeds. So I don't want to have to define a custom response event type. I just want the caller to hang until the server responds.

This could look almost identical to the current Endpoint.subscribe() API (except I also want an async version, mentioned below). As soon as the handler exits, the vanilla response event is sent to acknowledge completion.

Response with a primitive value

I have a request, but just need a simple value back. Do I really need to define the response event?

Something like, client-side:

result = await endpoint.request(NeedsDoubling(3))
assert result == 6

# also, a blocking version:
endpoint.request_blocking(NeedsDoubling(3))

Server-side

async def doubler(event: NeedsDoubling):
  return event.operand * 2
endpoint.add_async_handler(NeedsDoubling, doubler)

# also
endpoint.add_handler(NeedsDoubling, lambda event: event.operand * 2)

Maybe the acknowledgement becomes redundant with this API, because you could just return None.

Connection Retries

If I start both the server and client and the client runs slightly before, I get a connection refused. I'd prefer to have it retry, at least for a while. Probably something like:

• connect_to_endpoints(ConnectionConfig, timeout=seconds_im_willing_to_wait)

There are likely more APIs that would benefit. Unsure what the default timeout should be, if any.

Synchronous versions

Sync versions of most APIs. I expect the call to block until success (probably by launching a new thread under the hood):

• Endpoint.connect_to_endpoints()
• Endpoint.broadcast()

Async versions

like Endpoint.subscribe(event, some_awaitable_handler)

[pipermerriam]

Distilled to the things that aren't already addressed in master or via one of the open pull requests.

• add Endpoints.connect_to_endpoint_nowait to core API
• ensure that connect_to_endpoint tolerates slow-to-appear IPC sockets as a tested feature.
• sending back primatives: https://github.com/ethereum/lahja/issues/90
• allow requesting an ack when an event is received: https://github.com/ethereum/lahja/issues/91

This also touches on something that is now possible, at least once #70 is merged, which is setting up the server-side request/response handlers using the EndpointAPI.subscribe API now that it accepts a coroutine as the handler.

[carver]

I suppose another thing to do is update the examples in https://github.com/ethereum/lahja/tree/master/examples -- which was where I ended up on first contact.

[carver]

So here's a toy example of something I'd like to do from inside a BaseIsolatedPlugin. I thought it would help give color to the API desires...

def stacked_calls_demo(bus):
    bus.start_serving('task-runner')
    # This ^ is where task requesters will send events

    # Task execution will sometimes need extra data, connect below...

    # Block below connection until the endpoint becomes available...
    data_gatherer = bus.connect_to_endpoint('DataGatherer', timeout=10)
    # In the real implementation, this is probably lazier, and doesn't connect until
    # the first data is needed.

    # spawn a thread when this event is received. event expects primitive bool response
    bus.add_handler(RequestLongTask, long_task_runner(data_gatherer))

    # block until sigint || sigterm
    bus.serve_forever()

@curry
def long_task_runner(data_gatherer, event) -> bool:
    """
    returns bool: whether the long task was completed successfully
    """
    if not is_data_available():
        # block until data retrieved
        data = data_gatherer.request(WantData())
        # in the real beam sync, this ^ would probably just be an ACK
        # and the data would be loaded direct from the DB
    else:
        data = get_data()                                                                                  
    
    result = do_long_processing(data)
    
    return is_result_valid(result)

Also, maybe this requires making a sync version of the isolated plugin. Maybe it doesn't matter that we're blocking the event loop if we're not using it anywhere in this plugin, but it feels wrong.

[cburgdorf]

@carver I've updated the examples and added tests to CI so that they don't break again https://github.com/ethereum/lahja/pull/101

[carver]

Also want to be able to run a broadcast from another thread using something like:

future = asyncio.run_coroutine_threadsafe(event_bus.request(GetSomeData(key)), loop)
data = future.result(timeout=10)

(courtesy of Brian )

This crashes (in v0.12.0) with:

  File ".../venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/lahja/endpoint.py", line 179, in run
    if self._loop != asyncio.get_event_loop():
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/asyncio/events.py", line 694, in get_event_loop
    return get_event_loop_policy().get_event_loop()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/asyncio/events.py", line 602, in get_event_loop
    % threading.current_thread().name)
RuntimeError: There is no current event loop in thread 'ThreadPoolExecutor-0_0'.

[lithp]

@carver I think you already figured this out since you got beam sync working but the RuntimeError is because the decorator runs too soon, ti's not async-aware. Wrapping the call to event_bus.request() in another coro is enough to get this working:

async def run_request(endpoint):
    return await endpoint.request(Request('hi'))

Here's a working (on 3.7.0) example of blocking an event-loop-less thread on a response from the endpoint: https://gist.github.com/lithp/13ca70023dfedb25ceab7703ed6e4207

I'm not sure exactly what we could do to make the decorator wait a little before checking the event loop but I'm sure it's possible to fix this, it might be worth opening a ticket just for this problem.

[carver]

I guess it's all really a tangent, because what I really want is a ThreadedEndpoint that will block on:

endpoint.request(GetSomeData(key))

[carver]

FWIW, this is a local lahja patch on v0.12.0 that I'm running, so I don't have to deal with the RuntimeError:

diff --git a/lahja/endpoint.py b/lahja/endpoint.py
index 20dae5e..366aa5b 100644
--- a/lahja/endpoint.py
+++ b/lahja/endpoint.py
@@ -175,11 +175,16 @@ class Endpoint:
         def run(self, *args, **kwargs):  # type: ignore
             if not self._loop:
                 self._loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
-
-            if self._loop != asyncio.get_event_loop():
-                raise Exception(
-                    'All endpoint methods must be called from the same event loop'
-                )
+            else:
+                try:
+                    current_loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
+                except RuntimeError:
+                    pass
+                else:
+                    if self._loop != asyncio.get_event_loop():
+                        raise Exception(
+                            'All endpoint methods must be called from the same event loop'
+                        )
 
             return func(self, *args, **kwargs)
         return cast(TFunc, run)