Event Loop

Overview

class Async::Reactor provides the event loop and sits at the root of any task tree. Work is scheduled by adding class Async::Task instances to the reactor. When you invoke Async::Reactor#async, the parent task is determined by calling Async::Task.current? which uses fiber local storage. A slightly more efficient method is to use Async::Task#async, which uses self as the parent task.

require 'async'

def sleepy(duration, task: Async::Task.current)
	task.async do |subtask|
		subtask.annotate "I'm going to sleep #{duration}s..."
		subtask.sleep duration
		puts "I'm done sleeping!"
	end
end

def nested_sleepy(task: Async::Task.current)
	task.async do |subtask|
		subtask.annotate "Invoking sleepy 5 times..."
		5.times do |index|
			sleepy(index, task: subtask)
		end
	end
end

Async do |task|
	task.annotate "Invoking nested_sleepy..."
	subtask = nested_sleepy
	
	# Print out all running tasks in a tree:
	task.print_hierarchy($stderr)
	
	# Kill the subtask
	subtask.stop
end

Thread Safety

Most methods of the reactor and related tasks are not thread-safe, so you'd typically have one reactor per thread or process.

Embedding Reactors

Async::Scheduler#run will run until the reactor runs out of work to do. To run a single iteration of the reactor, use Async::Scheduler#run_once

require 'async'

Console.logger.debug!
reactor = Async::Reactor.new

# Run the reactor for 1 second:
reactor.async do |task|
	task.sleep 1
	puts "Finished!"
end

while reactor.run_once
	# Round and round we go!
end

You can use this approach to embed the reactor in another event loop. For some integrations, you may want to specify the maximum time to wait to Async::Scheduler#run_once.

Stopping Reactors

Async::Reactor#stop will stop the current reactor and all children tasks.

Interrupting Reactors

Async::Reactor#interrupt can be called safely from a different thread (or signal handler) and will cause the reactor to exit with an Interrupt exception.