Asynchronous method call in Python?

Question

I was wondering if there's any library for asynchronous method calls in Python. It would be great if you could do something like

@async
def longComputation():
    <code>


token = longComputation()
token.registerCallback(callback_function)
# alternative, polling
while not token.finished():
    doSomethingElse()
    if token.finished():
        result = token.result()

Or to call a non-async routine asynchronously

def longComputation()
    <code>

token = asynccall(longComputation())

It would be great to have a more refined strategy as native in the language core. Was this considered?

Answer 1

Just

import threading, time

def f():
    print "f started"
    time.sleep(3)
    print "f finished"

threading.Thread(target=f).start()

Answer 2

My solution is:

import threading

class TimeoutError(RuntimeError):
    pass

class AsyncCall(object):
    def __init__(self, fnc, callback = None):
        self.Callable = fnc
        self.Callback = callback

    def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.Thread = threading.Thread(target = self.run, name = self.Callable.__name__, args = args, kwargs = kwargs)
        self.Thread.start()
        return self

    def wait(self, timeout = None):
        self.Thread.join(timeout)
        if self.Thread.isAlive():
            raise TimeoutError()
        else:
            return self.Result

    def run(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.Result = self.Callable(*args, **kwargs)
        if self.Callback:
            self.Callback(self.Result)

class AsyncMethod(object):
    def __init__(self, fnc, callback=None):
        self.Callable = fnc
        self.Callback = callback

    def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        return AsyncCall(self.Callable, self.Callback)(*args, **kwargs)

def Async(fnc = None, callback = None):
    if fnc == None:
        def AddAsyncCallback(fnc):
            return AsyncMethod(fnc, callback)
        return AddAsyncCallback
    else:
        return AsyncMethod(fnc, callback)

And works exactly as requested:

@Async
def fnc():
    pass

Answer 3

Something like this works for me, you can then call the function, and it will dispatch itself onto a new thread.

from thread import start_new_thread

def dowork(asynchronous=True):
    if asynchronous:
        args = (False)
        start_new_thread(dowork,args) #Call itself on a new thread.
    else:
        while True:
            #do something...
            time.sleep(60) #sleep for a minute
    return

Answer 4

It's not in the language core, but a very mature library that does what you want is Twisted. It introduces the Deferred object, which you can attach callbacks or error handlers ("errbacks") to. A Deferred is basically a "promise" that a function will have a result eventually.

Answer 5

As of Python 3.5, you can use enhanced generators for async functions.

import asyncio
import datetime

Enhanced generator syntax:

@asyncio.coroutine
def display_date(loop):
    end_time = loop.time() + 5.0
    while True:
        print(datetime.datetime.now())
        if (loop.time() + 1.0) >= end_time:
            break
        yield from asyncio.sleep(1)


loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
# Blocking call which returns when the display_date() coroutine is done
loop.run_until_complete(display_date(loop))
loop.close()

New async/await syntax:

async def display_date(loop):
    end_time = loop.time() + 5.0
    while True:
        print(datetime.datetime.now())
        if (loop.time() + 1.0) >= end_time:
            break
        await asyncio.sleep(1)


loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
# Blocking call which returns when the display_date() coroutine is done
loop.run_until_complete(display_date(loop))
loop.close()

Answer 6

You can use concurrent.futures (added in Python 3.2).

import time
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor


def long_computation(duration):
    for x in range(0, duration):
        print(x)
        time.sleep(1)
    return duration * 2


print('Use polling')
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=1) as executor:
    future = executor.submit(long_computation, 5)
    while not future.done():
        print('waiting...')
        time.sleep(0.5)

    print(future.result())

print('Use callback')
executor = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=1)
future = executor.submit(long_computation, 5)
future.add_done_callback(lambda f: print(f.result()))

print('waiting for callback')

executor.shutdown(False)  # non-blocking

print('shutdown invoked')