How to wait for several Futures

Question

Suppose I have several futures and need to wait until either any of them fails or all of them succeed.

For example: Let there are 3 futures: f1, f2, f3.

• If f1 succeeds and f2 fails I do not wait for f3 (and return failure to the client).

• If f2 fails while f1 and f3 are still running I do not wait for them (and return failure)

• If f1 succeeds and then f2 succeeds I continue waiting for f3.

How would you implement it?

Answer 1

Here is a solution without using actors.

import scala.util._
import scala.concurrent._
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger

// Nondeterministic.
// If any failure, return it immediately, else return the final success.
def allSucceed[T](fs: Future[T]*): Future[T] = {
  val remaining = new AtomicInteger(fs.length)

  val p = promise[T]

  fs foreach {
    _ onComplete {
      case s @ Success(_) => {
        if (remaining.decrementAndGet() == 0) {
          // Arbitrarily return the final success
          p tryComplete s
        }
      }
      case f @ Failure(_) => {
        p tryComplete f
      }
    }
  }

  p.future
}

Answer 2

This question has been answered but I am posting my value class solution (value classes were added in 2.10) since there isn't one here. Please feel free to criticize.

  implicit class Sugar_PimpMyFuture[T](val self: Future[T]) extends AnyVal {
    def concurrently = ConcurrentFuture(self)
  }
  case class ConcurrentFuture[A](future: Future[A]) extends AnyVal {
    def map[B](f: Future[A] => Future[B]) : ConcurrentFuture[B] = ConcurrentFuture(f(future))
    def flatMap[B](f: Future[A] => ConcurrentFuture[B]) : ConcurrentFuture[B] = concurrentFutureFlatMap(this, f) // work around no nested class in value class
  }
  def concurrentFutureFlatMap[A,B](outer: ConcurrentFuture[A], f: Future[A] => ConcurrentFuture[B]) : ConcurrentFuture[B] = {
    val p = Promise[B]()
    val inner = f(outer.future)
    inner.future onFailure { case t => p.tryFailure(t) }
    outer.future onFailure { case t => p.tryFailure(t) }
    inner.future onSuccess { case b => p.trySuccess(b) }
    ConcurrentFuture(p.future)
  }

ConcurrentFuture is a no overhead Future wrapper that changes the default Future map/flatMap from do-this-then-that to combine-all-and-fail-if-any-fail. Usage:

def func1 : Future[Int] = Future { println("f1!");throw new RuntimeException; 1 }
def func2 : Future[String] = Future { Thread.sleep(2000);println("f2!");"f2" }
def func3 : Future[Double] = Future { Thread.sleep(2000);println("f3!");42.0 }

val f : Future[(Int,String,Double)] = {
  for {
    f1 <- func1.concurrently
    f2 <- func2.concurrently
    f3 <- func3.concurrently
  } yield for {
   v1 <- f1
   v2 <- f2
   v3 <- f3
  } yield (v1,v2,v3)
}.future
f.onFailure { case t => println("future failed $t") }

In the example above, f1,f2 and f3 will run concurrently and if any fail in any order the future of the tuple will fail immediately.