I'm building an iOS app using kotlin native and having problems with inter-thread communication.
In my app there is a class that makes an http request in a background thread (using coroutines) and needs to update the parent class state when the operation finishes. Something like this:
class Feed {
var items
fn update() {
asyncHttpRequest("http://myservice.com") { newItems ->
CoroutineScope(Dispatchers.Main).launch {
items = newItems
}
}
}
}
This fails because the feed object is frozen when passed as part of the lambda function context so it cannot be updated with the new items when the http background operation finishes.
What is the best way to design and implement something like this in kotlin-native?
Thank you!
One option would be to use atomics for modifying state concurrently:
AtomicReference
touchlab/Stately
Related
I have a function in my ViewModel in which I subscribe to some updates, I want to write a test that will check that after the subscribe is triggered, the specific function is called from the subscribe.
Here is how the function looks:
fun subscribeToTablesUpdates() {
dataManager.getTablesList()
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.subscribe { tablesList ->
updateTablesState(tablesList)
}
}
And this is the test that I wrote:
#Test
fun subscribeToTablesListTest() {
val mockedTablesList = mockk<List<Table>()
every {
viewModel.dataManager.getTablesList()
} returns Observable.just(mockedTablesList)
viewModel.subscribeToTablesUpdates()
verify {
viewModel.updateTablesState(mockedTablesList)
}
}
The issue is that I receive assertion exception without any another info and I don't know how to fix that.
Edit 1: subscribeToTableUpdates() is calling from the init block of ViewModel.
So basically the test itself was done right, but there were linking issue. Since the function of the VM was called from the init block the subscription happened only once, and that created a situation when at the time when I mocked the data service, the observer was already subscribed to the other service. Since the init block is called only once, there is no way to change the implementation of the data service to that observer.
After all this investigation the one thing which I successfully forgot came to my mind again: extract every external dependencies to constructors, so further you could substitute it for the test without any problems like this.
I'm using a popular library called RxRelay.
private val refreshPlaylists = ReplayRelay.create<Unit>()
refreshPlaylists
.map<Unit> { refresh ->
Log.d("Activity", Thread.currentThread().name)
}
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.subscribe()
refreshPlaylists.accept(Unit)
relayCheck.setOnClickListener {
refreshPlaylists.accept(Unit)
}
Output:
first accept: RxCachedThreadScheduler-2
onClickAccept: main
onClickAcceptSecond: main
Why is that?
The OnClickListener is called on the main thread, so refreshPlaylists.accept(Unit) is also called on the main thread.
The subscribeOn() operator has only effect on the subscription. Everything accepted afterwards will not regard this. Instead it will be emitted on the same thread as the call to accept().
Use observeOn() instead to change the thread the emitted values are observed on.
I'm using nServiceBus 5 and have created a number of host endpoints, two of which listen for database changes. (The specifics of how to do this can be found here). The intention is to have a service running in the background which publishes an event message using the Bus when notified to do so by the database listener.
The code which creates the database listener object and handles events is in the Start method, implemented as part of IWantToRunWhenBusStartsAndStops.
So - Is putting the code here likely to cause problems later on, for example if an exception is thrown (yes, I do have try/catch blocks, but I removed them from the sample code for clarity)? What happens when the Start method finishes executing?
Would I be better off with a constructor on my RequestNewQuoteSender class to instantiate the database listener as a class property and not use the Start method at all?
namespace MySample.QuoteRequest
{
public partial class RequestNewQuoteSender : IWantToRunWhenBusStartsAndStops
{
public void Start()
{
var changeListener = new DatabaseChangeListener(_ConnectionString);
// Assign the code within the braces to the DBListener's onChange event
changeListener.OnChange += () =>
{
// code to handle database change event
changeListener.Start(_SQLStatement);
};
// Now everything has been set up.... start it running.
changeListener.Start(_SQLStatement);
}
public void Stop() { LogInfo("Service Bus has stopped"); }
}
}
Your code seems fine to me.
Just a few small things:
Make changeListener a class field, so that it won't be GC (not 100% sure if it would be but just to make sure);
Unsubscribe from OnChange on the Stop() method;
You may also want to have a "lock" around changeListener.Start(_SQLStatement); and the Stop so that there are no racing conditions (I leave that one up to you to figure out if you need it or not);
Does this make sense ?
The problem: I'm crashing when I want to render my incoming data which was retrieved asynchronously.
The app starts and displays some dialog boxes using XAML. Once the user fills in their data and clicks the login button, the XAML class has in instance of a worker class that does the HTTP stuff for me (asynchronously using IXMLHTTPRequest2). When the app has successfully logged in to the web server, my .then() block fires and I make a callback to my main xaml class to do some rendering of the assets.
I am always getting crashes in the delegate though (the main XAML class), which leads me to believe that I cannot use this approach (pure virtual class and callbacks) to update my UI. I think I am inadvertently trying to do something illegal from an incorrect thread which is a byproduct of the async calls.
Is there a better or different way that I should be notifying the main XAML class that it is time for it to update it's UI? I am coming from an iOS world where I could use NotificationCenter.
Now, I saw that Microsoft has it's own Delegate type of thing here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh755798.aspx
Do you think that if I used this approach instead of my own callbacks that it would no longer crash?
Let me know if you need more clarification or what not.
Here is the jist of the code:
public interface class ISmileServiceEvents
{
public: // required methods
virtual void UpdateUI(bool isValid) abstract;
};
// In main XAML.cpp which inherits from an ISmileServiceEvents
void buttonClick(...){
_myUser->LoginAndGetAssets(txtEmail->Text, txtPass->Password);
}
void UpdateUI(String^ data) // implements ISmileServiceEvents
{
// This is where I would render my assets if I could.
// Cannot legally do much here. Always crashes.
// Follow the rest of the code to get here.
}
// In MyUser.cpp
void LoginAndGetAssets(String^ email, String^ password){
Uri^ uri = ref new URI(MY_SERVER + "login.json");
String^ inJSON = "some json input data here"; // serialized email and password with other data
// make the HTTP request to login, then notify XAML that it has data to render.
_myService->HTTPPostAsync(uri, json).then([](String^ outputJson){
String^ assets = MyParser::Parse(outputJSON);
// The Login has returned and we have our json output data
if(_delegate)
{
_delegate->UpdateUI(assets);
}
});
}
// In MyService.cpp
task<String^> MyService::HTTPPostAsync(Uri^ uri, String^ json)
{
return _httpRequest.PostAsync(uri,
json->Data(),
_cancellationTokenSource.get_token()).then([this](task<std::wstring> response)
{
try
{
if(_httpRequest.GetStatusCode() != 200) SM_LOG_WARNING("Status code=", _httpRequest.GetStatusCode());
String^ j = ref new String(response.get().c_str());
return j;
}
catch (Exception^ ex) .......;
return ref new String(L"");
}, task_continuation_context::use_current());
}
Edit: BTW, the error I get when I go to update the UI is:
"An invalid parameter was passed to a function that considers invalid parameters fatal."
In this case I am just trying to execute in my callback is
txtBox->Text = data;
It appears you are updating the UI thread from the wrong context. You can use task_continuation_context::use_arbitrary() to allow you to update the UI. See the "Controlling the Execution Thread" example in this document (the discussion of marshaling is at the bottom).
So, it turns out that when you have a continuation, if you don't specify a context after the lambda function, that it defaults to use_arbitrary(). This is in contradiction to what I learned in an MS video.
However by adding use_currrent() to all of the .then blocks that have anything to do with the GUI, my error goes away and everything is able to render properly.
My GUI calls a service which generates some tasks and then calls to an HTTP class that does asynchronous stuff too. Way back in the HTTP classes I use use_arbitrary() so that it can run on secondary threads. This works fine. Just be sure to use use_current() on anything that has to do with the GUI.
Now that you have my answer, if you look at the original code you will see that it already contains use_current(). This is true, but I left out a wrapping function for simplicity of the example. That is where I needed to add use_current().
I'm trying to figure out how can I use DispatcherHelperftom MVVM light toolkit in SL, but I can't find any example.
From home page of this framework I know that
DispatcherHelper class, a lightweight class helping you to create
multithreaded applications.
But I don't know how to use it.
How and for what I can use it?
You only need the DispatcherHelper when yo want to make changes to components on your UI thread, from code that runs on a different thread. E.g. in an Silverlight application you call a web service to retrieve some data asynchroneously, and now want to inform the Ui that the data is present via a OnNotifyPropertyChanged event.
First you have to initialize the DispatcherHelper. In Silverlight you do this in Application_Startup:
//initialize Dispatch helper
private void Application_Startup( object sender, StartupEventArgs e) {
RootVisual = new MainPage();
DispatcherHelper.Initialize();
}
In WPF the initialization is done in the static constructor of you App class:
static App() {
DispatcherHelper.Initialize();
}
Then in your event, handling the completion of your asnc call, use the following code to call RaisePropertyChanged on the UI thread:
DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(
() => RaisePropertyChanged(PowerStatePropertyName)
);
DispatcherHelper.BeginInvokeOnUl expects an Action so you can use any code in here just use
DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(
() => { /* complex code goes in here */ }
);
to do more complex tasks.