I have been trying to find a solution to what seems to be relatively simple scenario. I have JavaScript running in an html page that makes a call to an XPcom that I have written in C++. So far, so good.
This XPcom retrieves a reference to the observer-service (do_GetService("#mozilla.org/observer-service;1")); fires a notify which is 'seen' by the JavaScript; the XPcom creates a windows thread (AFX), passes a copy of the observer-service reference and returns to the JavaScript caller; expecting the XPcom thread to send additional notifies at appropriate times (based on external events).
The notifies however fail to arrive in the JavaScript and my initial thought was the notify method will not deliver notifications from a 'different' thread. I've used the VStudio debugger to confirm the program sequence is as expected; ie the external event is being received by the thread and the notify method is being called... but, no notify event arrives.
I've read quite a few postings across the web and nothing really 'nails' the particular scenario I'm trying to address. I'm not married to the idea of using notify:
I've tried event notification via NS_DispatchToCurrentThread however that is not working out either because I don't have an "event" from the JavaScript side to deliver. I can create one of my own within the context of the XPcom and I can 'notify it'; but, that was just a POC to prove I could deliver events from XPcom; now I need for the JavaScript side to give me an event to notify;
I've tried passing a new'ed object as a nsiSupports arg; but, the DispatchToCurrentThread wants an nsiRunnable and I cannot figure out how to pass one of those (the idl file does not support);
I've also considered 'wrapping' the event with some sort of object that is compatible with nsiSupports; but, am unsure about the details of doing so.
The objective is quite simple. deliver asynchronous events or notifications from an XPcom thread to the main, or even sub, thread of the JavaScript; but, I'm getting less than 10% traction here.
Has anyone accomplished this, or have ideas as to how to get it done?
You are correct, the observer service works only on the main thread (check the return value of your Notify() call, it should be NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED). You are also correct as far as the solution goes - dispatch an event to the main thread, via NS_DispatchToMainThread(). As to the actual implementation, function NS_NewRunnableMethod() should help (unless you want to create your custom nsIRunnable implementation - e.g. to pass parameters). You probably want to do something like this:
nsCOMPtr<nsIRunnable> event = NS_NewRunnableMethod(xpcomComponent, &nsMyComponent::processEvent);
nsresult rv = NS_DispatchToMainThread(event);
Here xpcomComponent would be a reference to your XPCOM component instance and nsMyComponent::processEvent its method that needs to be called on main thread. That method would then be able to notify the observer.
Related
There's a bit of someone else's code I am trying to add functionality to. It's using websockets to communicate with a server which I will most likely not be able to change (the server runs on a 3$ micro-controller...)
The pattern used, for instance when uploading data to the server, consists in using global variables, then sending a series of messages on the socket, as well as having an 'onmessage' which will handle the response. This seems clumsy, given that it assumes that there is only ever one socket call made at a time (I think the server guarantees that in fact). The messages sent by the server can be multiple, and even figuring out when the messages are finished is fiddly.
I am thinking of making things so that I have a better handle on things, mostly w.r.t. being able to know when the response has arrived (and finished), going to patterns like
function save_file(name, data, callback) {
}
And perhaps at some point I can even turn them into async functions.
So couple of ideas:
- is there some kind of identifier that I could find in the websocket object that might allow me to better string together request and response?
- short of that, what is the right pattern? I started using custom events, that allows me to much better tie the whole process, where I can supply a callback by attaching it to the event, but even doing removeEventListener is tricky because I need to keep reference to every single listener to make sure I can remove them later.
Any advice anyone?
As far as I understand, in good practice, the UI code should invoke the logic whenever needed, but the logic should know nothing about the GUI ("loose coupling", see for example How can I separate the user interface from the business logic while still maintaining efficiency?).
I am currently writing a chrome web app that uses the chrome.serial api. Most functions from this api are non-blocking and instead invoke a callback function when their work is done. For example
chrome.serial.getDevices(callback)
searches for devices and than calls callback with a list of found devices.
Now, after chrome.serial.getDevices is called from the logic part of my code, its results ultimately have to be communicated back to the UI code.
How do I achieve clean UI/logic separation in this case? Does my UI need to register callback funcions with my logic code for every call it makes? That seems to violate the above principle of loose coupling and feels like it becomes very confusing very quickly.
You can use Promises. Initiate them in your controller code and pass them to the view. The view will then call its .then() method and display the result.
For example:
//controller.js
myAsyncTask = new Promise(resolve,reject=>{
chrome.serial.getDevices(resolve)
})
view(myAsyncTask);
//view.js
function view(myAsyncTask){
myAsyncTask.then(render);
}
If you are using build tools, such as Webpack or Browserify, then you can have your "logic object" extend Node's EventEmitter (there are other implementations that work in-browser, such as https://github.com/Olical/EventEmitter, if you don't want to bundle Node APIs in with a build tool).
Your "logic object", which is a specialized EventEmitter, operates the chrome async API, which contacts the serial devices, then processing the results according to your data layer rules, and then emits its own events when it has something useful for the UI.
The UI listens both listens to, and emits, events on your "logic object", depending on what's happening. Bonus: this event emitter can also be used by separate UI objects to communicate to each other, via events.
EventEmitter is the key that will make this kind of separation feel clean, simple, and extendable.
I know these types of question come up fairly often, but I need help with a wait-like mechanism in JavaScript. I know setTimeout-based solutions are going to come up, but I'm not sure how to pull it off in my case.
I'm writing an API that uses a WebSocket internally. There's a connect() method that sets up the WebSocket, and I need to make it not return until after the WebSocket is set up. I'd like it to return a value for whether or not the connection was successful, but that's not the main problem.
The issue I'm hitting is that after a user calls connect(), they may call another method that relies on the WebSocket to be properly set up. If it's called too early, an error is thrown stating that the object is not usable.
My current solution is setting a "connected" flag when I've determined a successful connection and in each method checking for it in each method. If it's not connected, I add the method call to a queue that is ran through by the same code that sets the flag. This works, but it introduces that style of code all over my methods and also seems misleading from the user-perspective, since the call of those functions is deferred. Also, if there is other user code that relies on those calls being completed before it gets to them, it won't behave as expected.
I've been racking my brain with how to handle this case. The easiest solution is to just find a way to block returning from connect until after the WebSocket is set up, but that's not really the JavaScript way. The other option was to make them provide the rest of their code in a callback, but that seems like a weird thing to do in this case. Maybe I'm over-thinking it?
Edit: To better illustrate my problem, here's a example of what the user could do:
var client = new Client(options);
client.connect();
client.getServerStatus();
The getServerStatus() method would be using the WebSocket internally. If the WebSocket is not set up yet, the user will get that not usable error.
Todays Javascript does not really work like that unfortunately. In the future (ECMA6) there may be new language features that address this issue more directly. However for now you are stuck with the currently accepted method of handling asynchronous events, which is limited to callbacks. You may also want to explore 'promises' to handle 'callback hell' however you will need a library for this.
And yes it does seem strange to have callbacks everywhere, especially for someone new to web programming, however it is really the only way to go about it at this stage (assuming you want a cross-browser friendly solution).
"Wait" is almost the keyword you are looking for. Actually, it's yield that does this. See e.g. MDN's documentation.
There's a connect() method that sets up the WebSocket, and I need to make it not return until after the WebSocket is set up
That isn't going to happen unless you rewrite the javascript execution engine.
Either the code trying to send data will need to check the socket state (I'd go with encapsulating the socket in a object, supplying a method which sets a member variable on the open/close events and poll the state of that member variable from the external code). Alternatively you could add messages and call backs to a queue and process the queue when the socket connects.
I've got a question about data flow that is summarized best by the image below:
I've got the data path from the UI (WaveMaker) down to the hardware working perfectly. The question I have is whether I'm missing something in the connection from the Java Service to Wavemaker.
I'm trying to provide information back to Wavemaker from the HW. The specifics of shared memory and semaphore signaling are worked out already. Where I'm running into a problem is how to get the data from the Java Service back to WaveMaker, when it hasn't specifically requested it. My plan was to generate events when the Java Service returned, but another engineer here insists that it won't work, since there's no direct call from Wavemaker and we don't want to poll.
What I proposed was to call the function after the page loaded, allow the blocking to occur at the .so level, as shown below, and then handle the return string when the call returned. We would then call the function again. That has the serious flaw of blocking out interaction with the user interface.
Another option put forth would be to use a hidden control, somehow pass it into Java, and invoke an event on it from Java, which could then be made to execute a script to update the UI with the HW response. That keeps the option of using threads alive, and possibly resolves the issue. Is there some more elementary way of getting information from Java->JavaScript->UI without it having been asked for?
I have seen this link: Implementing Mutual Exclusion in JavaScript.
On the other hand, I have read that there are no threads in javascript, but what exactly does that mean?
When events occur, where in the code can they interrupt?
And if there are no threads in JS, do I need to use mutexes in JS or not?
Specifically, I am wondering about the effects of using functions called by setTimeout() and XmlHttpRequest's onreadystatechange on globally accessible variables.
Javascript is defined as a reentrant language which means there is no threading exposed to the user, there may be threads in the implementation. Functions like setTimeout() and asynchronous callbacks need to wait for the script engine to sleep before they're able to run.
That means that everything that happens in an event must be finished before the next event will be processed.
That being said, you may need a mutex if your code does something where it expects a value not to change between when the asynchronous event was fired and when the callback was called.
For example if you have a data structure where you click one button and it sends an XmlHttpRequest which calls a callback the changes the data structure in a destructive way, and you have another button that changes the same data structure directly, between when the event was fired and when the call back was executed the user could have clicked and updated the data structure before the callback which could then lose the value.
While you could create a race condition like that it's very easy to prevent that in your code since each function will be atomic. It would be a lot of work and take some odd coding patterns to create the race condition in fact.
The answers to this question are a bit outdated though correct at the time they were given. And still correct if looking at a client-side javascript application that does NOT use webworkers.
Articles on web-workers:
multithreading in javascript using webworkers
Mozilla on webworkers
This clearly shows that javascript via web-workers has multithreading capabilities. As concerning to the question are mutexes needed in javascript? I am unsure of this. But this stackoverflow post seems relevant:
Mutual Exclusion for N Asynchronous Threads
Yes, mutexes can be required in Javascript when accessing resources that are shared between tabs/windows, like localStorage.
For example, if a user has two tabs open, simple code like the following is unsafe:
function appendToList(item) {
var list = localStorage["myKey"];
if (list) {
list += "," + item;
}
else {
list = item;
}
localStorage["myKey"] = list;
}
Between the time that the localStorage item is 'got' and 'set', another tab could have modified the value. It's generally unlikely, but possible - you'd need to judge for yourself the likelihood and risk associated with any contention in your particular circumstances.
See the following articles for a more detail:
Wait, Don't Touch That: Mutual Exclusion Locks & JavaScript - Medium Engineering
JavaScript concurrency and locking the HTML5 localStorage - Benjamin Dumke-von der Eh, Stackoverflow
As #william points out,
you may need a mutex if your code does something where it expects a
value not to change between when the asynchronous event was fired and
when the callback was called.
This can be generalised further - if your code does something where it expects exclusive control of a resource until an asynchronous request resolves, you may need a mutex.
A simple example is where you have a button that fires an ajax call to create a record in the back end. You might need a bit of code to protect you from trigger happy users clicking away and thereby creating multiple records. there are a number of approaches to this problem (e.g. disable the button, enable on ajax success). You could also use a simple lock:
var save_lock = false;
$('#save_button').click(function(){
if(!save_lock){
//lock
save_lock=true;
$.ajax({
success:function()
//unlock
save_lock = false;
}
});
}
}
I'm not sure if that's the best approach and I would be interested to see how others handle mutual exclusion in javascript, but as far as i'm aware that's a simple mutex and it is handy.
JavaScript is single threaded... though Chrome may be a new beast (I think it is also single threaded, but each tab has it's own JavaScript thread... I haven't looked into it in detail, so don't quote me there).
However, one thing you DO need to worry about is how your JavaScript will handle multiple ajax requests coming back in not the same order you send them. So, all you really need to worry about is make sure your ajax calls are handled in a way that they won't step on eachother's feet if the results come back in a different order than you sent them.
This goes for timeouts too...
When JavaScript grows multithreading, then maybe worry about mutexes and the like....
JavaScript, the language, can be as multithreaded as you want, but browser embeddings of the javascript engine only runs one callback (onload, onfocus, <script>, etc...) at a time (per tab, presumably). William's suggestion of using a Mutex for changes between registering and receiving a callback should not be taken too literally because of this, as you wouldn't want to block in the intervening callback since the callback that will unlock it will be blocked behind the current callback! (Wow, English sucks for talking about threading.) In this case, you probably want to do something along the lines of redispatching the current event if a flag is set, either literally or with the likes of setTimeout().
If you are using a different embedding of JS, and that executes multiple threads at once, it can get a bit more dicey, but due to the way JS can use callbacks so easily and locks objects on property access explicit locking is not nearly as necessary. However, I would be surprised if an embedding designed for general code (eg, game scripting) that used multi threading didn't also give some explicit locking primitives as well.
Sorry for the wall of text!
Events are signaled, but JavaScript execution is still single-threaded.
My understanding is that when event is signaled the engine stops what it is executing at the moment to run event handler. After the handler is finished, script execution is resumed. If event handler changed some shared variables then resumed code will see these changes appearing "out of the blue".
If you want to "protect" shared data, simple boolean flag should be sufficient.