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Cool.io

Cool.io is an event library for Ruby, built on the libev event library which provides a cross-platform interface to high performance system calls . This includes the epoll system call for Linux, the kqueue system call for BSDs and OS X, and the completion ports interface for Solaris.

Cool.io also binds asynchronous wrappers to Ruby's core socket classes so you can use them in conjunction with Cool.io to build asynchronous event-driven applications.

You can include Cool.io in your programs with:

require 'cool.io'

Anatomy

Cool.io builds on two core classes which bind to the libev API:

• Cool.io::Loop - This class represents an event loop which uses underlying high performance system calls to wait for events.

• Cool.io::Watcher - This is the base class for event observers. Once you attach an event observer to a loop and start running it, you will begin receiving callbacks to particlar methods when events occur.

Watchers

There are presently four types of watchers:

• Cool.io::IOWatcher - This class waits for an IO object to become readable, writable, or both.

• Cool.io::TimerWatcher - This class waits for a specified duration then fires an event. You can also configure it to fire an event at specified intervals.

• Cool.io::StatWatcher - Monitors files or directories for changes

• Cool.io::AsyncWatcher - Can be used to wake up a Cool.io::Loop running in a different thread. This allows each thread to run a separate Cool.io::Loop and for the different event loops to be able to signal each other.

Using Watchers

Watchers have five important methods:

• attach(loop) - This binds a watcher to the specified event loop. If the watcher is already bound to a loop it will be detached first, then attached to the new one.

• detach - This completely unbinds a watcher from an event loop.

• disable - This stops the watcher from receiving events but does not unbind it from the loop. If you are trying to toggle a watcher on and off, it's best to use this method (and enable) as it performs better than completely removing the watcher from the event loop.

• enable - This re-enables a watcher which has been disabled in the past. The watcher must still be bound to an event loop.

• evloop - This returns the Cool.io::Loop object which the watcher is currently bound to.

Asynchronous Wrappers

Several classes which provide asynchronous event-driven wrappers for Ruby's core socket classes are also provided. Among these are:

• Cool.io::TCPSocket - A buffered wrapper to core Ruby's Socket class for use with TCP sockets. You can asynchronously create outgoing TCP connections using its Cool.io::TCPSocket.connect method. Cool.io::TCPSocket provides write buffering to ensure that writing never blocks, and has asynchronous callbacks for several events, including when the connection is opened (or failed), when data is received, when the write buffer has been written out completely, and when the connection closes.

• Cool.io::TCPServer - A wrapper for TCPServer which creates new instances of Cool.io::TCPSocket (or any subclass you wish to provide) whenever an incoming connection is received.

Example Program

Cool.io provides a Sinatra-like DSL for authoring event-driven programs:

require 'cool.io'
require 'cool.io/dsl'

ADDR = '127.0.0.1'
PORT = 4321

cool.io.connection :echo_server_connection do
  on_connect do
    puts "#{remote_addr}:#{remote_port} connected"
  end

  on_close do
    puts "#{remote_addr}:#{remote_port} disconnected"
  end

  on_read do |data|
    write data
  end
end

puts "Echo server listening on #{ADDR}:#{PORT}"
cool.io.server ADDR, PORT, :echo_server_connection
cool.io.run

This creates a new connection class called :echo_server_connection and defines a set of callbacks for when various events occur.

We then create a new server on the given address and port. When this server receives new connections, it will create new instances of the given connection class for each connection.

Finally, we kick everything off with cool.io.run. Calling cool.io.run will block, listening for events on our server.

Using Cool.io subclasses directly

Below is an example of how to write an echo server using a subclass instead of the DSL:

require 'cool.io'
HOST = 'localhost'
PORT = 4321

class EchoServerConnection < Cool.io::TCPSocket
  def on_connect
    puts "#{remote_addr}:#{remote_port} connected"
  end

  def on_close
    puts "#{remote_addr}:#{remote_port} disconnected"
  end

  def on_read(data)
    write data
  end
end

server = Cool.io::TCPServer.new(HOST, PORT, EchoServerConnection)
server.attach(Cool.io::Loop.default)

puts "Echo server listening on #{HOST}:#{PORT}"
Cool.io::Loop.default.run

Here a new observer type (EchoServerConnection) is made by subclassing an existing one and adding new implementations to existing event handlers.

A new event loop is created, and a new Cool.io::TCPServer (whose base class is Cool.io::Watcher) is created and attached to the event loop.

Once this is done, the event loop is started with event_loop.run. This method will block until there are no active watchers for the loop or the loop is stopped explicitly with event_loop.stop.