Django-DBSemaphore

This gives you multi-ticket DB-defined semaphores implemented on top of DB row locks.

Alternatives

The orthodox alternatives are:

• Posix semaphores (eg using posix_ipc)
• SysV semaphores (eg using sysv-ipc)

Why not use those then?

If a process which holds a Posix or SysV mutex ticket crashes while holding the ticket, it can't return it to the semaphore. Thus, you can leak tickets. But if a process which holds a ticket from Django-DBSemaphore crashes, its database connection goes with it, which terminates the DB transaction and frees the ticket. Crashing processes don't leak tickets.

And why not a lockfile?

Locked files (or locked byte ranges) disappear when a process crashes; its file descriptors are gone thus so are its locks. That's a great property. However, file locks are not multi-ticket. The file (or byterange therein) is either locked or not. The OS file locking APIs are good to implement mutexes with, but not semaphores — except, trivially, a 1-ticket semaphore — which is a mutex ;-).

Quirks

• In contrast to Posix/SysV semaphores and lockf-based approaches, with django-dbsemaphore you can't block until a ticket becomes available.
• From within the same transaction you can acquire tickets you already have over and over. In fact, it's currently impossible to get new tickets of a semaphore on a transaction that already has a ticket of that same semaphore. Typically, you won't need multiple tickets of the same semaphore in the same transaction, but a future version of this software might make it possible. In the meantime, consider using multiple semaphores for your multistage semaphore needs.
• At the base level, they work within transactions. If you want to use dbsemaphore.semaphore.acquire(), you'll need to structure your ticket acquisitions around DB transactions, and close those transactions (rollback or commit) to return the tickets. However, there is a context manager (dbsemaphore.contextmanager.semaphore_ticket()) that abstracts all of that away for you and makes it easy to use a ticket from anywhere in your code. See below.

Compatibility

Currently this is tested on PostgreSQL 14 and Django 3.2.

• It currently doesn't work on SQLite due to the way in which tables are locked in semaphore.make()
• MySQL, Oracle: Untested.
• (neat) Patches welcome!

Installing

1. pip install django-dbsemaphore
2. add 'dbsemaphore' to your Django's settings.INSTALLED_APPS.
3. run ./manage.py migrate dbsemaphore or some variation of such

How to use it

Have a look at the below examples, run the Django test, or read test.py.

Semaphore management

from dbsemaphore import semaphore as sem

# Creates a semaphore called 'test' with 3 tickets
>>> sem.make('test', 3)

# Increases the number of tickets of semaphore 'test' to 4.
# Blocks on concurrent calls of `make`.
# If 'test' doesn't exist, it will be created (with 4 tickets).
>>> sem.make('test', 4)

# Decreases the number of tickets of semaphore 'test' to 2.
# This can block, in the worst case until all tickets have been returned.
# As `make` calls block on eachother, this thus also blocks any *increase* of tickets until this decrease has succeeded.
>>> sem.make('test', 2)

# Returns a dictionary of available semaphores, with their ticket counts.
>>> sem.list()
{'test', 2}

# Destroys the semaphore. Blocks until all its tickets have been returned.
>>> sem.destroy('test')

Acquiring tickets; what we're here for!

With the contextmanager

from dbsemaphore.contextmanager import semaphore_ticket

# We use the semaphore named 'test' that we have created above.
with semaphore_ticket('test') as theticket:
    if theticket is None:
        print("Boo! No ticket was available!")
    else:
        do_the_ticketed_thing()

Using the lower-level API

from django.db import transaction
from dbsemaphore import semaphore as sem

@transaction.atomic
def do_something_potentially_from_many_processes_or_threads_but_not_too_many_at_the_same_time():
    # We use the semaphore named 'test' that we have created above.
    if ticket := sem.acquire('test'):
        do_that_something()

# When the transaction terminates, the ticket is returned to the semaphore.
# In fact, there isn't any API function to explicitly return a ticket...