A simple asyncio wrapper attempting to look like Trio
Project description
A simple asyncio wrapper attempting to look like Trio
When going deeper and deeper with asyncio, and managing a lot of tasks in parallel, you notice that on top of having a lot to deal with to keep an eye on all your task, you also end up always doing the same kind of boiler plate, and the code can become easily twisted and unreadable.
Trio is there to make asynchronous programming easy and more "for humans".
Traio (as kind of Trio on top of Asyncio) let you use asyncio with a little of the philosophy of Trio, mostly the Nursery concept. It also synthesize the most common pattern we are using for handling async tasks in a sane way.
Disclaimer
This is not a replacement for Trio: if you do a full Trio-like project, just use Trio! It's just truly awesome, but in some cases you get stuck with asyncio, but still want to have a code you can read and manage...
Because we run on top of asyncio, we are quite limited in how we can handle cancellation, scopes, and coroutines. This is just on top of asyncio, this is not an alternative! But on the good side, you can mix this with regular asyncio code, which can look appealing.
Examples
Simple Nursery
The main way to use the Nursery is (like in Trio) as a context manager
import asyncio
from traio import Nursery
async def fetch_url(x):
# Do something long
await asyncio.sleep(3)
async def main():
async with Nursery(timeout=10) as nursery:
for i in range(10):
nursery.start_soon(fetch_url(i))
When reaching the end of the context block, the code will block until:
- all tasks are done
- or the timeout is over
- or the nursery get's cancelled.
You can also use the Nursery without context manager:
import asyncio
from traio import Nursery
async def fetch_url(x):
# Do something long
await asyncio.sleep(3)
async def main():
# Equivalent to previous example
nursery = Nursery(timeout=10)
for i in range(10):
nursery.start_soon(fetch_url(i))
await nursery.join()
Names and logger
If you went deep enough in asyncio misteries, you know that tracing code is (for now) kind of a nightmare... For that reason, Nursery as well as tasks can be instantiated with a name. The Nursery can also take a logger which will be used for tracing most of the calls and task life cycle, mostly with debug level.
Special tasks
Nursery.start_soon
can be called with different parameters with interesting
effects:
- The
bubble
boolean parameter controls task error bubbling. A task will bubble by default. This means that an error in the taskwill cause the task to stop (of course), but the nursery will be cancelled as well and raise the given error. This is the desired default behavior. But it can be useful in some cases not to do that, and just ignore a task. Not that if you await manually a task, this cancels bubbling automatically: if you take the pain of waiting for a task, it's not to get all the rest cancelled!
import asyncio
from traio import Nursery
async def fetch_url():
# Do something long
await asyncio.sleep(10)
async def trivial():
await asyncio.sleep(0.01)
raise ValueError('not interesting')
async def main():
async with Nursery(timeout=0.5) as n:
# This will try to run for 10 seconds
n.start_soon(fetch_url())
# This will run a bit then raise (but not 'bubble')
n.start_soon(trivial(), bubble=False)
# Eventually after 0.5 seconds the Nursery times out and
# gives a TImeoutError
- A task can be marked as
master
, in that case the nursery will die with the task when done. This is typically useful when you have one main task to be performed and other background ones, which have no meaning if the main one stops.
import asyncio
from traio import Nursery
async def fetch_url():
# Do something long
await asyncio.sleep(10)
async def trivial():
await asyncio.sleep(0.01)
async def main():
async with Nursery(timeout=0.5) as n:
# This will try to run for 10 seconds
n.start_soon(fetch_url())
# This will run a bit then nursery gets cancelled when it ends
n.start_soon(trivial(), master=True)
Note you can combine both flags; If bubble is False and master is True, the nursery will exit silently when the task is done, even with an exception.
Nested Nursery
That's one of the most exciting ones: you can spawn a sub-nursery from the original one, which will follow the same rules as any Nursery but will as well die if the parent is cancelled!
import asyncio
from traio import Nursery
async def fetch_url():
# Do something long
await asyncio.sleep(10)
async def main():
async with Nursery(timeout=0.2):
async with Nursery(timeout=0.5) as inner:
# This will try to run for 10 seconds
inner.start_soon(fetch_url())
# Here the outer Nursery will timeout first and will cancel the inner one!
Caveat
Remember that we do not modify the way asyncio works. Asyncio is still
in charge of scheduling all tasks. In that aspect, if you block you nursery
awaiting for something not handled by the nursery, the timeouts and cancellation
won't apply until your current task is done. Instead, try to wrap your task in a
call to Nursery.start_soon
.
So instead of this:
async with Nursery() as n:
await my_very_long_task()
try to do this:
async with Nursery() as n:
await n.start_soon(my_very_long_task())
Status
This is still alpha; the principle was validated and the various tests ensure a pretty good coverage as well as examples. But the API may vary a bit for a while until we figure out what to add.
TODOS
- write more examples
- extend the API:
- new
Nursery
APIs - new kinds of tasks, for example executors (although we have no way to stop a thread executor...)
- After discovering a very similar project called Ayo, see what
good features can be integrated (love the
<<
operator!)
- new
- play more with the real Trio and get a better feeling of it
- get some user feedback if possible!
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