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Mastering Async with Ratpack

Need for Async

We want to do more with less.

Resources are expensive: You pay for memory/compute/network usage

cost    | $$$                | $$      | $
--------|-------------------------------------------
method  | Multiple Processes | threads | event loop
example | apache             | servlet | netty
----------------------------------------------------

Scalability

dhh 1
dhh 2

2000 peak rps for 30 servers sounds expensive…​

Meanwhile at Apple…​

apple

That’s pretty big scale…​ Still expensive xD

Takeaways

  • Need async to reduce footprint, especially important with each service that gets deployed

  • Async is difficult, not everyone knows Netty

  • Need to find balance between scale and usability

Some arguments

"Bottle neck is db calls"

This depends on the nature of your application. Not every app is a CRUD app, and even those that are serve of static/in memory content

State of async in Java land

Threads/Executors/Mutexes/AtomicReferences

We have the means, but…​

  • Testing

  • Readability, ease of understanding

  • Resource sharing (memory, system resources)

Async is hard

  • Non-deterministic

  • Callback hell

  • Error handling/propagation

How many times have you forgotten to send a response to the user after making some async call in nodejs or Playframework? Susceptible to brain damage trying to track down what is happening.

Libraries to the rescue

It’s no secret that concurrency is hard. Different concurrency models have found their way into the JVM ecosystem over the years:

  • Futures (callbacks)

  • Queues

  • Fork/Join

  • Actors

  • Disruptor

  • Continuations (Quasar/parallel universe)

Last few models try to limit or eliminate resource sharing between running threads.

Ratpack

Ratpack is async and non-blocking (Netty Rocks!)

It provides its own concurrency model (execution model) for managing and handling web requests

Ratpack Thread Model

Netty’s event loop used for compute bound code:

  • Entry point to executing your Chain

  • Handling NIO events (e.g. read/write)

  • Scheduling/Coordinating executions

Warning
 Never block the compute thread! Don’t make any syscalls that block CPU until operation completes!

Thread pool for running blocking code

  • For long running computations or code that blocks CPU until further notice

Ratpack Execution

An execution is a collection of units of work to be executed and managed by Ratpack

These units of work are called execution segment

Any http handling code is always done within an execution

Users schedule execution segments via Promise/Operation/Blocking facilities

Execution segments for a given execution are always executed on the same thread

Ratpack Async Primitives

  • Promise

  • Operation

  • Blocking

All Ratpack primitives are implemented with the Execution api

If you can’t find a method in Promise/Operation/Blocking you can always build it yourself!

Promises/Operations

  • Creating Promises schedules execution segments

  • Promises are executed in the order they were created (except for forked promises)

  • They run on cpu or blocking threads, determined at time of creation.

  • Easy to adapt with other async libraries (rx-mongo, thread pools)

Testability

Ratpack provides ExecHarness test fixture for easy testability

It allows you to run executions without starting a Ratpack server

ExecHarness

  • java.lang.AutoCloseable

  • Convenience methods that let ExecHarness manage start/close

Can use Java 7 try-with-resources using new Parrot project (Bridging the gap between Groovy and Java syntax)

ExecHarness#yield

Great for unit testing, executes a given promise and returns the value from the Promise in a blocking fashion

Automatically subscribes to the Promise, no need to call Promise#then

Comes in two varieties:

ExecHarness#yield

Keeps the ExecHarness running

link:{test}/ExecHarnessSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Get an instance of ExecHarness

  2. Invoke yield on the instance

  3. Return a Ratpack Promise from the Closure

  4. Extract the value from the Promise

  5. Remember to clean up after ourselves!

    ExecHarness.yieldSingle

    Creates and cleans up ExecHarness on each invocation

link:{test}/ExecHarnessSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Invoke static method ExecHarness.yieldSingle

  2. Return Ratpack Promise from Closure to ExecHarness

  3. Extract value from Promise

ExecHarness#run

Great for seeing Promises in action, closer to coding experience in Ratpack code

No return value

Promises are not automatically subscribed

Comes in two varieties:

ExecHarness#run

Starts and blocks execution until completed

link:{test}/ExecHarnessSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Get an instance of ExecHarness

  2. Pass a closure to ExecHarness#run method

  3. Create Ratpack Promise

  4. Subscribe to the Promise

  5. Use Groovy Power Assert to make assertion on value from Promise

    ExecHarness.runSingle

    Creates and cleans up ExecHarness on each invocation

link:{test}/ExecHarnessSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Invoke static method ExecHarness.runSingle()

  2. Create Ratpack Promise

  3. Subscribe to Ratpack Promise

  4. Use Groovy Power assert to assert the value resolved from the Promise

Note
 When making assertions from within closures you need to make sure that you use Groovy Power Assert. Spock does not apply assertions to values from within the Closure

Advanced Async

  • Promised

  • SerialBatch/ParallelBatch

Examples

Promise.sync
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

Promises don’t execute when you create them.

Promise#then
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

Promises execute with you subscribe via Promise#then

Promise.sync yield
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

Promises need to execute in Ratpack managed thread.

ExecHarness provides Ratpack managed threads as do RatpackServers of all varieties.

Promise.sync run
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]
Promise.value
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Promise.value creates promise from an already available value, unlike Promise.sync which will wait until the promise is subscribed in order to generate the value.

Blocking.get()
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]
Blocking runs on different threadpool
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]
Promise.async
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

You can think of Operations as a Promise<Void>, they don’t share a common type but there are ways to switch back and forth betwteen Promises and Operations

Operation.of
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Factory to queue up an Operation

  2. Note that Operations don’t return anything so there is nothing to receive in the subscriber

Operation to Promise
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Invoke Operation#promise to create a Promise<Void>

  2. See that we get null

  3. Note that we can still work with this transformed Promise

Promise to Operation
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. We can turn a Promise into an Operation, however note that we still get the previous Promise value

  2. See that Operation doesn’t return anything

Anatomy of a Promise

Promise.sync {
  return 'hello'
}.map { s ->
  s.toUpperCase()
}.then { s ->
  ctx.render(s)
}

As the methods sync, map, then are invoked, execution segments get queued.

[{Promise.sync { return 'hello' }.map { s -> s.toUpperCase() }.then { s -> ctx.render(s) }}]
           |                       |                            |
           |                       |                            |
           v                       |                            |
[{}, { return 'hello' }]           v                            |
[{}, { return 'hello' }, { s -> s.toUpperCase() }]              v
[{}, { return 'hello' }, { s -> s.toUpperCase() }, { s -> ctx.render(s) }]

The output from the first promise is then used as input for the second segment, et cetera.

Promise.sync {
  return 'hello'
}.flatMap { s ->
  Promise.sync {
    s.toUpperCase()
  }
}.then { s ->
  ctx.render(s)
}
[{Promise.sync { return 'hello' }.flatMap { s -> Promise.sync { s.toUpperCase() } }.then { s -> ctx.render(s) }}]
           |                       |                                                  |
           |                       |                                                  |
           v                       |                                                  |
[{}, { return 'hello' }]           v                                                  |
[{}, { return 'hello' }, { s -> Promise.sync { s -> s.toUpperCase() }}]               v
[{}, { return 'hello' }, { s -> Promise.sync { s -> s.toUpperCase() }}, { s -> ctx.render(s)}]
                                         |
                                         |_____________________________________
                                                                              |
                                                                              v
[{}, { return 'hello' }, { s -> Promise.sync { s -> s.toUpperCase() }}, { s -> s.toUpperCase() }, { s -> ctx.render(s)}]

Flatmap will queue up the promise, if you use map instead it just passes the promise to the next execution segment in the queue.

Handling errors

Exceptions can be thrown from Promises

Exception thrown from Promise
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

But we can handle it and short circuit

Promise#onError
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

Or we can handle and continue processing

Promise#mapError
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]
Note
 Promises are immutable, methods like Promise#map always return new promises
Promises are immutable
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Promise#onError returns a new Promise

  2. Promise#map returns a new Promise

Promise api allows you to chain promise manipulation
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Promise#onError returns a new Promise

Error mapping also available in flatmap flavor Promise#flatmapError.

Promise#map
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Promise#map runs on compute thread, don’t block here

Promise#flatMap
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Promise#flatMap runs on compute thread, don’t block here

  2. Since Blocking#get returns a Promise, need to use Promise#flatMap in order to "unpack" the nested promise and continue working with the value as in <3>

Promise#blockingMap
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. A convenience method for executing blocking code inline without having to do Promise#flatMap { Blocking.get {} } as in the previous example

Promise#flatMap with async
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Integrating with an externally managed threadpool/async library

Promise#left/right
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Imagine some blocking jdbc lookup by name

  2. Promise#right takes the result of the previous promise and creates a tuple like graph datastructure called Pair. The value returned from the closure/lambda is then pushed to the "right" position of the Pair

  3. Imagine some in memory lookup for interests by user that we just looked up from <1>

  4. The result from the previous call is of type Pair<A, B> where A is the result of the Blocking.get{} call and B is ther result of Promise#right call

Pairs are handy when working with small number of arguments.

You can also nest Pairs, you can have something like Pair<Pair<A, B>, C> but this quickly becomes hard to track.

If only Java had tuple support :(

This is also available in flatMap flavor Promise#flatLeft/flatRight

  • ParallelBatch, SerialBatch You’ll often want to take a list of promises and transform them into a list of resolved values. ParallelBatch and SerialBatch help achieve this.

link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Simulate price lookup in a blocking manner

  2. Use a Groovy range to generate a list of promises to lookup the price for the given id

  3. Invoke either SerialBatch.of or ParallelBatch.of and yield a Promise<List<Map<String, Object>>>

  4. Use the handy value as a single list

  5. Spock datatable for making batch pluggable

Batch is great for when you have List<Promise<A>> but want to work with Promise<List<A>> in subsequent calculations.

Forking execution

Promise#fork
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Convenience closure for printing and adding to list

  2. Add foo in a blocking manner

  3. Add bar in async manner

  4. Fork the bar async promise

  5. Assert that bar was entered before foo

Note
 When forking Promises, they execute immediately!

"Flow control"

Promise#mapIf
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Convenience closure

  2. Example of using Promise#mapIf(Predicate, Function), only maps if predicate passes

  3. Execute these promises in parallel

  4. Assert that our list is fizzbuzzed correctly

Also available in flatMap variety Promise#flatMapIf

Other useful methods:

  • Promise#onNull

  • Promise#route

Warning
 Promise#route is a terminating call, the rest of the promise chain is no longer executed!!
Promise#route(Predicate, Action)
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Note that we terminate the promise chain here if predicate passes

Throttling Promises

Throttle acts as a semaphore only allowing n number of promises to run in parallel.

Promise#throttled
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Declare a throttle of size 3

  2. Make sure that the promise we submit to the ParallelBatch is throttled

Sample output
2017-05-30T07:42:48.294 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 4
2017-05-30T07:42:48.308 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 5
2017-05-30T07:42:48.294 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 1
2017-05-30T07:42:50.367 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 10
2017-05-30T07:42:50.367 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 12
2017-05-30T07:42:50.367 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 2
2017-05-30T07:42:52.371 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 13
2017-05-30T07:42:52.371 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 9
2017-05-30T07:42:52.371 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 3
2017-05-30T07:42:54.374 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 7
2017-05-30T07:42:54.374 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 6
2017-05-30T07:42:54.374 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 11
2017-05-30T07:42:56.377 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 8
2017-05-30T07:42:56.377 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 15
2017-05-30T07:42:56.377 EXECUTING FIZZBUZZ for 14

You can see there is a tight grouping of 3 per time period

Spying

If you wish to observe items as they get processed in the promise chain, you can make use of Promise#wiretap

Promise#wiretap
link:{test}/PromiseSpec.groovy[role=include]

  1. Invoke wiretap method

  2. Note that we have to invoke Result#getValue in order to get the value produced from the previous Promise

  3. Note that the next processor gets the same result as the wiretap

Best practices

  • Avoid multiple then blocks

  • Try to linearize/flatten data flow

About

Notes on async behavior in Ratpack

danhyun.github.io/mastering-async-ratpack/

Topics

java groovy async jvm netty nio ratpack gr8conf greach

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