I am trying to make a Discord.Net bot for my Discord Server. I would like the Bot to share data between commands, but currently because of the nature of the async tasks, the class variables are reset to null as a new instance is created on each task. I was wondering how other Discord Bots handle this problem.
I know I am able to save the values to a file/DB but I was hoping to use something simpler to allow for multiple concurrent commands.
using Discord.Commands;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace UsefulDiscordBot.Modules
{
public class Foo : ModuleBase<SocketCommandContext>
{
string test;
[Command("initializeString")]
public async Task initializeString()
{
test = "Initialized";
}
[Command("addToString")]
public async Task addToString([Remainder]string s)
{
test += s;
}
[Command("printString")]
public async Task printString()
{
await ReplyAsync(test);
}
}
}
Command modules in Discord.Net are Transient (they are spawned when required and disposed of once executed). That said, the general best practice (when building a bot with Discord.Net) for what you wish to achieve is to use a Service - a Class to store your data external to the command module.
You can read up on how to do this via the Discord.Net documentation. There's a section in the FAQ (linked) specifically for this. Hope it helps.
Good day!
I have simple wcf service and desktop client,wich uses some functions.
But my client fault with exception that my wcf operation goes too long.
Some code:
client=new MyWcfServiceClient();
client.DoWork(param1,param2..etc);
I dont need to wait while DoWork do work. I need to execute this method and go forward. It is like send command to do some work and i dont need to get result immediately.
How to do that?
Thank you!
P.S. server side code looks like:
DoWork(param1,etc)
{
// do long-term work at same thread
}
P.P.S. i ingnore the result.
On the service, move your logic from: DoWork(param1, etc) to another method e.g. DoWorkBackground(...)
static Task _backgroundTask;
void DoWork(param1, etc)
{
if (_backgroundTask == null || _backgroundTask.IsCompleted)
_backgroundTask = System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Run(
() => DoWorkBackground(param1, etc) );
}
void DoWorkBackground(param1, etc)
{
//long running logic
}
You could do something along:
private static Task DoWork()
{
// do stuff here
// return something (?) assuming you need or care about this
}
and then you can do something like
Task task = DoWork().Start;
// you can wait, poll, or if you don't care, ignore the result
Using .NET 4.5, you can create task-based proxies while adding service reference to an application. This can be done using by clicking on the Advanced button in the Add Service Reference dialogue. See here for more info.
Once this is done you will get the following: DoWorkAsync
Using this new proxy you can do things like this:
var result = await client.DoWorkAsync(param1,param2..etc);
If you can modify your DoWork operation, define it as OneWay, so it will return immediately. If DoWork is a web service, the HTTP code 202 will be returned.
I am a normal C# developer but occasionally I develop application in Java. I'm wondering if there is any Java equivalent of C# async/await?
In simple words what is the java equivalent of:
async Task<int> AccessTheWebAsync()
{
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
var urlContents = await client.GetStringAsync("http://msdn.microsoft.com");
return urlContents.Length;
}
No, there isn't any equivalent of async/await in Java - or even in C# before v5.
It's a fairly complex language feature to build a state machine behind the scenes.
There's relatively little language support for asynchrony/concurrency in Java, but the java.util.concurrent package contains a lot of useful classes around this. (Not quite equivalent to the Task Parallel Library, but the closest approximation to it.)
The await uses a continuation to execute additional code when the asynchronous operation completes (client.GetStringAsync(...)).
So, as the most close approximation I would use a CompletableFuture<T> (the Java 8 equivalent to .net Task<TResult>) based solution to process the Http request asynchronously.
UPDATED on 25-05-2016 to AsyncHttpClient v.2 released on Abril 13th of 2016:
So the Java 8 equivalent to the OP example of AccessTheWebAsync() is the following:
CompletableFuture<Integer> AccessTheWebAsync()
{
AsyncHttpClient asyncHttpClient = new DefaultAsyncHttpClient();
return asyncHttpClient
.prepareGet("http://msdn.microsoft.com")
.execute()
.toCompletableFuture()
.thenApply(Response::getResponseBody)
.thenApply(String::length);
}
This usage was taken from the answer to How do I get a CompletableFuture from an Async Http Client request?
and which is according to the new API provided in version 2 of AsyncHttpClient released on Abril 13th of 2016, that has already intrinsic support for CompletableFuture<T>.
Original answer using version 1 of AsyncHttpClient:
To that end we have two possible approaches:
the first one uses non-blocking IO and I call it AccessTheWebAsyncNio. Yet, because the AsyncCompletionHandler is an abstract class (instead of a functional interface) we cannot pass a lambda as argument. So it incurs in inevitable verbosity due to the syntax of anonymous classes. However, this solution is the most close to the execution flow of the given C# example.
the second one is slightly less verbose however it will submit a new Task that ultimately will block a thread on f.get() until the response is complete.
First approach, more verbose but non-blocking:
static CompletableFuture<Integer> AccessTheWebAsyncNio(){
final AsyncHttpClient asyncHttpClient = new AsyncHttpClient();
final CompletableFuture<Integer> promise = new CompletableFuture<>();
asyncHttpClient
.prepareGet("https://msdn.microsoft.com")
.execute(new AsyncCompletionHandler<Response>(){
#Override
public Response onCompleted(Response resp) throws Exception {
promise.complete(resp.getResponseBody().length());
return resp;
}
});
return promise;
}
Second approach less verbose but blocking a thread:
static CompletableFuture<Integer> AccessTheWebAsync(){
try(AsyncHttpClient asyncHttpClient = new AsyncHttpClient()){
Future<Response> f = asyncHttpClient
.prepareGet("https://msdn.microsoft.com")
.execute();
return CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(
() -> return f.join().getResponseBody().length());
}
}
async and await are syntactic sugars. The essence of async and await is state machine. The compiler will transform your async/await code into a state machine.
At the same time, in order for async/await to be really practicable in real projects, we need to have lots of Async I/O library functions already in place. For C#, most original synchronized I/O functions has an alternative Async version. The reason we need these Async functions is because in most cases, your own async/await code will boil down to some library Async method.
The Async version library functions in C# is kind of like the AsynchronousChannel concept in Java. For example, we have AsynchronousFileChannel.read which can either return a Future or execute a callback after the read operation is done. But it’s not exactly the same. All C# Async functions return Tasks (similar to Future but more powerful than Future).
So let’s say Java do support async/await, and we write some code like this:
public static async Future<Byte> readFirstByteAsync(String filePath) {
Path path = Paths.get(filePath);
AsynchronousFileChannel channel = AsynchronousFileChannel.open(path);
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(100_000);
await channel.read(buffer, 0, buffer, this);
return buffer.get(0);
}
Then I would imagine the compiler will transform the original async/await code into something like this:
public static Future<Byte> readFirstByteAsync(String filePath) {
CompletableFuture<Byte> result = new CompletableFuture<Byte>();
AsyncHandler ah = new AsyncHandler(result, filePath);
ah.completed(null, null);
return result;
}
And here is the implementation for AsyncHandler:
class AsyncHandler implements CompletionHandler<Integer, ByteBuffer>
{
CompletableFuture<Byte> future;
int state;
String filePath;
public AsyncHandler(CompletableFuture<Byte> future, String filePath)
{
this.future = future;
this.state = 0;
this.filePath = filePath;
}
#Override
public void completed(Integer arg0, ByteBuffer arg1) {
try {
if (state == 0) {
state = 1;
Path path = Paths.get(filePath);
AsynchronousFileChannel channel = AsynchronousFileChannel.open(path);
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(100_000);
channel.read(buffer, 0, buffer, this);
return;
} else {
Byte ret = arg1.get(0);
future.complete(ret);
}
} catch (Exception e) {
future.completeExceptionally(e);
}
}
#Override
public void failed(Throwable arg0, ByteBuffer arg1) {
future.completeExceptionally(arg0);
}
}
There is no equivalent of C# async/await in Java at the language level. A concept known as Fibers aka cooperative threads aka lightweight threads could be an interesting alternative. You can find Java libraries providing support for fibers.
Java libraries implementing Fibers
JetLang
Kilim
Quasar
You can read this article (from Quasar) for a nice introduction to fibers. It covers what threads are, how fibers can be implemented on the JVM and has some Quasar specific code.
As it was mentioned, there is no direct equivalent, but very close approximation could be created with Java bytecode modifications (for both async/await-like instructions and underlying continuations implementation).
I'm working right now on a project that implements async/await on top of JavaFlow continuation library, please check https://github.com/vsilaev/java-async-await
No Maven mojo is created yet, but you may run examples with supplied Java agent. Here is how async/await code looks like:
public class AsyncAwaitNioFileChannelDemo {
public static void main(final String[] argv) throws Exception {
...
final AsyncAwaitNioFileChannelDemo demo = new AsyncAwaitNioFileChannelDemo();
final CompletionStage<String> result = demo.processFile("./.project");
System.out.println("Returned to caller " + LocalTime.now());
...
}
public #async CompletionStage<String> processFile(final String fileName) throws IOException {
final Path path = Paths.get(new File(fileName).toURI());
try (
final AsyncFileChannel file = new AsyncFileChannel(
path, Collections.singleton(StandardOpenOption.READ), null
);
final FileLock lock = await(file.lockAll(true))
) {
System.out.println("In process, shared lock: " + lock);
final ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect((int)file.size());
await( file.read(buffer, 0L) );
System.out.println("In process, bytes read: " + buffer);
buffer.rewind();
final String result = processBytes(buffer);
return asyncResult(result);
} catch (final IOException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace(System.out);
throw ex;
}
}
#async is the annotation that flags a method as asynchronously executable, await() is a function that waits on CompletableFuture using continuations and a call to "return asyncResult(someValue)" is what finalizes associated CompletableFuture/Continuation
As with C#, control flow is preserved and exception handling may be done in regular manner (try/catch like in sequentially executed code)
Java itself has no equivalent features, but third-party libraries exist which offer similar functionality, e.g.Kilim.
Java doesn't have direct equivalent of C# language feature called async/await, however there's a different approach to the problem that async/await tries to solve. It's called project Loom, which will provide virtual threads for high-throughput concurrency. It will be available in some future version of OpenJDK.
This approach also solves "colored function problem" that async/await has.
Similar feature can be also found in Golang (goroutines).
First, understand what async/await is. It is a way for a single-threaded GUI application or an efficient server to run multiple "fibers" or "co-routines" or "lightweight threads" on a single thread.
If you are ok with using ordinary threads, then the Java equivalent is ExecutorService.submit and Future.get. This will block until the task completes, and return the result. Meanwhile, other threads can do work.
If you want the benefit of something like fibers, you need support in the container (I mean in the GUI event loop or in the server HTTP request handler), or by writing your own.
For example, Servlet 3.0 offers asynchronous processing. JavaFX offers javafx.concurrent.Task. These don't have the elegance of language features, though. They work through ordinary callbacks.
There isn't anything native to java that lets you do this like async/await keywords, but what you can do if you really want to is use a CountDownLatch. You could then imitate async/await by passing this around (at least in Java7). This is a common practice in Android unit testing where we have to make an async call (usually a runnable posted by a handler), and then await for the result (count down).
Using this however inside your application as opposed to your test is NOT what I am recommending. That would be extremely shoddy as CountDownLatch depends on you effectively counting down the right number of times and in the right places.
I make and released Java async/await library.
https://github.com/stofu1234/kamaitachi
This library don't need compiler extension, and realize stackless IO processing in Java.
async Task<int> AccessTheWebAsync(){
HttpClient client= new HttpClient();
var urlContents= await client.GetStringAsync("http://msdn.microsoft.com");
return urlContents.Length;
}
↓
//LikeWebApplicationTester.java
BlockingQueue<Integer> AccessTheWebAsync() {
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
return awaiter.await(
() -> client.GetStringAsync("http://msdn.microsoft.com"),
urlContents -> {
return urlContents.length();
});
}
public void doget(){
BlockingQueue<Integer> lengthQueue=AccessTheWebAsync();
awaiter.awaitVoid(()->lengthQueue.take(),
length->{
System.out.println("Length:"+length);
}
);
}
There is an "equivalent" of await developed by EA: https://github.com/electronicarts/ea-async. Refer to the Java example code:
import static com.ea.async.Async.await;
import static java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture.completedFuture;
public class Store
{
public CompletableFuture<Boolean> buyItem(String itemTypeId, int cost)
{
if(!await(bank.decrement(cost))) {
return completedFuture(false);
}
await(inventory.giveItem(itemTypeId));
return completedFuture(true);
}
}
Java has unfortunately no equivalent of async/await. The closest you can get is probably with ListenableFuture from Guava and listener chaining, but it would be still very cumbersome to write for cases involving multiple asynchronous calls, as the nesting level would very quickly grow.
If you're ok with using a different language on top of JVM, fortunately there is async/await in Scala which is a direct C# async/await equivalent with an almost identical syntax and semantics:
https://github.com/scala/async/
Note that although this functionality needed a pretty advanced compiler support in C#, in Scala it could be added as a library thanks to a very powerful macro system in Scala and therefore can be added even to older versions of Scala like 2.10. Additionally Scala is class-compatible with Java, so you can write the async code in Scala and then call it from Java.
There is also another similar project called Akka Dataflow http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/2.3-M1/scala/dataflow.html which uses different wording but conceptually is very similar, however implemented using delimited continuations, not macros (so it works with even older Scala versions like 2.9).
If you're just after clean code which simulates the same effect as async/await in java and don't mind blocking the thread it is called on until it is finished, such as in a test, you could use something like this code:
interface Async {
void run(Runnable handler);
}
static void await(Async async) throws InterruptedException {
final CountDownLatch countDownLatch = new CountDownLatch(1);
async.run(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
countDownLatch.countDown();
}
});
countDownLatch.await(YOUR_TIMEOUT_VALUE_IN_SECONDS, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
await(new Async() {
#Override
public void run(final Runnable handler) {
yourAsyncMethod(new CompletionHandler() {
#Override
public void completion() {
handler.run();
}
});
}
});
I have developed a library JAsync to do this.
It is just released today.
It makes the developer's asynchronous programming experience as close as possible to the usual synchronous programming, including code style and debugging.
Here is the example.
#RestController
#RequestMapping("/employees")
public class MyRestController {
#Inject
private EmployeeRepository employeeRepository;
#Inject
private SalaryRepository salaryRepository;
// The standard JAsync async method must be annotated with the Async annotation, and return a Promise object.
#Async()
private Promise<Double> _getEmployeeTotalSalaryByDepartment(String department) {
double money = 0.0;
// A Mono object can be transformed to the Promise object. So we get a Mono object first.
Mono<List<Employee>> empsMono = employeeRepository.findEmployeeByDepartment(department);
// Transformed the Mono object to the Promise object.
Promise<List<Employee>> empsPromise = JAsync.from(empsMono);
// Use await just like es and c# to get the value of the Promise without blocking the current thread.
for (Employee employee : empsPromise.await()) {
// The method findSalaryByEmployee also return a Mono object. We transform it to the Promise just like above. And then await to get the result.
Salary salary = JAsync.from(salaryRepository.findSalaryByEmployee(employee.id)).await();
money += salary.total;
}
// The async method must return a Promise object, so we use just method to wrap the result to a Promise.
return JAsync.just(money);
}
// This is a normal webflux method.
#GetMapping("/{department}/salary")
public Mono<Double> getEmployeeTotalSalaryByDepartment(#PathVariable String department) {
// Use unwrap method to transform the Promise object back to the Mono object.
return _getEmployeeTotalSalaryByDepartment(department).unwrap(Mono.class);
}
}
And in debug mode, you can see all the variable just like the synchronous code.
The other great thing about this project is that it's one of the few projects of its kind that's still active right now. It's just been released, so it has a lot of potential
I am trying to create a sample app using OData and Silverlight, using (what else?) the Netflix service. I've already succeeded in creating the app using WPF, but am struggling to port my service class to an async model.
My existing service class (simplified) looks like this:
public IEnumerable<Title> BlockingSearch(TitleSearchParam param)
{
var catalog = new NetflixCatalog(new Uri("http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/"));
return catalog.Titles.Where(t =>
t.Instant.AvailableFrom > param.InstantStartDate && t.Instant.AvailableFrom < param.InstantEndDate &&
(string.IsNullOrEmpty(param.TitleName) || t.Name.Contains(param.TitleName))).ToList();
}
All of the examples of consuming OData asynchronously employ some kind of Respository Pattern and/or require an instantiated collection to be passed in. I would like to model the method signature for the Silverlight/Async call to look something like this (with the service class itself being stateless):
public void AsyncSearch(TitleSearchParam param, Action<IEnumerable<Title>> completedCallback, Action<MyErrorClass> errorCallback, object callBackOwner)
{
}
I think I could so something along the lines of what MS outlines in Calling Synchronous Methods Asynchronously, but I was hoping there was a more elegant solution that I was missing.
As you already know, you can always run the call on a different thread than the UI thread, so there will be no blocking per se. That seems like a decent enough solution. Then you can (in fact, must) use dispatchers to handle results coming from callbacks if you intend to use them with UI.
I'm working in .NET 4 and SL 4.
I'm wanting to abstract out the data retrieval portion of my DAL from my silverlight page's code behind.
Ideally into its own DLL as an interface layer between my silverlight application and REST API calls.
My intent is not to use RIA services as I already have an existing DAL that's making use of a DLL that makes REST API calls.
The issue is the asynchronous "WebClient" call back process.
I know that I can utilize the WebClient class to make a REST call and then register the asynchronous handler to simply bind the results from that call to the UI.
But in my case, I want to abstract this out into its own DLL. Basically....making it synchronous.
By definition an asynchronous call has issues here being that it can't immediately and directly return an IEnumerable of some type.
Can anyone point me to a sample/tutorial where something like this is being done?
RIA makes method call to separate DLL for IEnumerable data collection
That method makes REST API call to retrieve data, then returns that IEnumerable to the RIA and is bound to the UI.
Boling it right down to the fundementals what you are actually asking for is to be able to make a synchronous call into an API that performs an asynchronous task but only returns when that asynchronous task is complete. To state it another way you want to re-combine the Begin and End phases of an asynchronous operation back into a single atomic synchronous operation.
The only way to acheive that is to block the thread making the call until the end phase of the asynchronous operation is reached. For a number of reasons this is not a good idea.
If you are serious about using Silverlight you have to swallow its asynchronous nature and work with in that framework rather than attempting to force it back into a synchronous system.
Converting synchronous to asynchronous
Have a read of this blog about converting synchronous code into asynchronous code. Having read that now lets just imagine that your code uses a synchronous method in your new DLL called DownloadYourDataObjects which has this imaginary signature:-
public IEnumerable<YourDataObject> DownloadYourDataObjects(Uri source);
Internally it use WebClient to download a string from a REST base service and converts it to a set of YourDataObject instances. The imaginary synchronous code to display this set of data might be:-
private void btnLoadMyData_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
try
{
LoadMyData();
}
catch (Exception err)
{
// Oops something bad happened show err.
}
}
private void LoadMyData()
{
DataItemsListBox.ItemsSource = DownloadYourDataObjects(someUri);
}
Since Silverlight WebClient is asynchronous we need to convert this whole chain of code to work in an asynchronous manner.
Using the AsyncOperationService from the blog we first need to convert the DownloadYourDataObjects to return an AsyncOperation instead. It would have a signature like this (see later for an implementation idea):-
public AsyncOperation DownloadYourDataObjects(Uri source, Action<IEnumerable<YourDataObject>> returnResult);
The usage code would then look something like this:-
private void btnLoadMyData_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
LoadMyData().Run(err =>
{
if (err != null)
{
// Oops something bad happened show err.
}
});
}
private IEnumerable<AsyncOperation> LoadMyData()
{
yield return DownloadYourDataObjects(someUri, result =>
{
DataItemsListBox.ItemsSource = result;
});
}
This may look a litte OTT but in fact it isn't much more code than the original "synchronous" version. In this simple case LoadMyData only had one operation to perform. A more complex version of LoadMyData may have multiple other operations that need to be asynchronous as well. In such a case those operations would just be other yield points in the code, the basic logical structure of LoadMyData would not change much from an original synchronous version.
Here is an example of an implementation of DownloadYourDataObjects that your DLL would supply.
public AsyncOperation DownloadYourDataObjects(Uri source, Action<IEnumerable<YourDataObject>> returnResult)
{
return (completed) =>
{
WebClient client = new WebClient();
client.DownloadStringCompleted += (s, args) =>
{
try
{
returnResult(ConvertStringToYourDataObjects(args.Result));
completed(null);
}
catch (Exception err)
{
completed(err);
}
};
client.DownloadStringAsync(source);
};
}