About
The libasync asynchronous library is written completely in D, features a cross-platform event loop and enhanced connectivity and concurrency facilities for extremely lightweight asynchronous tasks. It embeds naturally to D projects (DMD >= 2.076.0, LDC >= 1.18.0), allows you to target a wide range of architectures through LDC, compiles statically with your project and has an open source license (MIT).
A fully functional, tested vibe.d driver is available in the latest version of vibe.d, you can enable it by appending "subConfigurations": { "vibe-d": "libasync"} in your project's dub.json configuration file.
Features
The following capabilities have been tested in a production environment:
(*) Unit tests confirmed on Mac, Linux, Windows - Platforms used were Mac OS X (10.8+, 10.9+), Linux (Fedora 20+) and Windows 7+ 32/64 bit, although it should be compatible to 99% of Desktop OS users.
(*) Compiles with DMD & LDC (DMD 2.076.0+, LDC 1.18.0+)
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Multi-threading support - EventLoop can be launched and run from an unlimited number of threads!
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Asynchronous TCP connection - handles multiple requests at a time in each individual thread
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Buffered TCP connection - Allows callbacks to be attached to a byte sized future
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Asynchronous TCP listener - delivers a new connection to the delegate of your choice
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File Operations - executes file read/write/append commands in a thread pool, notifies of completion in a handler
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DNS resolver - runs blocking DNS resolve operations in a thread pool, savings are the duration of a ping.
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File/Folder Watcher - watches directories for file changes (CREATE, DELETE, MODIFY, RENAME/MOVE)
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UDP connection - receives or sends packets from/to multiple peers
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Timer - sets a periodic or one-shot/periodic timer with high-precision (μs) to call a select delegate
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Signal - Wakes up the event loop in a foreign thread and passes a message to its delegate
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Notifier - Thread-local and lock-less adaptation of Signal which queues a message intended for a local delegate
Limitations
Some or all of these limitations are possibly being implemented currently and may be available in a future release.
- One EventLoop per thread - There is a hard limit of one event loop per thread
- Manual error management - The entire library is
nothrowand error management must be built on top of it. - No embedded HTTP or TLS handlers - The support fort HTTP, TLS (and other protocols) is only available through vibe.d with Tasks as of yet.
Installation Instructions
- Download and install DMD from dlang.org
- Use Git to clone this repository
- Run
dub testto test the library on your operating system (submit any issue with a log report by uncommentingenum LOG = trueintypes.d) - Add the library to your project by including it in the dependencies, using
import libasync - The recommended editor is Visual Studio Code with the Code-D extension
- On another note, you can also try the vibe.d libasync built-in driver by adding
"subConfigurations": { "vibe-d": "libasync" }to your vibe.d dub.json.
Tutorial
There are many examples available in the examples/ older. They must be tested by starting the server before the client.
All other usage examples are available in source/libasync/test.d.
Documentation has been written throughout the code.