Author: James CE Johnson

ACE Tutorial 010
Passing chunks of data through an ACE_Message_Queue

Our Task object definition.

Something to look at here is the ACE_Barrier usage. In the constructor, we tell the barrier how many threads we're using. Then, in the svc() method, we use the barrier's wait() method. You can think of the barrier as a semaphore initialized to the thread count. Each time wait() is invoked, the semaphore is decremented and the thread is blocked. When the count equals zero, all threads are unblocked and allowed to continue.

Note: This isn't the way ACE_Barrier really works, it's just an analogy

    // page05.html,v 1.8 1999/04/03 21:56:27 jcej Exp

    #include "task.h"
    #include "block.h"

    /* Set our housekeeping pointer to NULL and tell the user we exist.  */
    Task::Task (size_t n_threads)
      : barrier_ (n_threads),
        n_threads_ (n_threads)
    {
      ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG,
                  "(%P|%t) Task ctor 0x%x\n",
                  (void *) this));
    }

    /* Take care of cleanup & tell the user we're going away.  */
    Task::~Task (void)
    {
      ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG,
                  "(%P|%t) Task dtor 0x%x\n",
                  (void *) this));

      /* Get our shutdown notification out of the queue and release it.  */
      ACE_Message_Block *message;

      /* Like the getq() in svc() below, this will block until a message
        arrives.  By blocking, we know that the destruction will be paused
        until the last thread is done with the message block.  */
      this->getq (message);
      message->release ();
    }

    /* Open the object to do work.  Next, we activate the Task into the
      number of requested threads.  */
    int
    Task::open (void *unused)
    {
      ACE_UNUSED_ARG (unused);

      return this->activate (THR_NEW_LWP,
                             n_threads_);
    }

    /* Tell the user we're closing and invoke the baseclass' close() to
      take care of things.  */
    int
    Task::close (u_long flags)
    {
      ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG,
                  "(%P|%t) Task close 0x%x\n",
                  (void *) this));
      return inherited::close (flags);
    }

    /* Our svc() method waits for work on the queue and then processes
      that work.  */
    int
    Task::svc (void)
    {
      /* This will cause all of the threads to wait on this line until all
        have invoked this method.  The net result is that no thread in the
        Task will get a shot at the queue until all of the threads are
        active.  There's no real need to do this but it's an easy intro
        into the use of ACE_Barrier.  */
      this->barrier_.wait ();

      ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG,
                  "(%P|%t) Task 0x%x starts in thread %d\n",
                  (void *) this,
                  ACE_Thread::self ()));

      /* Remember that get() needs a reference to a pointer.  To save
        stack thrashing we'll go ahead and create a pointer outside of the
        almost- infinite loop.  */
      ACE_Message_Block *message;

      for (;;)
        {
          /* Get a message from the queue.  Note that getq() will block
            until a message shows up.  That makes us very
            processor-friendly.  */
          if (this->getq (message) == -1)
            ACE_ERROR_RETURN ((LM_ERROR,
                               "%p\n",
                               "getq"),
                              -1);
          /* If we got the shutdown request, we need to go away.  */
          if (message->msg_type () == ACE_Message_Block::MB_HANGUP)
            {
              /* Forward the request to any peer threads.  */
              this->putq (message);

              /* Leave the infinite loop so that the thread exits.  */
              break;
            }

          /* The message queue stores char* data.  We use rd_ptr() to get
            to the beginning of the data.  */
          const char *cp = message->rd_ptr ();

          /* Move the rd_ptr() past the data we read.  This isn't real
            useful here since we won't be reading any more from the block
            but it's a good habit to get into.  */
          message->rd_ptr (ACE_OS::strlen (cp));

          /* Display the block's address and data to the user.  */
          ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG,
                      "(%P|%t) Block 0x%x contains (%s)\n",
                      (void *) message,
                      cp));

          /* Pretend that it takes a while to process the data.  */
          ACE_OS::sleep (ACE_Time_Value (0, 5000));

          /* Release the message block.  Notice that we never delete a
            message block.  Blocks are reference counted & the release()
            method will take care of the delete when there are no more
            references to the data.  */
          message->release ();
        }

      return 0;
    }

This is all pretty straight-forward too. One gottcha we avoided was a memory leak due to our shutdown message. Notice that svc() enqueues that block without bothering to see if there are any more threads to dequeue it. Thats why our dtor can call getq() without worrying about blocking infinitely: it knows the message block will be there.

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