Re: Managing timing in Python calls
Interesting stuff - I hadn't come across the 'with' syntax before, so
I've learned something already.
I was briefly excited to learn about the callLater command which is just
a convenience class for the wxTimer class. It seems to be pretty much
a parallel of the
var t = window.setTimeout( function () { do_when_timed_out}
sort of thing in AJAX.
However, as is well grumbled on the 'net, you can't use wxTimer from a
non-main thread. So that dropped off my plate.
But getting my head around my AJAX problem versus my python
implementation, I realized my use of those javascript structures were
really just used because javascript doesn't allow any threading at all.
With Python, just having my other processing path in a thread is enough,
and I can use the brutish time.sleep() function, without worrying about
blocking the processing of my mainline (UI) thread. So I'm able to proceed.
I do want to know more about the 'with' command tho' so I'll look into that.
Thx again.
Ross.
cmdrrickhun...@yaho.com wrote:
I believe WxTimerEvent is handled using the event queue, which isn't
going to do what you want. An event which goes through the queue does
not get processed until you return to the queue.
What you want to do is actually a rather difficult task to do
generically. Should the task be interrupted immediately? Or is a
tiny latency acceptable? Should the function being terminated get to
handle its own termination? Or should the termination be forced on
it. What sort of overhead is acceptable for this "set_timeout"
behavior?
I would not be surprised if there isn't a built in solution, because
its so hard, but rather built in tools which can be used to do it.
If your timeouts are on the order of seconds, you might be able to
just check time.time() at the begining, and compare it to the current
time later in the function. This could be on the main thread or on a
worker thread.
If you need better handling, you may want to look at how condition
variables and such work.
Finally, thread has a function to send a Keyboard Interrupt to the
main thread. I believe you could do your work on the main thread, and
catch the interrupt.
"Background" tasks are not easy to implement in any language (other
than perhaps AJAX ;-) ).
Remember, Python does not support truly simultaneous threads. It
actually does timeslices of about 100 operations. Any solution you
choose should work given this information.
And as for a "nicer" construct, I personally just learned of how to
handle the "with" command. I could see something like
class Timeout:
def __init__(self, t):
self.t = t
def __enter__(self):
self.start = time.time()
def __exit__(self, x, y, z):
return None
def __nonzero__(self):
return time.time() - self.start <= self.t
def doSomethingLong(timeout = True): # true guarentees bailout never
occurs
while timeout:
doAnIteration()
with Timeout(3) as t:
doSomethingLong(t)
and have your Timeout class have a flag which it sets when
doSomethingLong needs to bail out, using whatever method is "best" for
your particular application. This is, of course pseudocode - I've not
run it through python msyself. Hopefully any errors are obvious
enough that you can work around them.
--
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Re: Managing timing in Python calls
I believe WxTimerEvent is handled using the event queue, which isn't going to do what you want. An event which goes through the queue does not get processed until you return to the queue. What you want to do is actually a rather difficult task to do generically. Should the task be interrupted immediately? Or is a tiny latency acceptable? Should the function being terminated get to handle its own termination? Or should the termination be forced on it. What sort of overhead is acceptable for this "set_timeout" behavior? I would not be surprised if there isn't a built in solution, because its so hard, but rather built in tools which can be used to do it. If your timeouts are on the order of seconds, you might be able to just check time.time() at the begining, and compare it to the current time later in the function. This could be on the main thread or on a worker thread. If you need better handling, you may want to look at how condition variables and such work. Finally, thread has a function to send a Keyboard Interrupt to the main thread. I believe you could do your work on the main thread, and catch the interrupt. "Background" tasks are not easy to implement in any language (other than perhaps AJAX ;-) ). Remember, Python does not support truly simultaneous threads. It actually does timeslices of about 100 operations. Any solution you choose should work given this information. And as for a "nicer" construct, I personally just learned of how to handle the "with" command. I could see something like class Timeout: def __init__(self, t): self.t = t def __enter__(self): self.start = time.time() def __exit__(self, x, y, z): return None def __nonzero__(self): return time.time() - self.start <= self.t def doSomethingLong(timeout = True): # true guarentees bailout never occurs while timeout: doAnIteration() with Timeout(3) as t: doSomethingLong(t) and have your Timeout class have a flag which it sets when doSomethingLong needs to bail out, using whatever method is "best" for your particular application. This is, of course pseudocode - I've not run it through python msyself. Hopefully any errors are obvious enough that you can work around them. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing timing in Python calls
bieff...@gmail.com wrote: Python has in its standard library a timer class which actually is implemented as a thread (I think) ... however, when using a GUI package, I think it is better to use gui- specific functions for event-driven programming, to make sure that your code do not mess with GUI event loop and to work around the lack of thread-safety in some GUI libraries. This applies to timer/timeouts but also to execute code when specific I/O events occur ( e.g. the receiving of data from a socket ). Although I'm not an expert of pywx, a quick search pointed me to this page: http://wxpython.org/onlinedocs.php from which it seams that WxTimerEvent couldbe what you need. I agree with you that for loading images from local files a thread should not be needed. P.S : notice that the documentation refers to the C++ library on which the python wrapper is built. This is often the case for python wrapper of GUI libraries. However, the most important ones come with a rich set of demo programs (and pywx demo suite is quite complete) from which one can lear what he needs. Ciao - FB The wxTimerEvent does sound attractive - I'll look into that. Thanks too for the opinion on loading images - gives me some guts to just give it a try without threading it and see how it goes. I appreciate the quick input :) Ross. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing timing in Python calls
On 15 Dic, 16:21, Ross wrote:
> I'm porting some ugly javascript managed stuff to have an equivalent
> behaviour in a standalone app. It uses events that arrive from a server,
> and various small images. In this standalone version, the data is local
> in a file and the images in a local directory.
>
> My AJAX code managed a timely presentation of the info, and in the
> Javascript that relied on the ugly:
>
> myImage.onload = function(){dosomething_when_it's_finished}
>
> structure. Also, I used the similarly unpretty:
>
> var t = window.setTimeout( function () { do_when_timed_out}
>
> structures which allows stuff to happen after a perscribed period.
>
> In my python implementation my first guess is to use a thread to load my
> image into a variable
>
> myImage = wx.Image("aPic.gif",
> wx.BITMAP_TYPE_GIF ).ConvertToBitmap()
>
> so that it won't block processing. (Though perhaps it'll just happen so
> fast without a server involved that I won't care.)
>
> Is there a nice equivalent of a 'setTimeout' function in python? ie to
> call a function after some time elapses without blocking my other
> processing? I suppose just a thread with a time.sleep(x_mS) in it would
> be my first guess?
>
> Can anyone give me some feedback on whether that's a logical path
> forward, or if there are some nicer constructs into which I might look?
>
> Thanks for any suggests... Ross.
Python has in its standard library a timer class which actually is
implemented as a thread (I think) ...
however, when using a GUI package, I think it is better to use gui-
specific functions for event-driven programming,
to make sure that your code do not mess with GUI event loop and to
work around the lack of thread-safety in some GUI libraries.
This applies to timer/timeouts but also to execute code when specific
I/O events occur ( e.g. the receiving of data from a socket ).
Although I'm not an expert of pywx, a quick search pointed me to this
page:
http://wxpython.org/onlinedocs.php
from which it seams that WxTimerEvent couldbe what you need.
I agree with you that for loading images from local files a thread
should not be needed.
P.S : notice that the documentation refers to the C++ library on which
the python wrapper is built. This is often the case for
python wrapper of GUI libraries. However, the most important ones come
with a rich set of demo programs (and pywx demo suite is quite
complete) from which one can lear what he needs.
Ciao
-
FB
--
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