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Class HeterEventQueue reference
Table Of Contents
Description
HeterEventQueue includes all features of HeterEventDispatcher and adds event queue features. Note: HeterEventQueue doesn't inherit from HeterEventDispatcher, don't try to cast HeterEventQueue to HeterEventDispatcher.
HeterEventQueue is asynchronous. Events are cached in the queue when HeterEventQueue::enqueue is called, and dispatched later when HeterEventQueue::process is called.
API reference
Header
eventpp/eventqueue.h
Template parameters
template <
typename Event,
typename PrototypeList,
typename Policies = DefaultPolicies
>
class HeterEventQueue;
HeterEventQueue has the exactly same template parameters with EventDispatcher. Please reference HeterEventDispatcher document for details.
Public types
Member functions
constructors
HeterEventQueue();
HeterEventQueue(const HeterEventQueue & other);
HeterEventQueue(HeterEventQueue && other) noexcept;
HeterEventQueue & operator = (const HeterEventQueue & other);
HeterEventQueue & operator = (HeterEventQueue && other) noexcept;
EventDispatcher can be copied, moved, assigned, and move assigned.
Note: the queued events are not copied, moved, assigned, or move assigned, only the listeners are performed these operations.
enqueue
template <typename T, typename ...Args>
void enqueue(T && first, Args && ...args);
Put an event into the event queue. The event type is deducted from the arguments of enqueue.
All copyable arguments are copied to internal data structure. All non-copyable but movable arguments are moved.
HeterEventQueue requires the arguments either copyable or movable.
If an argument is a reference to a base class and a derived object is passed in, only the base object will be stored and the derived object is lost. Usually shared pointer should be used in such situation.
If an argument is a pointer, only the pointer will be stored. The object it points to must be available until the event is processed.
enqueue wakes up any threads that are blocked by wait or waitFor.
The time complexity is O(1).
process
bool process();
Process the event queue. All events in the event queue are dispatched once and then removed from the queue.
The function returns true if any events were processed, false if no event was processed.
The listeners are called in the thread same as the caller of process.
Any new events added to the queue during process() are not dispatched during current process().
process() is efficient in single thread event processing, it processes all events in the queue in current thread. To process events from multiple threads efficiently, use processOne().
Note: if process() is called from multiple threads simultaneously, the events in the event queue are guaranteed dispatched only once.
processOne
bool processOne();
Process one event in the event queue. The first event in the event queue is dispatched once and then removed from the queue.
The function returns true if one event was processed, false if no event was processed.
The listener is called in the thread same as the caller of processOne.
Any new events added to the queue during processOne() are not dispatched during current processOne().
If there are multiple threads processing events, processOne() is more efficient than process() because it can split the events processing to different threads. However, if there is only one thread processing events, 'process()' is more efficient.
Note: if processOne() is called from multiple threads simultaneously, the events in the event queue are guaranteed dispatched only once.
processIf
template <typename F>
bool processIf(F && func);
Process the event queue. Before processing an event, the event is passed to func and the event will be processed only if func returns true.
func takes exactly the same arguments as HeterEventQueue::enqueue, and returns a boolean value.
processIf returns true if any event was dispatched, false if no event was dispatched.
processIf has some good use scenarios:
- Process certain events in certain thread. For example, in a GUI application, the UI related events may be only desired to processed in the main thread.
- Process the events until certain time. For example, in a game engine, the event process may be limited to only several milliseconds, the remaining events will be process in next game loop.
emptyQueue
bool emptyQueue() const;
Return true if there is no any event in the event queue, false if there are any events in the event queue.
Note: in multiple threading environment, the empty state may change immediately after the function returns.
Note: don't write loop as while(! eventQueue.emptyQueue()) {}. It's dead loop since the compiler will inline the code and the change of empty state is never seen by the loop. The safe approach is while(eventQueue.waitFor(std::chrono::nanoseconds(0))) ;.
clearEvents
void clearEvents();
Clear all queued events without dispatching them.
This is useful to clear any references such as shared pointer in the queued events to avoid cyclic reference.
wait
void wait() const;
wait causes the current thread to block until there is new event arrives in the queue.
Note: though wait has work around with spurious wakeup internally, the queue is not guaranteed not empty after wait returns.
wait is useful when a thread processes the event queue. A sample usage is,
for(;;) {
eventQueue.wait();
eventQueue.process();
}
The code works event if it doesn't wait, but doing that will waste CPU power resource.
waitFor
template <class Rep, class Period>
bool waitFor(const std::chrono::duration<Rep, Period> & duration) const;
Wait for no longer than duration time out.
Return true if the queue is not empty, false if the return is caused by time out.
waitFor is useful when a event queue processing thread has other condition to check. For example,
std::atomic<bool> shouldStop(false);
for(;;) {
while(! eventQueue.waitFor(std::chrono::milliseconds(10)) && ! shouldStop.load()) ;
if(shouldStop.load()) {
break;
}
eventQueue.process();
}
Inner class HeterEventQueue::DisableQueueNotify
HeterEventQueue::DisableQueueNotify is a RAII class that temporarily prevents the event queue from waking up any waiting threads. When any DisableQueueNotify object exist, calling enqueue doesn't wake up any threads that are blocked by wait. When the DisableQueueNotify object is out of scope, the waking up is resumed. If there are more than one DisableQueueNotify objects, the waking up is only resumed after all DisableQueueNotify objects are destroyed.
DisableQueueNotify is useful to improve performance when batching adding events to the queue. For example, in a main loop of a game engine, DisableQueueNotify can be created on the start in a frame, then the game adding events to the queue, and the DisableQueueNotify is destroyed at the end of a frame and the events are processed.
To use DisableQueueNotify, construct it with a pointer to event queue.
Sample code
using EQ = eventpp::HeterEventQueue<int, void ()>;
EQ queue;
{
EQ::DisableQueueNotify disableNotify(&queue);
// any blocking threads will not be waken up by the below two lines.
queue.enqueue(1);
queue.enqueue(2);
}
// any blocking threads are waken up here immediately.
// any blocking threads will be waken up by below line since there is no DisableQueueNotify.
queue.enqueue(3);