python-peps/pep-3156.txt

PEP: 3156
Title: Asynchronous IO Support Rebooted
Version: $Revision$
Last-Modified: $Date$
Author: Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org>
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 12-Dec-2012
Post-History: 21-Dec-2012

Abstract
========

This is a proposal for asynchronous I/O in Python 3, starting with
Python 3.3.  Consider this the concrete proposal that is missing from
PEP 3153.  The proposal includes a pluggable event loop API, transport
and protocol abstractions similar to those in Twisted, and a
higher-level scheduler based on ``yield from`` (PEP 380).  A reference
implementation is in the works under the code name Tulip.  The Tulip
repo is linked from the References section at the end.


Introduction
============

The event loop is the place where most interoperability occurs.  It
should be easy for (Python 3.3 ports of) frameworks like Twisted,
Tornado, or even gevents to either adapt the default event loop
implementation to their needs using a lightweight wrapper or proxy, or
to replace the default event loop implementation with an adaptation of
their own event loop implementation.  (Some frameworks, like Twisted,
have multiple event loop implementations.  This should not be a
problem since these all have the same interface.)

In most cases it should be possible for two different third-party
frameworks to interoperate, either by sharing the default event loop
implementation (each using its own adapter), or by sharing the event
loop implementation of either framework.  In the latter case two
levels of adaptation would occur (from framework A's event loop to the
standard event loop interface, and from there to framework B's event
loop).  Which event loop implementation is used should be under
control of the main program (though a default policy for event loop
selection is provided).

For this interoperability to be effective, the preferred direction of
adaptation in third party frameworks is to keep the default event loop
and adapt it to the framework's API.  Ideally all third party
frameworks would give up their own event loop implementation in favor
of the standard implementation.  But not all frameworks may be
satisfied with the functionality provided by the standard
implementation.

In order to support both directions of adaptation, two separate APIs
are defined:

- getting and setting the current event loop object
- the interface of a conforming event loop and its minimum guarantees

An event loop implementation may provide additional methods and
guarantees.

The event loop interface does not depend on ``yield from``.  Rather, it
uses a combination of callbacks, additional interfaces (transports and
protocols), and Futures.  The latter are similar to those defined in
PEP 3148, but have a different implementation and are not tied to
threads.  In particular, they have no wait() method; the user is
expected to use callbacks.

For users (like myself) who don't like using callbacks, a scheduler is
provided for writing asynchronous I/O code as coroutines using the PEP
380 ``yield from`` expressions.  The scheduler is not pluggable;
pluggability occurs at the event loop level, and the scheduler should
work with any conforming event loop implementation.

For interoperability between code written using coroutines and other
async frameworks, the scheduler has a Task class that behaves like a
Future.  A framework that interoperates at the event loop level can
wait for a Future to complete by adding a callback to the Future.
Likewise, the scheduler offers an operation to suspend a coroutine
until a callback is called.

Limited interoperability with threads is provided by the event loop
interface; there is an API to submit a function to an executor (see
PEP 3148) which returns a Future that is compatible with the event
loop.

A Note About Transports and Protocols
-------------------------------------

For those not familiar with Twisted, a quick explanation of the
difference between transports and protocols is in order.  At the
highest level, the transport is concerned with *how* bytes are
transmitted, while the protocol determines *which* bytes to transmit
(and to some extent when).

The most common type of transport is a bidirectional stream transport.
It represents a pair of streams (one in each direction) that each
transmit a sequence of bytes.  The most common example of a
bidirectional stream transport is probably a TCP connection.  Another
common example is an SSL connection.  But there are some other things
that can be viewed this way, for example an SSH session or a pair of
UNIX pipes.  Typically there aren't many different transport
implementations, and most of them come with the event loop
implementation.  Note that transports don't need to use sockets, not
even if they use TCP -- sockets are a platform-specific implementation
detail.

A bidirectional stream transport has two "sides": one side talks to
the network (or another process, or whatever low-level interface it
wraps), and the other side talks to the protocol.  The former uses
whatever API is necessary to implement the transport; but the
interface between transport and protocol is standardized by this PEP.

A protocol represents some kind of "application-level" protocol such
as HTTP or SMTP.  Its primary interface is with the transport.  While
some popular protocols will probably have a standard implementation,
often applications implement custom protocols.  It also makes sense to
have libraries of useful 3rd party protocol implementations that can
be downloaded and installed from pypi.python.org.

There general notion of transport and protocol includes other
interfaces, where the transport wraps some other communication
abstraction.  Examples include interfaces for sending and receiving
datagrams (e.g. UDP), or a subprocess manager.  The separation of
concerns is the same as for bidirectional stream transports and
protocols, but the specific interface between transport and protocol
is different in each case.

Details of the interfaces defined by the various standard types of
transports and protocols are given later.

Dependencies
------------

Python 3.3 is required for many of the proposed features.  The
reference implementation (Tulip) requires no new language or standard
library features beyond Python 3.3, no third-party modules or
packages, and no C code, except for the proactor-based event loop on
Windows.


Event Loop Interface Specification
==================================

Module Namespace
----------------

The specification here will live in a new toplevel package.  Different
components will live in separate submodules of that package.  The
package will import common APIs from their respective submodules and
make them available as package attributes (similar to the way the
email package works).

The name of the toplevel package is currently unspecified.  The
reference implementation uses the name 'tulip', but the name will
change to something more boring if and when the implementation is
moved into the standard library (hopefully for Python 3.4).

Until the boring name is chosen, this PEP will use 'tulip' as the
toplevel package name.  Classes and functions given without a module
name are assumed to be accessed via the toplevel package.

Event Loop Policy: Getting and Setting the Current Event Loop
-------------------------------------------------------------

Event loop management is controlled by an event loop policy, which is
a global (per-process) state.  There is a default policy, and an API
to change the policy.  The policy defines the notion of context; the
default policy's notion of context is defined as the current thread.

Certain platforms or programming frameworks may change the default
policy to something more suitable to the expectations of the users of
that platform or framework.  Such platforms or frameworks must
document their policy and at what point during their initialization
sequence the policy is set. in order to avoid undefined behavior when
multiple active frameworks want to override the default policy.

An event loop policy may but does not have to enforce that there is
only one event loop in existence.  The default event loop policy does
not enforce this, but it does enforce that there is only one event
loop per thread (as far as ``get_event_loop()`` is concerned).

To get the current event loop, use ``get_event_loop()``.  This returns
an event loop object implementing the interface specified below, or
``None`` in case no current event loop has been set and the current
policy does not specify how to create one for the current context.  It
is expected that ``get_event_loop()`` returns a different object
depending on the context, and the default policy will only create a
default event loop in the main thread; in other threads an event loop
must be explicitly set (but other policies may behave differently).
Event loop creation is lazy; i.e. the first call to
``get_event_loop()`` creates an event loop instance if necessary and
specified by the current policy.

To set the current event loop, use ``set_event_loop(event_loop)``,
where ``event_loop`` is an event loop object.  It is allowed to set
the current event loop to ``None`` (although under the default policy,
if the main thread's current event loop is set to ``None``, and
``get_event_loop()`` is called subsequently, it will create a new
event loop instance.

For the benefit of unit tests and other special cases there's a third
policy function: ``new_event_loop()``, which creates and returns a new
event loop object according to the policy's default rules.  To make
this the current event loop, you must call ``set_event_loop()``.

To change the event loop policy, call
``set_event_loop_policy(policy)``, where ``policy`` is an event loop
policy object or ``None``.  The policy object must be an object that
has methods ``get_event_loop()``, ``set_event_loop(loop)`` and
``new_event_loop()``, all behaving like the functions described above.
Passing a policy value of ``None`` restores the default event loop
policy (overriding the alternate default set by the platform or
framework).  The default event loop policy is an instance of the class
``DefaultEventLoopPolicy``.  The current event loop policy object can
be retrieved by calling ``get_event_loop_policy()``.  (TBD: Require
inheriting from ``AbstractEventLoopPolicy``?)

Event Loop Classes
------------------

There is no actual class named ``EventLoop``.  There is an
``AbstractEventLoop`` class which defines all the methods without
implementations, and serves primarily as documentation.  The following
concrete classes are defined:

- ``SelectorEventLoop`` is a concrete implementation of the full API
  based on the ``selectors`` module.  (This module is part of Tulip,
  but not specified by this PEP.  It is separately proposed for
  inclusion in the standard library.)  The constructor takes one
  optional argument, a ``selectors.Selector`` object.  By default an
  instance of ``selectors.DefaultSelector`` is created and used.

- ``ProactorEventLoop`` is a concrete implementation of the API except
  for the I/O event handling and signal handling methods.  It is only
  defined on Windows (or on other platforms which support a similar
  API for "overlapped I/O").  The constructor takes one optional
  argument, a ``Proactor`` object.  By default an instance of
  ``IocpProactor`` is created and used.  (The ``IocpProactor`` class
  is not specified by this PEP.  Its inclusion in the standard library
  is not currently under consideration; it is just an implementation
  detail of the ``ProactorEventLoop`` class.

Event Loop Methods Overview
---------------------------

The methods of a conforming event loop are grouped into several
categories.  A brief overview of the categories.  The first set of
categories must be supported by all conforming event loop
implementations.   (However, in some cases a partially-conforming
implementation may choose not to implement the internet/socket
methods, and still conform to the other methods.)

- Miscellaneous: ``close()``, ``time()``.

- Starting and stopping: ``run_forever()``, ``run_until_complete()``,
  ``stop()``, ``is_running()``.

- Basic callbacks: ``call_soon()``, ``call_later()``, ``call_at()``.

- Thread interaction: ``call_soon_threadsafe()``,
  ``run_in_executor()``, ``set_default_executor()``.

- Internet name lookups: ``getaddrinfo()``, ``getnameinfo()``.

- Internet connections: ``create_connection()``, ``start_serving()``,
  ``stop_serving()``, ``create_datagram_endpoint()``.

- Wrapped socket methods: ``sock_recv()``, ``sock_sendall()``,
  ``sock_connect()``, ``sock_accept()``.

The second set of categories *may* be supported by conforming event
loop implementations.  If not supported, they will raise
``NotImplementedError``.  (In the current state of Tulip,
``SelectorEventLoop`` on UNIX systems supports all of these;
``SelectorEventLoop`` on Windows supports the I/O event handling
category; ``ProactorEventLoop`` on Windows supports None.  The
intention is to add support for pipes and subprocesses on Windows as
well, using the ``subprocess`` module in the standard library.)

- I/O callbacks: ``add_reader()``, ``remove_reader()``,
  ``add_writer()``, ``remove_writer()``.

- Pipes and subprocesses: ``connect_read_pipe()``,
  ``connect_write_pipe()``, ``spawn_subprocess()``.

- Signal callbacks: ``add_signal_handler()``,
  ``remove_signal_handler()``.

Specifying Times
----------------

As usual in Python, all timeouts, intervals and delays are measured in
seconds, and may be ints or floats.  The accuracy and precision of the
clock are up to the implementation; the default implementation uses
``time.monotonic()``.  Books could be written about the implications
of this choice.  Better read the docs for the stdandard library
``time`` module.

Required Event Loop Methods
---------------------------

Miscellaneous
'''''''''''''

- ``close()``.  Closes the event loop, releasing any resources it may
  hold, such as the file descriptor used by ``epoll()`` or
  ``kqueue()``.  This should not be called while the event loop is
  running.  After it has been called the event loop may not be used
  again.  It may be called multiple times; subsequent calls are
  no-ops.

- ``time()``.  Returns the current time according to the event loop's
  clock.  This may be ``time.time()`` or ``time.monotonic()`` or some
  other system-specific clock, but it must return a float expressing
  the time in units of approximately one second since some epoch.
  (No clock is perfect -- see PEP 418.)

Starting and Stopping
'''''''''''''''''''''

An (unclosed) event loop can be in one of two states: running or
stopped.  These methods deal with starting and stopping an event loop:

- ``run_forever()``.  Runs the event loop until ``stop()`` is called.
  This cannot be called when the event loop is already running.  (This
  has a long name in part to avoid confusion with earlier versions of
  this PEP, where ``run()`` had different behavior, in part because
  there are already too many APIs that have a method named ``run()``,
  and in part because there shouldn't be many places where this is
  called anyway.)

- ``run_until_complete(future, timeout=None)``.  Runs the event loop
  until the Future is done.  If a timeout is given, it waits at most
  that long.  If the Future is done, its result is returned, or its
  exception is raised; if the timeout expires before the Future is
  done, or if ``stop()`` is called, ``TimeoutError`` is raised (but
  the Future is not cancelled).  This cannot be called when the event
  loop is already running.

- ``stop()``.  Stops the event loop as soon as it is convenient.  It
  is fine to restart the loop with ``run_forever()`` or
  ``run_until_complete()`` subsequently; no scheduled callbacks will
  be lost if this is done.  Note: ``stop()`` returns normally and the
  current callback is allowed to continue.  How soon after this point
  the event loop stops is up to the implementation, but the intention
  is to stop short of polling for I/O, and not to run any callbacks
  scheduled in the future; the major freedom an implementation has is
  how much of the "ready queue" (callbacks already scheduled with
  ``call_soon()``) it processes before stopping.

- ``is_running()``.  Returns ``True`` if the event loop is currently
  running, ``False`` if it is stopped.  (TBD: Do we need another
  inquiry method to tell whether the loop is in the process of
  stopping?)

Basic Callbacks
'''''''''''''''

- ``call_soon(callback, *args)``.  This schedules a callback to be
  called as soon as possible.  Returns a Handle representing the
  callback, whose ``cancel()`` method can be used to cancel the
  callback.  It guarantees that callbacks are called in the order in
  which they were scheduled.

- ``call_later(delay, callback, *args)``.  Arrange for
  ``callback(*args)`` to be called approximately ``delay`` seconds in
  the future, once, unless cancelled.  Returns a Handle representing
  the callback, whose ``cancel()`` method can be used to cancel the
  callback.  Callbacks scheduled in the past or at exactly the same
  time will be called in an undefined order.

- ``call_at(when, callback, *args)``.  This is like ``call_later()``,
  but the time is expressed as an absolute time.  Returns a similar
  Handle.  There is a simple equivalency: ``loop.call_later(delay,
  callback, *args)`` is the same as ``loop.call_at(loop.time() +
  delay, callback, *args)``.

Note: A previous version of this PEP defined a method named
``call_repeatedly()``, which promised to call a callback at regular
intervals.  This has been withdrawn because the design of such a
function is overspecified.  On the one hand, a simple timer loop can
easily be emulated using a callback that reschedules itself using
``call_later()``; it is also easy to write coroutine containing a loop
and a ``sleep()`` call (a toplevel function in the module, see below).
On the other hand, due to the complexities of accurate timekeeping
there are many traps and pitfalls here for the unaware (see PEP 418),
and different use cases require different behavior in edge cases.  It
is impossible to offer an API for this purpose that is bullet-proof in
all cases, so it is deemed better to let application designers decide
for themselves what kind of timer loop to implement.

Thread interaction
''''''''''''''''''

- ``call_soon_threadsafe(callback, *args)``.  Like
  ``call_soon(callback, *args)``, but when called from another thread
  while the event loop is blocked waiting for I/O, unblocks the event
  loop.  This is the *only* method that is safe to call from another
  thread.  (To schedule a callback for a later time in a threadsafe
  manner, you can use ``loop.call_soon_threadsafe(loop.call_later,
  when, callback, *args)``.)  Note: this is not safe to call from a
  signal handler (since it may use locks).  In fact, no API is
  signal-safe; if you want to handle signals, use
  ``add_signal_handler()`` described below.

- ``run_in_executor(executor, callback, *args)``.  Arrange to call
  ``callback(*args)`` in an executor (see PEP 3148).  Returns a Future
  whose result on success is the return value of that call.  This is
  equivalent to ``wrap_future(executor.submit(callback, *args))``.  If
  ``executor`` is ``None``, the default executor set by
  ``set_default_executor()`` is used.  If no default executor has been
  set yet, a ``ThreadPoolExecutor`` with 5 threads is created and set
  as the default executor.

- ``set_default_executor(executor)``.  Set the default executor used
  by ``run_in_executor()``.  The argument must be a PEP 3148
  ``Executor`` instance or ``None``, in order to reset the default
  executor.

See also the ``wrap_future()`` function described in the section about
Futures.

Internet name lookups
'''''''''''''''''''''

These methods are useful if you want to connect or bind a socket to an
address without the risk of blocking for the name lookup.  They are
usually called implicitly by ``create_connection()``,
``start_serving()`` or ``create_datagram_endpoint()``.

- ``getaddrinfo(host, port, family=0, type=0, proto=0, flags=0)``.
  Similar to the ``socket.getaddrinfo()`` function but returns a
  Future.  The Future's result on success will be a list of the same
  format as returned by ``socket.getaddrinfo()``, i.e. a list of
  ``(address_family, socket_type, socket_protocol, canonical_name,
  address)`` where ``address`` is a 2-tuple ``(ipv4_address, port)``
  for IPv4 addresses and a 4-tuple ``(ipv4_address, port, flow_info,
  scope_id)`` for IPv6 addresses.  If the ``family`` argument is zero
  or unspecified, the list returned may contain a mixture of IPv4 and
  IPv6 addresses; otherwise the addresses returned are constrained by
  the ``family`` value (similar for ``proto`` and ``flags``).  The
  default implementation calls ``socket.getaddrinfo()`` using
  ``run_in_executor()``, but other implementations may choose to
  implement their own DNS lookup.  The optional arguments *must* be
  specified as keyword arguments.

  Note: implementations are allowed to implement a subset of the full
  socket.getaddrinfo() interface; e.g. they may not support symbolic
  port names, or they may ignore or incompletely implement the
  ``type``, ``proto`` and ``flags`` arguments.  However, if ``type``
  and ``proto`` are ignored, the argument values passed in should be
  copied unchanged into the return tuples' ``socket_type`` and
  ``socket_protocol`` elements.  (You can't ignore ``family``, since
  IPv4 and IPv6 addresses must be looked up differently.  The only
  permissible values for ``family`` are ``socket.AF_UNSPEC`` (``0``),
  ``socket.AF_INET`` and ``socket.AF_INET6``, and the latter only if
  it is defined by the platform.)

- ``getnameinfo(sockaddr, flags=0)``.  Similar to
  ``socket.getnameinfo()`` but returns a Future.  The Future's result
  on success will be a tuple ``(host, port)``.  Same implementation
  remarks as for ``getaddrinfo()``.

Internet connections
''''''''''''''''''''

These are the high-level interfaces for managing internet connections.
Their use is recommended over the corresponding lower-level interfaces
because they abstract away the differences between selector-based
and proactor-based event loops.

Note that the client and server side of stream connections use the
same transport and protocol interface.  However, datagram endpoints
use a different transport and protocol interface.

- ``create_connection(protocol_factory, host, port, **kwargs)``.
  Creates a stream connection to a given internet host and port.  This
  is a task that is typically called from the client side of the
  connection.  It creates an implementation-dependent (bidirectional
  stream) Transport to represent the connection, then calls
  ``protocol_factory()`` to instantiate (or retrieve) the user's
  Protocol implementation, and finally ties the two together.  (See
  below for the definitions of Transport and Protocol.)  The user's
  Protocol implementation is created or retrieved by calling
  ``protocol_factory()`` without arguments(*).  The coroutine's result
  on success is the ``(transport, protocol)`` pair; if a failure
  prevents the creation of a successful connection, an appropriate
  exception will be raised.  Note that when the coroutine completes,
  the protocol's ``connection_made()`` method has not yet been called;
  that will happen when the connection handshake is complete.

  (*) There is no requirement that ``protocol_factory`` is a class.
  If your protocol class needs to have specific arguments passed to
  its constructor, you can use ``lambda`` or ``functools.partial()``.
  You can also pass a trivial ``lambda`` that returns a previously
  constructed Protocol instance.

  Optional keyword arguments:

  - ``ssl``: Pass ``True`` to create an SSL transport (by default a
    plain TCP transport is created).  Or pass an ``ssl.SSLContext``
    object to override the default SSL context object to be used.

  - ``family``, ``proto``, ``flags``: Address family, protocol and
    flags to be passed through to ``getaddrinfo()``.  These all
    default to ``0``, which means "not specified".  (The socket type
    is always ``SOCK_STREAM``.)  If any of these values are not
    specified, the ``getaddrinfo()`` method will choose appropriate
    values.  Note: ``proto`` has nothing to do with the high-level
    Protocol concept or the ``protocol_factory`` argument.

  - ``sock``: An optional socket to be used instead of using the
    ``host``, ``port``, ``family``, ``proto``, and ``flags``
    arguments.  If this is given, host and port must be omitted;
    otherwise, host and port are required.

  - ``local_addr``: If given, a ``(host, port)`` tuple used to bind
    the socket to locally.  This is rarely needed but on multi-homed
    servers you occasionally need to force a connection to come from a
    specific address.  This is how you would do that.  The host and
    port are looked up using ``getaddrinfo()``.

- ``start_serving(protocol_factory, host, port, **kwds)``.  Enters a
  serving loop that accepts connections.  This is a Task that
  completes once the serving loop is set up to serve.  The return
  value is a list of one or more sockets in listening mode.  (Multiple
  sockets may be returned if the specified address allows both IPv4
  and IPv6 connections.)  You can use ``stop_serving()`` to stop the
  serving loop.  Each time a connection is accepted,
  ``protocol_factory`` is called without arguments(*) to create a
  Protocol, a (bidirectional stream) Transport is created to represent
  the network side of the connection, and the two are tied together by
  calling ``protocol.connection_made(transport)``.

  (*) See footnote above for ``create_connection()``.  However, since
  ``protocol_factory()`` is called once for each new incoming
  connection, it should return a new Protocol object each time it is
  called.

  Optional keyword arguments:

  - ``ssl``: Pass an ``ssl.SSLContext`` object to override the default
    SSL context object to be used.  (Unlike ``create_connection()``,
    passing ``True`` does not make sense -- the ``SSLContext`` object
    is required to specify the certificate and key.)

  - ``backlog``: Backlog value to be passed to the ``listen()`` call.
    Defaults to ``100``.

  - ``reuse_address``: Whether to set the ``SO_REUSEADDR`` option on
    the socket.  The default is ``True`` on UNIX, ``False`` on
    Windows.

  - ``family``, ``flags``: Address family and flags to be passed
     through to ``getaddrinfo()``.  The family defaults to
     ``AF_UNSPEC``; the flags default to ``AI_PASSIVE``.  (The socket
     type is always ``SOCK_STREAM``; the socket protocol always set to
     ``0``, to let ``getaddrinfo()`` choose.)

  - ``sock``: An optional socket to be used instead of using the
    ``host``, ``port``, ``family``, and ``flags`` arguments.  If this
    is given, host and port must be omitted; otherwise, host and port
    are required.  The return value will be the one-element list
    ``[sock]``.

- ``stop_serving(sock)``.  The argument should be a socket from the
  list returned by ``start_serving()``.  The serving loop associated
  with that socket will be stopped.  Connections that have already
  been accepted will not be affected.  (TBD: What if
  ``start_serving()`` doesn't use sockets?  Then it should probably
  return a list of opaque objects that can be passed to
  ``stop_serving()``.)

- ``create_datagram_endpoint(protocol_factory, local_addr,
  remote_addr, **kwds)``.  Creates an endpoint for sending and
  receiving datagrams (typically UDP packets).  Because of the nature
  of datagram traffic, there are no separate calls to set up client
  and server side, since usually a single endpoint acts as both client
  and server.  This is a coroutine that returns a ``(transport,
  protocol)`` pair on success, or raises an exception on failure.  If
  the coroutine returns successfully, the transport will call
  callbacks on the protocol whenever a datagram is received or the
  socket is closed; it is up to the protocol to call methods on the
  protocol to send datagrams.  Note that the transport and protocol
  interfaces used here are different than those for stream
  connections.

  Arguments:

  - ``protocol_factory``: A class or factory function that will be
    called, without arguments, to construct the protocol object to be
    returned.  The interface between datagram transport and protocol
    is described below.

  - ``local_addr``: An optional tuple indicating the address to which
    the socket will be bound.  If given this must be a ``(host,
    port)`` pair.  It will be passed to ``getaddrinfo()`` to be
    resolved and the result will be passed to the ``bind()`` method of
    the socket created.  If ``getaddrinfo()`` returns more than one
    address, they will be tried in turn.  If omitted, no ``bind()``
    call will be made.

  - ``remote_addr``: An optional tuple indicating the address to which
    the socket will be "connected".  (Since there is no such thing as
    a datagram connection, this just specifies a default value for the
    destination address of outgoing datagrams.)  If given this must be
    a ``(host, port)`` pair.  It will be passed to ``getaddrinfo()``
    to be resolved and the result will be passed to ``sock_connect()``
    together with the socket created.  If ``getaddrinfo()`` returns
    more than one address, they will be tried in turn.  If omitted,
    no ``sock_connect()`` will be made.

  - ``family``, ``proto``, ``flags``: Address family, protocol and
    flags to be passed through to ``getaddrinfo()``.  These all
    default to ``0``, which means "not specified".  (The socket type
    is always ``SOCK_DGRAM``.)  If any of these values are not
    specified, the ``getaddrinfo()`` method will choose appropriate
    values.

  Note that if both ``local_addr`` and ``remote_addr`` are present,
  all combinations of local and remote addresses with matching address
  family will be tried.

Wrapped Socket Methods
''''''''''''''''''''''

The following methods for doing async I/O on sockets are not for
general use.  They are primarily meant for transport implementations
working with IOCP through the ``ProactorEventLoop`` class.  However,
they are easily implementable for other event loop types, so there is
no reason not to require them.  The socket argument has to be a
non-blocking socket.

- ``sock_recv(sock, n)``.  Receive up to ``n`` bytes from socket
  ``sock``.  Returns a Future whose result on success will be a
  bytes object.

- ``sock_sendall(sock, data)``.  Send bytes ``data`` to socket
  ``sock``.  Returns a Future whose result on success will be
  ``None``.  Note: the name uses ``sendall`` instead of ``send``, to
  reflect that the semantics and signature of this method echo those
  of the standard library socket method ``sendall()`` rather than
  ``send()``.  (TBD: but maybe it would be better to emulate
  ``send()`` after all?  That would be better for datagram sockets.)

- ``sock_connect(sock, address)``.  Connect to the given address.
  Returns a Future whose result on success will be ``None``.

- ``sock_accept(sock)``.  Accept a connection from a socket.  The
  socket must be in listening mode and bound to an address.  Returns a
  Future whose result on success will be a tuple ``(conn, peer)``
  where ``conn`` is a connected non-blocking socket and ``peer`` is
  the peer address.

Optional Event Loop Methods
---------------------------

I/O Callbacks
'''''''''''''

These methods are primarily meant for transport implementations
working with a selector.  They are implemented by
``SelectorEventLoop`` but not by ``ProactorEventLoop``.  Custom event
loop implementations may or may not implement them.

The ``fd`` arguments below may be integer file descriptors, or
"file-like" objects with a ``fileno()`` method that wrap integer file
descriptors.  Not all file-like objects or file descriptors are
acceptable.  Sockets (and socket file descriptors) are always
accepted.  On Windows no other types are supported.  On UNIX, pipes
and possibly tty devices are also supported, but disk files are not.
Exactly which special file types are supported may vary by platform
and per selector implementation.  (Experimentally, there is at least
one kind of pseudo-tty on OSX that is supported by ``select`` and
``poll`` but not by ``kqueue``: it is used by Emacs shell windows.)

- ``add_reader(fd, callback, *args)``.  Arrange for
  ``callback(*args)`` to be called whenever file descriptor ``fd`` is
  deemed ready for reading.  Calling ``add_reader()`` again for the
  same file descriptor implies a call to ``remove_reader()`` for the
  same file descriptor.

- ``add_writer(fd, callback, *args)``.  Like ``add_reader()``,
  but registers the callback for writing instead of for reading.

- ``remove_reader(fd)``.  Cancels the current read callback for file
  descriptor ``fd``, if one is set.  If no callback is currently set
  for the file descriptor, this is a no-op and returns ``False``.
  Otherwise, it removes the callback arrangement and returns ``True``.

- ``remove_writer(fd)``.  This is to ``add_writer()`` as
  ``remove_reader()`` is to ``add_reader()``.

Pipes and Subprocesses
''''''''''''''''''''''

TBD: Should these really take stream objects?  The stream objects are
not useful for reading or writing because they would cause blocking
I/O.  This section of the API is clearly not yet ready for review.

- ``connect_read_pipe(protocol_factory, pipe)``: Create a
  unidrectional stream connection from a file-like object wrapping the
  read end of a UNIX pipe.  The protocol/transport interface is the
  read half of the bidirectional stream interface.

- ``connect_write_pipe(protocol_factory, pipe)``: Create a
  unidrectional stream connection from a file-like object wrapping the
  write end of a UNIX pipe.  The protocol/transport interface is the
  write half of the bidirectional stream interface.

- TBD: A way to run a subprocess with stdin, stdout and stderr
  connected to pipe transports.  (This is being designed but not yet
  ready.)

TBD: offer the same interface on Windows for e.g. named pipes.  (This
should be possible given that the standard library ``subprocess``
module is supported on Windows.)

Signal callbacks
''''''''''''''''

- ``add_signal_handler(sig, callback, *args).  Whenever signal ``sig``
  is received, arrange for ``callback(*args)`` to be called.
  Specifying another callback for the same signal replaces the
  previous handler (only one handler can be active per signal).  The
  ``sig`` must be a valid sigal number defined in the ``signal``
  module.  If the signal cannot be handled this raises an exception:
  ``ValueError`` if it is not a valid signal or if it is an uncatchable
  signale (e.g. ``SIGKILL``), ``RuntimeError`` if this particular event
  loop instance cannot handle signals (since signals are global per
  process, only an event loop associated with the main thread can
  handle signals).

- ``remove_signal_handler(sig)``.  Removes the handler for signal
  ``sig``, if one is set.  Raises the same exceptions as
  ``add_signal_handler()`` (except that it may return ``False``
  instead raising ``RuntimeError`` for uncatchable signals).  Returns
  ``True`` if a handler was removed successfully, ``False`` if no
  handler was set.

Note: If these methods are statically known to be unsupported, they
may return ``NotImplementedError`` instead of ``RuntimeError``.

Callback Sequencing
-------------------

When two callbacks are scheduled for the same time, they are run
in the order in which they are registered.  For example::

  loop.call_soon(foo)
  loop.call_soon(bar)

guarantees that ``foo()`` is called before ``bar()``.

If ``call_soon()`` is used, this guarantee is true even if the system
clock were to run backwards.  This is also the case for
``call_later(0, callback, *args)``.  However, if ``call_later()`` is
used with a nonzero delay, all bets are off if the system
clock were to runs backwards.  (A good event loop implementation
should use ``time.monotonic()`` to avoid problems when the clock runs
backward.  See PEP 418.)

Context
-------

All event loops have a notion of context.  For the default event loop
implementation, the context is a thread.  An event loop implementation
should run all callbacks in the same context.  An event loop
implementation should run only one callback at a time, so callbacks
can assume automatic mutual exclusion with other callbacks scheduled
in the same event loop.

Exceptions
----------

There are two categories of exceptions in Python: those that derive
from the ``Exception`` class and those that derive from
``BaseException``.  Exceptions deriving from ``Exception`` will
generally be caught and handled appropriately; for example, they will
be passed through by Futures, and they will be logged and ignored when
they occur in a callback.

However, exceptions deriving only from ``BaseException`` are never
caught, and will usually cause the program to terminate with a
traceback.  (Examples of this category include ``KeyboardInterrupt``
and ``SystemExit``; it is usually unwise to treat these the same as
most other exceptions.)

Handles
-------

The various methods for registering one-off callbacks
(``call_soon()``, ``call_later()``, ``call_at()`` and
``call_soon_threadsafe()``) all return an object representing the
registration that can be used to cancel the callback.  This object is
called a Handle (although its class name is not necessarily
``Handle``).  Handles are opaque and have only one public method:

- ``cancel()``.  Cancel the callback.


Futures
-------

The ``tulip.Future`` class here is intentionally similar to the
``concurrent.futures.Future`` class specified by PEP 3148, but there
are slight differences.  Whenever this PEP talks about Futures or
futures this should be understood to refer to ``tulip.Future`` unless
``concurrent.futures.Future`` is explicitly mentioned.  The supported
public API is as follows, indicating the differences with PEP 3148:

- ``cancel()``.  If the Future is already done (or cancelled), return
  ``False``.  Otherwise, change the Future's state to cancelled (this
  implies done), schedule the callbacks, and return ``True``.

- ``cancelled()``.  Returns ``True`` if the Future was cancelled.

- ``running()``.  Always returns ``False``.  Difference with PEP 3148:
  there is no "running" state.

- ``done()``.  Returns ``True`` if the Future is done.  Note that a
  cancelled Future is considered done too (here and everywhere).

- ``result()``.  Returns the result set with ``set_result()``, or
  raises the exception set with ``set_exception()``.  Raises
  ``CancelledError`` if cancelled.  Difference with PEP 3148: This has
  no timeout argument and does *not* wait; if the future is not yet
  done, it raises an exception.

- ``exception()``.  Returns the exception if set with
  ``set_exception()``, or ``None`` if a result was set with
  ``set_result()``.  Raises ``CancelledError`` if cancelled.
  Difference with PEP 3148: This has no timeout argument and does
  *not* wait; if the future is not yet done, it raises an exception.

- ``add_done_callback(fn)``.  Add a callback to be run when the Future
  becomes done (or is cancelled).  If the Future is already done (or
  cancelled), schedules the callback to using ``call_soon()``.
  Difference with PEP 3148: The callback is never called immediately,
  and always in the context of the caller.  (Typically, a context is a
  thread.)  You can think of this as calling the callback through
  ``call_soon()``.  Note that in order to match PEP 3148, the callback
  (unlike all other callbacks defined in this PEP, and ignoring the
  convention from the section "Callback Style" below) is always called
  with a single argument, the Future object.

- ``remove_done_callback(fn)``.  Remove the argument from the list of
  callbacks.  This method is not defined by PEP 3148.  The argument
  must be equal (using ``==``) to the argument passed to
  ``add_done_callback()``.  Returns the number of times the callback
  was removed.

- ``set_result(result)``.  The Future must not be done (nor cancelled)
  already.  This makes the Future done and schedules the callbacks.
  Difference with PEP 3148: This is a public API.

- ``set_exception(exception)``.  The Future must not be done (nor
  cancelled) already.  This makes the Future done and schedules the
  callbacks.  Difference with PEP 3148: This is a public API.

The internal method ``set_running_or_notify_cancel()`` is not
supported; there is no way to set the running state.

The following exceptions are defined:

- ``InvalidStateError``.  Raised whenever the Future is not in a state
  acceptable to the method being called (e.g. calling ``set_result()``
  on a Future that is already done, or calling ``result()`` on a Future
  that is not yet done).

- ``InvalidTimeoutError``.  Raised by ``result()`` and ``exception()``
  when a nonzero ``timeout`` argument is given.

- ``CancelledError``.  An alias for
  ``concurrent.futures.CancelledError``.  Raised when ``result()`` or
  ``exception()`` is called on a Future that is cancelled.

- ``TimeoutError``.  An alias for ``concurrent.futures.TimeoutError``.
  May be raised by ``run_until_complete()``.

A Future is associated with the default event loop when it is created.
(TBD: Optionally pass in an alternative event loop instance?)

A ``tulip.Future`` object is not acceptable to the ``wait()`` and
``as_completed()`` functions in the ``concurrent.futures`` package.
However, there are similar APIs ``tulip.wait()`` and
``tulip.as_completed()``, described below.

A ``tulip.Future`` object is acceptable to a ``yield from`` expression
when used in a coroutine.  This is implemented through the
``__iter__()`` interface on the Future.  See the section "Coroutines
and the Scheduler" below.

When a Future is garbage-collected, if it has an associated exception
but neither ``result()`` nor ``exception()`` nor ``__iter__()`` has
ever been called (or the latter hasn't raised the exception yet --
details TBD), the exception should be logged.  TBD: At what level?

In the future (pun intended) we may unify ``tulip.Future`` and
``concurrent.futures.Future``, e.g. by adding an ``__iter__()`` method
to the latter that works with ``yield from``.  To prevent accidentally
blocking the event loop by calling e.g. ``result()`` on a Future
that's not done yet, the blocking operation may detect that an event
loop is active in the current thread and raise an exception instead.
However the current PEP strives to have no dependencies beyond Python
3.3, so changes to ``concurrent.futures.Future`` are off the table for
now.

There are some public functions related to Futures:

- ``async(arg)``.  This takes an argument that is either a coroutine
  object or a Future (i.e., anything you can use with ``yield from``)
  and returns a Future.  If the argument is a Future, it is returned
  unchanged; if it is a coroutine object, it wraps it in a Task
  (remember that ``Task`` is a subclass of ``Future``).

- ``wrap_future(future)``.  This takes a PEP 3148 Future (i.e., an
  instance of ``concurrent.futures.Future``) and returns a Future
  compatible with the event loop (i.e., a ``tulip.Future`` instance).


Transports
----------

Transports and protocols are strongly influenced by Twisted and PEP
3153.  Users rarely implement or instantiate transports -- rather,
event loops offer utility methods to set up transports.

Transports work in conjunction with protocols.  Protocols are
typically written without knowing or caring about the exact type of
transport used, and transports can be used with a wide variety of
protocols.  For example, an HTTP client protocol implementation may be
used with either a plain socket transport or an SSL transport.  The
plain socket transport can be used with many different protocols
besides HTTP (e.g. SMTP, IMAP, POP, FTP, IRC, SPDY).

The most common type of transport is a bidirectional stream transport.
There are also unidirectional stream transports (used for pipes) and
datagram transports (used by the ``create_datagram_endpoint()``
method).

Methods For All Transports
''''''''''''''''''''''''''

- ``get_extra_info(name, default=None)``.  This is a catch-all method
  that returns implementation-specific information about a transport.
  The first argument is the name of the extra field to be retrieved.
  The optional second argument is a default value to be returned.
  Consult the implementation documentation to find out the supported
  extra field names.  For an unsupported name, the default is always
  returned.

Bidirectional Stream Transports
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

A bidrectional stream transport is an abstraction on top of a socket
or something similar (for example, a pair of UNIX pipes or an SSL
connection).

Most connections have an asymmetric nature: the client and server
usually have very different roles and behaviors.  Hence, the interface
between transport and protocol is also asymmetric.  From the
protocol's point of view, *writing* data is done by calling the
``write()`` method on the transport object; this buffers the data and
returns immediately.  However, the transport takes a more active role
in *reading* data: whenever some data is read from the socket (or
other data source), the transport calls the protocol's
``data_received()`` method.

Nevertheless, the interface between transport and protocol used by
bidirectional streams is the same for clients as it is for servers,
since the connection between a client and a server is essentially a
pair of streams, one in each direction.

Bidirectional stream transports have the following public methods:

- ``write(data)``.  Write some bytes.  The argument must be a bytes
  object.  Returns ``None``.  The transport is free to buffer the
  bytes, but it must eventually cause the bytes to be transferred to
  the entity at the other end, and it must maintain stream behavior.
  That is, ``t.write(b'abc'); t.write(b'def')`` is equivalent to
  ``t.write(b'abcdef')``, as well as to::

    t.write(b'a')
    t.write(b'b')
    t.write(b'c')
    t.write(b'd')
    t.write(b'e')
    t.write(b'f')

- ``writelines(iterable)``.  Equivalent to::

    for data in iterable:
        self.write(data)

- ``write_eof()``.  Close the writing end of the connection.
  Subsequent calls to ``write()`` are not allowed.  Once all buffered
  data is transferred, the transport signals to the other end that no
  more data will be received.  Some protocols don't support this
  operation; in that case, calling ``write_eof()`` will raise an
  exception.  (Note: This used to be called ``half_close()``, but
  unless you already know what it is for, that name doesn't indicate
  *which* end is closed.)

- ``can_write_eof()``.  Return ``True`` if the protocol supports
  ``write_eof()``, ``False`` if it does not.  (This method typically
  returns a fixed value that depends only on the specific Transport
  class, not on the state of the Transport object.  It is needed
  because some protocols need to change their behavior when
  ``write_eof()`` is unavailable.  For example, in HTTP, to send data
  whose size is not known ahead of time, the end of the data is
  typically indicated using ``write_eof()``; however, SSL does not
  support this, and an HTTP protocol implementation would have to use
  the "chunked" transfer encoding in this case.  But if the data size
  is known ahead of time, the best approach in both cases is to use
  the Content-Length header.)

- ``pause()``.  Suspend delivery of data to the protocol until a
  subsequent ``resume()`` call.  Between ``pause()`` and ``resume()``,
  the protocol's ``data_received()`` method will not be called.  This
  has no effect on ``write()``.

- ``resume()``.  Restart delivery of data to the protocol via
  ``data_received()``.

- ``pause_writing()``.  Suspend sending data to the network until a
  subsequent ``resume_writing()`` call.  Between ``pause_writing()``
  and ``resume_writing()`` the transport's ``write()`` method will
  just be accumulating data in an internal buffer.

- ``resume_writing()``.  Restart sending data to the network.

- ``discard_output()``.  Discard all data buffered by ``write()`` but
  not yet sent to the network.

- ``close()``.  Sever the connection with the entity at the other end.
  Any data buffered by ``write()`` will (eventually) be transferred
  before the connection is actually closed.  The protocol's
  ``data_received()`` method will not be called again.  Once all
  buffered data has been flushed, the protocol's ``connection_lost()``
  method will be called with ``None`` as the argument.  Note that
  this method does not wait for all that to happen.

- ``abort()``.  Immediately sever the connection.  Any data still
  buffered by the transport is thrown away.  Soon, the protocol's
  ``connection_lost()`` method will be called with ``None`` as
  argument.  (TBD: Distinguish in the ``connection_lost()`` argument
  between ``close()``, ``abort()`` or a close initated by the other
  end?  Or add a transport method to inquire about this?  Glyph's
  proposal was to pass different exceptions for this purpose.)

TBD: Provide flow control the other way -- the transport may need to
suspend the protocol if the amount of data buffered becomes a burden.
Proposal: let the transport call ``protocol.pause()`` and
``protocol.resume()`` if they exist; if they don't exist, the
protocol doesn't support flow control.  (Perhaps different names
to avoid confusion between protocols and transports?)

Unidirectional Stream Transports
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

A writing stream transport supports the ``write()``, ``writelines()``,
``write_eof()``, ``can_write_eof()``, close() and ``abort()`` methods
described for bidrectional stream transports.

A reading stream transport supports the ``pause()``, ``resume()`` and
``close()`` methods described for bidrectional stream transports.

A writing stream transport calls only ``connection_made()`` and
``connection_lost()`` on its associated protocol.

A reading stream transport can call all protocol methods specified in
the Protocols section below (i.e., the previous two plus
``data_received()`` and ``eof_received()``).

Datagram Transports
'''''''''''''''''''

Datagram transports have these methods:

- ``sendto(data, addr=None)``.  Sends a datagram (a bytes object).
  The optional second argument is the destination address.  If
  omitted, ``remote_addr`` must have been specified in the
  ``create_datagram_endpoint()`` call that created this transport.  If
  present, and ``remote_addr`` was specified, they must match.  The
  (data, addr) pair may be sent immediately or buffered.  The return
  value is None.

- ``abort()``.  Immediately close the transport.  Buffered data will
  be discarded.

- ``close()``.  Close the transport.  Buffered data will be
  transmitted asynchronously.

Datagram transports call the following methods on the associated
protocol object: ``connection_made()``, ``connection_lost()``,
``connection_refused()``, and ``datagram_received()``.  ("Connection"
in these method names is a slight misnomer, but the concepts still
exist: ``connection_made()`` means the transport representing the
endpoint has been created, and ``connection_lost()`` means the
transport is closed.  The ``connection_refused()`` method is called
before ``connection_lost()`` when ``remote_addr`` was given and an
explicit negative acknowledgement was received (this is a UDP
feature).  (TBD: Do we need the latter?  It seems easy enough to
implement this in the protocol if it needs to make the distinction.)

Protocols
---------

Protocols are always used in conjunction with transports.  While a few
common protocols are provided (e.g. decent though not necessarily
excellent HTTP client and server implementations), most protocols will
be implemented by user code or third-party libraries.


Like for transports, we distinguish between stream protocols, datagram
protocols, and perhaps other custom protocols.  The most common type
of protocol is a bidirectional stream protocol.  (There are no
unidirectional protocols.)

(TBD: should protocol callbacks be allowed to be coroutines?)

Stream Protocols
''''''''''''''''

A (bidirectional) stream protocol must implement the following
methods, which will be called by the transport.  Think of these as
callbacks that are always called by the event loop in the right
context.  (See the "Context" section way above.)

- ``connection_made(transport)``.  Indicates that the transport is
  ready and connected to the entity at the other end.  The protocol
  should probably save the transport reference as an instance variable
  (so it can call its ``write()`` and other methods later), and may
  write an initial greeting or request at this point.

- ``data_received(data)``.  The transport has read some bytes from the
  connection.  The argument is always a non-empty bytes object.  There
  are no guarantees about the minimum or maximum size of the data
  passed along this way.  ``p.data_received(b'abcdef')`` should be
  treated exactly equivalent to::

    p.data_received(b'abc')
    p.data_received(b'def')

- ``eof_received()``.  This is called when the other end called
  ``write_eof()`` (or something equivalent).  The default
  implementation calls ``close()`` on the transport, which causes
  ``connection_lost()`` to be called (eventually) on the protocol.

- ``connection_lost(exc)``.  The transport has been closed or aborted,
  has detected that the other end has closed the connection cleanly,
  or has encountered an unexpected error.  In the first three cases
  the argument is ``None``; for an unexpected error, the argument is
  the exception that caused the transport to give up.  (TBD: Do we
  need to distinguish between the first three cases?)

Here is a chart indicating the order and multiplicity of calls:

  1. ``connection_made()`` -- exactly once
  2. ``data_received()`` -- zero or more times
  3. ``eof_received()`` -- at most once
  4. ``connection_lost()`` -- exactly once

TBD: Discuss whether user code needs to do anything to make sure that
protocol and transport aren't garbage-collected prematurely.

Datagram Protocols
''''''''''''''''''

Datagram protocols have ``connection_made()`` and
``connection_lost()`` methods with the same signatures as stream
protocols.  (As explained in the section about datagram transports, we
prefer the slightly odd nomenclature over defining different method
names to indicating the opening and closing of the socket.)

In addition, they have the following methods:

- ``datagram_received(data, addr)``.  Indicates that a datagram
  ``data`` (a bytes objects) was received from remote address ``addr``
  (an IPv4 2-tuple or an IPv6 4-tuple).

- ``connection_refused(exc)``.  Indicates that a send or receive
  operation raised a ``ConnectionRefused`` exception.  This typically
  indicates that a negative acknowledgment was received for a
  previously sent datagram (not for the datagram that was being sent,
  if the exception was raised by a send operation).  Immediately after
  this the socket will be closed and ``connection_lost()`` will be
  called with the same exception argument.

Here is a chart indicating the order and multiplicity of calls:

  1. ``connection_made()`` -- exactly once
  2. ``datagram_received()`` -- zero or more times
  3. ``connection_refused()`` -- at most once
  4. ``connection_lost()`` -- exactly once

Callback Style
--------------

Most interfaces taking a callback also take positional arguments.  For
instance, to arrange for ``foo("abc", 42)`` to be called soon, you
call ``loop.call_soon(foo, "abc", 42)``.  To schedule the call
``foo()``, use ``loop.call_soon(foo)``.  This convention greatly
reduces the number of small lambdas required in typical callback
programming.

This convention specifically does *not* support keyword arguments.
Keyword arguments are used to pass optional extra information about
the callback.  This allows graceful evolution of the API without
having to worry about whether a keyword might be significant to a
callee somewhere.  If you have a callback that *must* be called with a
keyword argument, you can use a lambda or ``functools.partial``.  For
example::

  loop.call_soon(functools.partial(foo, "abc", repeat=42))


Coroutines and the Scheduler
============================

This is a separate toplevel section because its status is different
from the event loop interface.  Usage of coroutines is optional, and
it is perfectly fine to write code using callbacks only.  On the other
hand, there is only one implementation of the scheduler/coroutine API,
and if you're using coroutines, that's the one you're using.

Coroutines
----------

A coroutine is a generator that follows certain conventions.  For
documentation purposes, all coroutines should be decorated with
``@tulip.coroutine``, but this cannot be strictly enforced.

Coroutines use the ``yield from`` syntax introduced in PEP 380,
instead of the original ``yield`` syntax.

The word "coroutine", like the word "generator", is used for two
different (though related) concepts:

- The function that defines a coroutine (a function definition
  decorated with ``tulip.coroutine``).  If disambiguation is needed
  we will call this a *coroutine function*.

- The object obtained by calling a coroutine function.  This object
  represents a computation or an I/O operation (usually a combination)
  that will complete eventually.  If disambiguation is needed we will
  call it a *coroutine object*.

Things a coroutine can do:

- ``result = yield from future`` -- suspends the coroutine until the
  future is done, then returns the future's result, or raises an
  exception, which will be propagated.  (If the future is cancelled,
  it will raise a ``CancelledError`` exception.)  Note that tasks are
  futures, and everything said about futures also applies to tasks.

- ``result = yield from coroutine`` -- wait for another coroutine to
  produce a result (or raise an exception, which will be propagated).
  The ``coroutine`` expression must be a *call* to another coroutine.

- ``return expression`` -- produce a result to the coroutine that is
  waiting for this one using ``yield from``.

- ``raise exception`` -- raise an exception in the coroutine that is
  waiting for this one using ``yield from``.

Calling a coroutine does not start its code running -- it is just a
generator, and the coroutine object returned by the call is really a
generator object, which doesn't do anything until you iterate over it.
In the case of a coroutine object, there are two basic ways to start
it running: call ``yield from coroutine`` from another coroutine
(assuming the other coroutine is already running!), or convert it to a
Task (see below).

Coroutines (and tasks) can only run when the event loop is running.

Waiting for Multiple Coroutines
-------------------------------

To wait for multiple coroutines or Futures, two APIs similar to the
``wait()`` and ``as_completed()`` APIs in the ``concurrent.futures``
package are provided:

- ``tulip.wait(fs, timeout=None, return_when=ALL_COMPLETED)``.  This
  is a coroutine that waits for the Futures or coroutines given by
  ``fs`` to complete.  Coroutine arguments will be wrapped in Tasks
  (see below).  This returns a Future whose result on success is a
  tuple of two sets of Futures, ``(done, pending)``, where ``done`` is
  the set of original Futures (or wrapped coroutines) that are done
  (or cancelled), and ``pending`` is the rest, i.e. those that are
  still not done (nor cancelled).  Note that with the defaults for
  ``timeout`` and ``return_when``, ``done`` will always be an empty
  list.  Optional arguments ``timeout`` and ``return_when`` have the
  same meaning and defaults as for ``concurrent.futures.wait()``:
  ``timeout``, if not ``None``, specifies a timeout for the overall
  operation; ``return_when``, specifies when to stop.  The constants
  ``FIRST_COMPLETED``, ``FIRST_EXCEPTION``, ``ALL_COMPLETED`` are
  defined with the same values and the same meanings as in PEP 3148:

  - ``ALL_COMPLETED`` (default): Wait until all Futures are done or
    completed (or until the timeout occurs).

  - ``FIRST_COMPLETED``: Wait until at least one Future is done or
    cancelled (or until the timeout occurs).

  - ``FIRST_EXCEPTION``: Wait until at least one Future is done (not
    cancelled) with an exception set.  (The exclusion of cancelled
    Futures from the condition is surprising, but PEP 3148 does it
    this way.)

- ``tulip.as_completed(fs, timeout=None)``.  Returns an iterator whose
  values are Futures or coroutines; waiting for successive values
  waits until the next Future or coroutine from the set ``fs``
  completes, and returns its result (or raises its exception).  The
  optional argument ``timeout`` has the same meaning and default as it
  does for ``concurrent.futures.wait()``: when the timeout occurs, the
  next Future returned by the iterator will raise ``TimeoutError``
  when waited for.  Example of use::

    for f in as_completed(fs):
        result = yield from f  # May raise an exception.
        # Use result.

  Note: if you do not wait for the values produced by the iterator,
  your ``for`` loop may not make progress (since you are not allowing
  other tasks to run).

Sleeping
--------

The coroutine ``sleep(delay)`` returns after a given time delay.

(TBD: Should the optional second argument, ``result``, be part of the
spec?)

Tasks
-----

A Task is an object that manages an independently running coroutine.
The Task interface is the same as the Future interface, and in fact
``Task`` is a subclass of ``Future``.  The task becomes done when its
coroutine returns or raises an exception; if it returns a result, that
becomes the task's result, if it raises an exception, that becomes the
task's exception.

Cancelling a task that's not done yet prevents its coroutine from
completing.  In this case a ``CancelledError`` exception is thrown
into the coroutine, which it may catch to propagate cancellation to
other Futures.  If the exception is not caught, the generator will be
properly finalized anyway, as described in PEP 342.

Tasks are also useful for interoperating between coroutines and
callback-based frameworks like Twisted.  After converting a coroutine
into a Task, callbacks can be added to the Task.

There are two ways to convert a coroutine into a task: explicitly, by
calling the coroutine function and then passing the resulting
coroutine object to the ``tulip.Task()`` constructor; or implicitly,
by decorating the coroutine with ``@tulip.task`` (instead of
``@tulip.coroutine``).

You may ask, why not automatically convert all coroutines to Tasks?
The ``@tulip.coroutine`` decorator could do this.  However, this would
slow things down considerably in the case where one coroutine calls
another (and so on), as switching to a "bare" coroutine has much less
overhead than switching to a Task.

The Scheduler
-------------

The scheduler has no public interface.  You interact with it by using
``yield from future`` and ``yield from task``.  In fact, there is no
single object representing the scheduler -- its behavior is
implemented by the ``Task`` and ``Future`` classes using only the
public interface of the event loop, so it will work with third-party
event loop implementations, too.

Coroutines and Protocols
------------------------

The best way to use coroutines to implement an Internet protocol such
as FTP is probably to use a streaming buffer that gets filled by
``data_received()`` and can be read asynchronously using methods like
``read(n)`` and ``readline()`` that are coroutines or return a Future.
When the connection is closed, ``read()`` should eventually produce
``b''``, or raise an exception if ``connection_closed()`` is called
with an exception.

To write a response, the ``write()`` method (and friends) on the
transport can be used -- these do not return Futures.  A standard
protocol implementation should be provided that sets this up and kicks
off the coroutine when ``connection_made()`` is called.


Open Issues
===========

- A fuller public API for Handle?  What's the use case?

- Should we require all event loops to implement ``sock_recv()`` and
  friends?  Is the use case strong enough?  (Maybe some transports
  usable with both ``SelectorEventLoop`` and ``ProactorEventLoop`` use
  them?  That'd be a good enough use case for me.)

- Should we require callers of ``create_connection()`` to create and
  pass an ``SSLContext`` explicitly, instead of allowing ssl=True?
  (For ``start_serving()`` we already require an ``SSLContext``.)

- A debugging API?  E.g. something that logs a lot of stuff, or logs
  unusual conditions (like queues filling up faster than they drain)
  or even callbacks taking too much time...

- Do we need introspection APIs?  E.g. asking for the read callback
  given a file descriptor.  Or when the next scheduled call is.  Or
  the list of file descriptors registered with callbacks.  Right now
  these would all require using Tulip internals.

- Locks and queues?  The Tulip implementation contains implementations
  of most types of locks and queues modeled after the standard library
  ``threading`` and ``queue`` modules.  Should we incorporate these in
  the PEP?

- Probably need more socket I/O methods, e.g. ``sock_sendto()`` and
  ``sock_recvfrom()``, and perhaps others like ``pipe_read()``.  Or
  users can write their own (it's not rocket science).

- We may need APIs to control various timeouts.  E.g. we may want to
  limit the time spent in DNS resolution, connecting, ssl handshake,
  idle connection, close/shutdown, even per session.  Possibly it's
  sufficient to add ``timeout`` keyword arguments to some methods,
  and other timeouts can probably be implemented by clever use of
  ``call_later()`` and ``Task.cancel()``.  But it's possible that some
  operations need default timeouts, and we may want to change the
  default for a specific operation globally (i.e., per event loop).


References
==========

- PEP 380 describes the semantics of ``yield from``.  

- Greg Ewing's ``yield from`` tutorials:
  http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python/yield-from/yield_from.html

- PEP 3148 describes ``concurrent.futures.Future``.

- PEP 3153, while rejected, has a good write-up explaining the need
  to separate transports and protocols.

- PEP 418 discusses the issues of timekeeping.

- Tulip repo: http://code.google.com/p/tulip/

- Nick Coghlan wrote a nice blog post with some background, thoughts
  about different approaches to async I/O, gevent, and how to use
  futures with constructs like ``while``, ``for`` and ``with``:
  http://python-notes.boredomandlaziness.org/en/latest/pep_ideas/async_programming.html

- TBD: references to the relevant parts of Twisted, Tornado, ZeroMQ,
  pyftpdlib, libevent, libev, pyev, libuv, wattle, and so on.


Acknowledgments
===============

Apart from PEP 3153, influences include PEP 380 and Greg Ewing's
tutorial for ``yield from``, Twisted, Tornado, ZeroMQ, pyftpdlib, tulip
(the author's attempts at synthesis of all these), wattle (Steve
Dower's counter-proposal), numerous discussions on python-ideas from
September through December 2012, a Skype session with Steve Dower and
Dino Viehland, email exchanges with Ben Darnell, an audience with
Niels Provos (original author of libevent), and two in-person meetings
with several Twisted developers, including Glyph, Brian Warner, David
Reid, and Duncan McGreggor.  Also, the author's previous work on async
support in the NDB library for Google App Engine was an important
influence.


Copyright
=========

This document has been placed in the public domain.



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