robustthread

Author:: Jared Kuolt (mailto:[e-mail]) Copyright:: Copyright (c) 2009 Jared Kuolt License:: MIT License

= RobustThread

This module allows for the creation of a thread that will not simply die when the process dies. Instead, it joins all RobustThreads in Ruby's exit handler.

== Installation

sudo gem install robustthread

== Usage

rt = RobustThread.new(:args => args, :label => "do_something with x and y") do |x, y| do_something(x, y) end

Options:

• +args+: arguments passed to the thread
• +label+: an identifier (used primarily in logs for debugging, defaults to +thread.inspect+)

=== Easy Looping

You can loop a task in a thread to cleanly exit:

RobustThread.loop(:seconds => 3) do do_something end

Options are the same as RobustThread#new, with the addition of +seconds+, the interval at which the Thread will sleep.

=== Exception Handling

Since Threads usually eat exceptions, RobustThread allows for a simple global exception handler:

RobustThread.exception_handler do |exception| # Handle your exceptions here end

If no handler is assigned, the exception traceback will be piped into the logger as an error message.

=== Callbacks

RobustThread currently supports 5 callbacks. The following 4 are called per RobustThread.

RobustThread.add_callback(:before_init){ puts "Before init!" } RobustThread.add_callback(:before_yield){ puts "Before yield!" } RobustThread.add_callback(:after_yield){ puts "After yield!" } RobustThread.add_callback(:after_join){ puts "After join!" }

The +before_exit+ callback is called after all threads are re-joined.

RobustThread.add_callback(:before_exit){ puts "Before exit!" }

=== Etc...

If necessary, you can access the actual thread from the RobustThread object via its +thread+ attribute.

rt.thread => #<Thread:0x7fa1ea57ff88 run>

By default, RobustThread uses a Logger that defaults itself to STDOUT. You can change this by assigning the +logger+ class attribute to a different Logger object:

RobustThread.logger = Logger.new(STDERR)