What is the best way to update a gui from another thread in python.
I have main function (GUI) in thread1 and from this i'm referring another thread (thread2), is it possible to update GUI while working in Thread2 without cancelling work at thread2, if it is yes how can I do that?
any suggested reading about thread handling. ?
Of course you can use Threading to run several processes simultaneously.
You have to create a class like this :
from threading import Thread
class Work(Thread):
def __init__(self):
Thread.__init__(self)
self.lock = threading.Lock()
def run(self): # This function launch the thread
(your code)
if you want run several thread at the same time :
def foo():
i = 0
list = []
while i < 10:
list.append(Work())
list[i].start() # Start call run() method of the class above.
i += 1
Be careful if you want to use the same variable in several threads. You must lock this variable so that they do not all reach this variable at the same time. Like this :
lock = threading.Lock()
lock.acquire()
try:
yourVariable += 1 # When you call lock.acquire() without arguments, block all variables until the lock is unlocked (lock.release()).
finally:
lock.release()
From the main thread, you can call join() on the queue to wait until all pending tasks have been completed.
This approach has the benefit that you are not creating and destroying threads, which is expensive. The worker threads will run continuously, but will be asleep when no tasks are in the queue, using zero CPU time.
I hope it will help you.
Related
first of all I have to mention I'm not a programmer but a mechanical engineer so please don't crucify me if I misinterpret something or say some nonsense.
I want to write a python code witch will be "simulating" a real life problem. The real life problem is something like FIFO queue, where objects are taken from on different stations and they spend there some time and then they are returned back to queue.
What I understand what I need is to write an asynchronous Programm, because I have one Function which is putting objects to queue (let say every 15 second) and then I have some stations which take only one object from this queue and then are working on it for some time again (simple timer and a print "Hi im working on object x, will return it in: minutes".
I'm not sure if I can do it with Threading? What if I had 100 stations which work asynchronous is it possible to start 100 Threads? Because as I understand every thread should have one timer?
I would ask to give me a little push to the simplest direction to solve it, it doesn't have to be pretty but functional and easy for me.
thank you in advance for each idea!
Best regards,
MM.
Of course you can use Threading to run several processes simultaneously.
You have to create a class like this :
from threading import Thread
class Work(Thread):
def __init__(self):
Thread.__init__(self)
self.lock = threading.Lock()
def run(self): # This function launch the thread
(your code)
if you want run several thread at the same time :
def foo():
i = 0
list = []
while i < 10:
list.append(Work())
list[i].start() # Start call run() method of the class above.
i += 1
Be careful if you want to use the same variable in several threads. You must lock this variable so that they do not all reach this variable at the same time. Like this :
lock = threading.Lock()
lock.acquire()
try:
yourVariable += 1 # When you call lock.acquire() without arguments, block all variables until the lock is unlocked (lock.release()).
finally:
lock.release()
From the main thread, you can call join() on the queue to wait until all pending tasks have been completed.
This approach has the benefit that you are not creating and destroying threads, which is expensive. The worker threads will run continuously, but will be asleep when no tasks are in the queue, using zero CPU time.
I hope it will help you.
I have a python program with one main thread and let's say 2 other threads (or maybe even more, probably doesn't matter). I would like to let the main thread sleep until ONE of the other threads is finished. It's easy to do with polling (by calling t.join(1) and waiting for one second for every thread t).
Is it possible to do it without polling, just by
SOMETHING_LIKE_JOIN(1, [t1, t2])
where t1 and t2 are threading.Thread objects? The call must do the following: sleep 1 second, but wake up as soon as one of t1,t2 is finished. Quite similar to POSIX select(2) call with two file descriptors.
One solution is to use a multiprocessing.dummy.Pool; multiprocessing.dummy provides an API almost identical to multiprocessing, but backed by threads, so it gets you a thread pool for free.
For example, you can do:
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
pool = ThreadPool(2) # Two workers
for res in pool.imap_unordered(some_func, list_of_func_args):
# res is whatever some_func returned
multiprocessing.Pool.imap_unordered returns results as they become available, regardless of which task finishes first.
If you can use Python 3.2 or higher (or install the concurrent.futures PyPI module for older Python) you can generalize to disparate task functions by creating one or more Futures from a ThreadPoolExecutor, then using concurrent.futures.wait with return_when=FIRST_COMPLETED, or using concurrent.futures.as_completed for similar effect.
Here is an example of using condition object.
from threading import Thread, Condition, Lock
from time import sleep
from random import random
_lock = Lock()
def run(idx, condition):
sleep(random() * 3)
print('thread_%d is waiting for notifying main thread.' % idx)
_lock.acquire()
with condition:
print('thread_%d notifies main thread.' % idx)
condition.notify()
def is_working(thread_list):
for t in thread_list:
if t.is_alive():
return True
return False
def main():
condition = Condition(Lock())
thread_list = [Thread(target=run, kwargs={'idx': i, 'condition': condition}) for i in range(10)]
with condition:
with _lock:
for t in thread_list:
t.start()
while is_working(thread_list):
_lock.release()
if condition.wait(timeout=1):
print('do something')
sleep(1) # <-- Main thread is doing something.
else:
print('timeout')
for t in thread_list:
t.join()
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
I don't think there is race condition as you described in comment. The condition object contains a Lock. When the main thread is working(sleep(1) in the example), it holds the lock and no thread can notify it until it finishes its work and release the lock.
I just realize that there is a race condition in the previous example. I added a global _lock to ensure the condition never notifies the main thread until the main thread starts waiting. I don't like how it works, but I haven't figured out a better solution...
You can create a Thread Class and the main thread keeps a reference to it. So you can check whether the thread has finished and make your main thread continue again easily.
If that doesn't helped you, I suggest you to look at the Queue library!
import threading
import time, random
#THREAD CLASS#
class Thread(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.daemon = True
self.state = False
#START THREAD (THE RUN METHODE)#
self.start()
#THAT IS WHAT THE THREAD ACTUALLY DOES#
def run(self):
#THREAD SLEEPS FOR A RANDOM TIME RANGE#
time.sleep(random.randrange(5, 10))
#AFTERWARDS IS HAS FINISHED (STORE IN VARIABLE)#
self.state = True
#RETURNS THE STATE#
def getState(self):
return self.state
#10 SEPERATE THREADS#
threads = []
for i in range(10):
threads.append(Thread())
#MAIN THREAD#
while True:
#RUN THROUGH ALL THREADS AND CHECK FOR ITS STATE#
for i in range(len(threads)):
if threads[i].getState():
print "WAITING IS OVER: THREAD ", i
#SLEEPS ONE SECOND#
time.sleep(1)
from threading import Thread
class MyClass:
#...
def method2(self):
while True:
try:
hashes = self.target.bssid.replace(':','') + '.pixie'
text = open(hashes).read().splitlines()
except IOError:
time.sleep(5)
continue
# function goes on ...
def method1(self):
new_thread = Thread(target=self.method2())
new_thread.setDaemon(True)
new_thread.start() # Main thread will stop there, wait until method 2
print "Its continues!" # wont show =(
# function goes on ...
Is it possible to do like that?
After new_thread.start() Main thread waits until its done, why is that happening? i didn't provide new_thread.join() anywhere.
Daemon doesn't solve my problem because my problem is that Main thread stops right after new thread start, not because main thread execution is end.
As written, the call to the Thread constructor is invoking self.method2 instead of referring to it. Replace target=self.method2() with target=self.method2 and the threads will run in parallel.
Note that, depending on what your threads do, CPU computations might still be serialized due to the GIL.
IIRC, this is because the program doesn't exit until all non-daemon threads have finished execution. If you use a daemon thread instead, it should fix the issue. This answer gives more details on daemon threads:
Daemon Threads Explanation
I have a simple app that listens to a socket connection. Whenever certain chunks of data come in a callback handler is called with that data. In that callback I want to send my data to another process or thread as it could take a long time to deal with. I was originally running the code in the callback function, but it blocks!!
What's the proper way to spin off a new task?
threading is the threading library usually used for resource-based multithreading. The multiprocessing library is another library, but designed more for running intensive parallel computing tasks; threading is generally the recommended library in your case.
Example
import threading, time
def my_threaded_func(arg, arg2):
print "Running thread! Args:", (arg, arg2)
time.sleep(10)
print "Done!"
thread = threading.Thread(target=my_threaded_func, args=("I'ma", "thread"))
thread.start()
print "Spun off thread"
The multiprocessing module has worker pools. If you don't need a pool of workers, you can use Process to run something in parallel with your main program.
import threading
from time import sleep
import sys
# assume function defs ...
class myThread (threading.Thread):
def __init__(self, threadID):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.threadID = threadID
def run(self):
if self.threadID == "run_exe":
run_exe()
def main():
itemList = getItems()
for item in itemList:
thread = myThread("run_exe")
thread.start()
sleep(.1)
listenToSocket(item)
while (thread.isAlive()):
pass # a way to wait for thread to finish before looping
main()
sys.exit(0)
The sleep between thread.start() and listenToSocket(item) ensures that the thread is established before you begin to listen. I implemented this code in a unit test framework were I had to launch multiple non-blacking processes (len(itemList) number of times) because my other testing framework (listenToSocket(item)) was dependent on the processes.
un_exe() can trigger a subprocess call that can be blocking (i.e. invoking pipe.communicate()) so that output data from the execution will still be printed in time with the python script output. But the nature of threading makes this ok.
So this code solves two problems - print data of a subprocess without blocking script execution AND dynamically create and start multiple threads sequentially (makes maintenance of the script better if I ever add more items to my itemList later).
I have some python application with 2 threads. Each thread operates within a separate gui. The GUIs need to operate independently without blocking. I am trying to figure out how to make thread_1 trigger an event to happen in thread_2?
Below is some code I want function foo to trigger function bar in the simplest, most elegant way as quickly as possible, without consuming unnecessary resources. Below is what I've come up with.
bar_trigger=False #global trigger for function bar.
lock = threading.Lock()
class Thread_2(threading.Thread):
def run(self):
global lock, bar_trigger
while(True):
lock.acquire()
if bar_trigger==True:
Thread_2.bar() #function I want to happen
bar_trigger=False
lock.release()
time.sleep(100) #sleep to preserve resources
#would like to preserve as much resources as possible
# and sleep as little as possible.
def bar(self):
print "Bar!"
class Thread_1(threading.Thread):
def foo(self):
global lock, bar_trigger
lock.acquire()
bar_trigger=True #trigger for bar in thread2
lock.release()
Is there a better way to accomplish this? I'm not a threadding expert so any advice on how to best trigger a method in thread_2 from within thread_1 is appreciated.
Without knowing what you're doing and what GUI framework you're using, I can't get into much more detail, but from your problem's code snippet, it sounds like you're looking for something called conditional variables.
Python comes with them included by default in the threading module, under threading.Condition You might be interested in threading.Event as well.
How are these threads instantiated? There should really be a main thread that oversees the workers. For example,
import time
import threading
class Worker(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self, stopper):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.stopper = stopper
def run(self):
while not self.stopper.is_set():
print 'Hello from Worker!'
time.sleep(1)
stop = threading.Event()
worker = Worker(stop)
worker.start()
# ...
stop.set()
Using a shared Event object is just one way of synchronizing and sending messages between threads. There are others, and their usages depend on the specifics.
One option would be to share a queue between the threads. Thread 1 would push an instruction into the queue and thread two would poll that queue. When Thread 2 sees the queue is non-empty, it reads off the first instruction in the queue and calls the appropriate function. This has the additional benefit of being fairly loosely couple which can make testing each thread in isolation easier.