ACE Tutorial 012
Passing classes through ACE_Message_Queue

The Task is the only object we've not been through yet. I'll go ahead and show both the header and cpp on this one page since the header isn't very large.

task.h

    // $Id: page05.html,v 1.8 1999/04/03 21:56:28 jcej Exp $

    #ifndef TASK_H
    #define TASK_H

    #include "ace/Task.h"

    #if !defined (ACE_LACKS_PRAGMA_ONCE)
    # pragma once
    #endif /* ACE_LACKS_PRAGMA_ONCE */

    /*
      This is our basic thread-pool Task.  We have a choice of pool size
      on the open() and the usual svc() and close() methods.

      A new addition is the ACE_Barrier object.  This will allow the
      synchronization of our svc() methods so that they all start at the
      "same" time.  The normal case may allow one thread to start working
      earlier than others.  There's no real harm in it but you can get
      better "work by thread" statistics if they start out together.
    */
    class Task : public ACE_Task < ACE_MT_SYNCH >
    {
    public:

        typedef ACE_Task < ACE_MT_SYNCH > inherited;

        Task (void);
        ~Task (void);

        /*
          I really wanted this to be called open() but that was already
          claimed by the Task framework.  start() will kick off our thread
          pool for us.
        */
        int start (int threads = 1);

        virtual int svc (void);

        virtual int close (u_long flags = 0);

    protected:
        ACE_Barrier * barrier_;
    };

    #endif

task.cpp

    // $Id: page05.html,v 1.8 1999/04/03 21:56:28 jcej Exp $

    #include "task.h"
    #include "block.h"
    #include "work.h"

    /*
      Boring default constructor.  Be sure our barrier_ is initialized in
      case we get destructed before opened.
    */
    Task::Task (void)
    : barrier_ (0)
    {
      ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG, "(%P|%t) Task ctor 0x%x\n", (void *) this));
    }

    /*
      You'll see in the svc() method that when we get a shutdown request,
      we always putq() it back into our message queue.  The last thread in
      the pool will do this also and result in there always being one
      shutdown request left in the queue when we get here.  Just to be
      polite, we'll go ahead and get that message and release it.

      We also delete the barrier_ object we used to synch the svc()
      methods.
    */
    Task::~Task (void)
    {
      ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG, "(%P|%t) Task dtor 0x%x\n", (void *) this));

      ACE_Message_Block *message;
      this->getq (message);
      message->release ();

      delete barrier_;
    }

    /*
      The ACE_Barrier needs to know how many threads it will be working
      for.  For that reason, we have to put off it's construction until we
      get here.  We then pass the thread count through to our base class'
      activate().
    */
    int Task::start (int threads)
    {
      barrier_ = new ACE_Barrier (threads);
      return this->activate (THR_NEW_LWP, threads);
    }

    /*
      We don't really do anything here but I wanted to provide a message
      in the output.
    */
    int Task::close (u_long flags)
    {
      ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG, "(%P|%t) Task close 0x%x\n", (void *) this));
      return inherited::close (flags);
    }

    /*
      Now the svc() method where everything interesting happens.
    */
    int Task::svc (void)
    {
         /*
           All of the threads will block here until the last thread
           arrives.  They will all then be free to begin doing work.
         */
      this->barrier_->wait ();

      ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG, "(%P|%t) Task 0x%x starts in thread %u\n", (void *) this, ACE_Thread::self ()));

       // Where we getq() the message
      ACE_Message_Block *message;
       // What we really put into the queue is a Message_Block, so we'll
       // cast the 'message' to 'message_block' after getting it.  I'm
       // going through some extra steps here just to be explicit
      Message_Block * message_block;
       // The baseclass of the work object we put into the queue.  Notice
       // that we can use this and not bother with the Work object at all.
      Unit_Of_Work * unit_of_work;

      while (1)
      {
           // Get the message...
        if (this->getq (message) == -1)
        {
          ACE_ERROR_RETURN ((LM_ERROR, "%p\n", "getq"), -1);
        }

         // Is it a shutdown request?
        if (message->msg_type () == ACE_Message_Block::MB_HANGUP)
        {
             // Send the shutdown to all of our pool peers
          this->putq (message);
          break;
        }

         // Cast the pointer to our specialized Message_Block.  We could
         // have done this at the getq() call but I wanted to be explicit
         // about what we're doing here
        message_block = (Message_Block*)message;

         /*
           Since we left alone the ACE_Data_Block used by the
           Message_Block we have chosen to use it to send arbitrary data
           as well.
         */
        const char *cp = message_block->rd_ptr ();
         // Don't forget to skip the NULL we inserted
        message_block->rd_ptr (strlen (cp) + 1);

         /*
           Get the Unit_Of_Work pointer out of our specialized
           Message_Block.  Since the methods of interest are virtual, we
           don't have to know what kind of work we're to do.
         */
        unit_of_work = message_block->data();

        /*
           Invoke a couple of method calls on the object we constructed.
         */
        unit_of_work->who_am_i ();
        unit_of_work->what_am_i ();

        ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG, "(%P|%t) Block 0x%x contains (%s)\n", (void *) message, cp));

         /*
           Pretend that the work takes a little time to process.  This
           prevents one thread from getting all of the action.  In a real
           system you wouldn't need to do this since the work really
           would take time to complete.
         */
        ACE_OS::sleep (ACE_Time_Value (0, 5000));

         /*
           Release the message block and allow the unit of work to also go
           away.
         */
        message->release ();
      }

      return (0);
    }

Like main() this is actually simpler than the previous tutorial. It's much cleaner to carry around a pointer to the object we're working with than to try copying data.

The only complication is the new ACE_Barrier. It's a pretty simple object that makes it easy for you to synch threads in this way. You could do some fancy tricks with mutexes, counters & semaphores but why bother when the Barrier already exists.

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