-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 3.8k
Commit
This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository.
Add a java specific description of manual flow control to the example. (
#10223) * Add a java specific description of manual flow control to the example.
- Loading branch information
1 parent
5a27e3e
commit df85a45
Showing
1 changed file
with
76 additions
and
0 deletions.
There are no files selected for viewing
76 changes: 76 additions & 0 deletions
76
examples/src/main/java/io/grpc/examples/manualflowcontrol/README.md
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Original file line number | Diff line number | Diff line change |
---|---|---|
@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ | ||
gRPC Manual Flow Control Example | ||
===================== | ||
Flow control is relevant for streaming RPC calls. | ||
|
||
By default, gRPC will handle dealing with flow control. However, for specific | ||
use cases, you may wish to take explicit control. | ||
|
||
The default, if you do not disable auto requests, is for the gRPC framework to | ||
automatically request 1 message at startup and after each onNext call, | ||
request 1 more. With manual flow control, you explicitly do the request. Note | ||
that acknowledgements (which is what lets the server know that the receiver can | ||
handle more data) are sent after an onNext call. The onNext method is called | ||
when there is both an undelivered message and an outstanding request. | ||
|
||
The most common use case for manual flow control is to avoid requiring your | ||
asynchronous onNext method to block when processing of the read message is being | ||
done somewhere else. | ||
|
||
Another, minor use case for manual flow control, is when there are lots of small | ||
messages and you are using Netty. To avoid switching back and forth between the | ||
application and network threads, you can specify a larger initial value (such | ||
as 5) so that the application thread can have values waiting for it rather than | ||
constantly having to block and wait for the network thread to provide the next | ||
value. | ||
|
||
### Outgoing Flow Control | ||
|
||
The underlying layer (such as Netty) will make the write wait when there is no | ||
space to write the next message. This causes the request stream to go into | ||
a not ready state and the outgoing onNext method invocation waits. You can | ||
explicitly check that the stream is ready for writing before calling onNext to | ||
avoid blocking. This is done with `CallStreamObserver.isReady()`. You can | ||
utilize this to start doing reads, which may allow | ||
the other side of the channel to complete a write and then to do its own reads, | ||
thereby avoiding deadlock. | ||
|
||
### Incoming Manual Flow Control | ||
|
||
An example use case is, you have a buffer where your onNext places values from | ||
the stream. Manual flow control can be used to avoid buffer overflows. You could | ||
use a blocking buffer, but you may not want to have the thread being used by | ||
onNext block. | ||
|
||
By default, gRPC will configure a stream to request one value at startup and | ||
then at the completion of each "onNext" invocation requests one more message. | ||
You can take control of this by disabling AutoRequest on the | ||
request stream. If you do so, then you are responsible for asynchronously | ||
telling the stream each time that you would like a new message to be | ||
asynchronously sent to onNext when one is available. This is done by calling a | ||
method on the request stream to request messages (while this has a count, | ||
generally you request 1). Putting this request at the end of your onNext method | ||
essentially duplicates the default behavior. | ||
|
||
#### Client side (server or bidi streaming) | ||
|
||
In the `ClientResponseObserver.beforeStart` method, call | ||
`requestStream.disableAutoRequestWithInitial(1)` | ||
|
||
When you are ready to begin processing the next value from the stream call | ||
`requestStream.request(1)` | ||
|
||
#### Server side (client or bidi streaming) | ||
|
||
In your stub methods supporting streaming, add the following at the top | ||
|
||
1. cast `StreamObserver<> responseObserver` | ||
to `ServerCallStreamObserver<> serverCallStreamObserver` | ||
1. call `serverCallStreamObserver.disableAutoRequest()` | ||
|
||
When you are ready to begin processing the next value from the stream call | ||
`serverCallStreamObserver.request(1)` | ||
|
||
### Related documents | ||
Also see [gRPC Flow Control Users Guide][user guide] | ||
|
||
[user guide]: https://grpc.io/docs/guides/flow-control |