Re: [Twisted-Python] understanding deferreds
"Alexey" == twisted-web
writes:
Alexey> Is it true, that adding many callback functions as filters is Alexey> elegant, but impractical solution? Many callbacks as a filter is elegant & practical. But there's a difference with errbacks, as people are touching on. That's, with a bit of hand-waving, because when things are going right there's only one thing happening - you're in the middle of a computation figuring out the single result. With errors though, there are multiple types of errors, many ways of dealing with them, multiple different possible outcomes when an error occurs. So the callback chain is great when everything is working, but the errback chain can sometimes feel like it's not quite the right tool for the job. But there are some techniques to mitigate that, and I think they work quite well. Alexey> Since there is only a [linear] list of pairs (callback, errback), Alexey> the last errbacks have to be complex to distinguish the failures, Alexey> that came from the previous callback from failures, that traverse Alexey> the errback chain from the beginning. Alexey> Should I only use errbacks as a means of catching errors only from Alexey> who have produced the Deferred? And never use them to catch Alexey> errors, that came from my callbacks? No. One thing to think about is the flow down the call/errback chain. You can do something like this. d = IReturnADeferred() d.addErrback(e1) d.addCallback(c1) d.addErrback(e2, 'first') d.addCallback(c2) d.addCallback(c3) d.addErrback(e2, 'second') Here e1 will only get errors created by IReturnADeferred. If IReturnADeferred has no problem, you're into c1 and e1 is "behind" you on the call/errback chain. Note that I add e2 to the errback chain twice. That's a way of having the same function be called for (perhaps) the same reason, but on the chain in 2 places. By the time the flow of control gets to c2 or c3, e2 can only be called with 'second' as its argument. Alexey> Nevertheless the Deferred mechanism always catch the exceptions in Alexey> my callbacks, I have to always catch them myself and never let them Alexey> out uncontrolled (since I cannot distinguish, say TypeError that Alexey> came from the first callback from TypeError, that came from the Alexey> next callback, and they are not the same for me, since I try to do Alexey> a cleanup)? But then I have to translate all errors to my invented Alexey> exceptions, so they will differ. See the above example. Alexey> Or just tell me, that I have missed something, I'm still getting Alexey> into the theme! The other thing that's very useful is to write errbacks like this: def e1(fail): fail.trap(TypeError, KeyError) # Do stuff to handle just TypeError, KeyError def e2(fail): fail.trap(MyException) # Do stuff to handle MyException then you just do d = IReturnADeferred() d.addErrback(e1) d.addErrback(e2) The fail.trap will cause the function to immediately return the current failure if it's not one of the mentioned types. See also fail.check (which is what trap uses). I.e., go read the source of twisted.python.failure That approach is nice because you can write your err handling methods completely separately, and can probably not worry about the order you list them in, etc. The failure just falls down the errback chain until it hits something that can deal with it ("trap" it). Another thing you could do (a bit of a hack) is to add an attribute to a failure object to mark that you've processed it (e.g., that it has been logged). And you might want to read the recent post to this list by Brian Warner (which I've also been meaning to reply to - hi Brian!). See http://twistedmatrix.com/pipermail/twisted-python/2010-January/021330.html Probably others have suggestions on nice ways to handle particular cases. Those are just some that I've used. Terry
participants (1)
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Terry Jones