[issue9693] asynchat push_callable() patch

[Giampaolo Rodola']

Giampaolo Rodola' <g.rodola at gmail.com> added the comment:

Thanks for the comments.

> I don't understand what _Callable is used for; why not just a tuple?

_Callable is just a container to store function, args and kwargs objects.
I thought it made more sense than using a tuple because it's intrinsically callable.

> - if you use _Callable, then why do you write "hasattr(first, 
> '__call__')" rather than simply "isinstance(first, _Callable)"?

For flexibility, in the remote case the user wants to override _Callable class.  It's a corner case though, not really important.

> - why override __bool__??

I did that for performance.
Considering that initiate_send() method is called many times, and that it is almost always used to send data rather than firing functions I wanted to avoid to call isinstance(first, _Callable) (or hasattr(first,  '__call__')) on every loop.
By making __bool__ return False we achieve this, see:

            first = self.producer_fifo[0]
            # handle empty string/buffer or None entry
            if not first:
                ...
            # code to handle data to be sent follows...
            ...
       

> The API also looks a bit weird to me - the Twisted model of Deferreds 
> is so much better - but why not.

The API follows the exact same approach as push(), push_with_producer() and close_when_done() methods.
It adds "something" to a fifo and that "something" will be processed (called) only when the previous producers are exhausted, respecting the order of what has been "pushed" first and later.
This is different than a deferred.

A deferred is a callback that will be fired at a later time and that is related to the main loop (the reactor).
push_callable() is a callback that will be fired when all previous producers will be exhausted firsts and is related to the connection itself, not the main loop (if the connection gets closed the callback will be discarded).

Something similar to Twisted deferreds is this:
http://bugs.python.org/issue1641
...which, despite apparently similar, is different than this.

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