[erlang-questions] time consuming operations inside gen_server

[Max Bourinov]

Hi Martin,

First of all I try to avoid calls in my systems. I believe that is there is
a call - there is a potential lock. Casts are friends.

In your case I would suggest you to have "special" workers for time
consuming operations. Workers should be gen_servers and should be a part of
your supervisors tree.

This is just a general suggestion - of course each case is unique. Please
adapt it to your case if possible.

Best regards,
Max




On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Martin Dimitrov <mrtndimitrov@REDACTED>wrote:

> Thanks, this sounds very cool.
>
> On 12/12/2012 11:42 AM, Attila Rajmund Nohl wrote:
> > 2012/12/12 Martin Dimitrov <mrtndimitrov@REDACTED>:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> In our application, we have a gen_server that does a time consuming
> >> operation. The message is of type cast thus the caller process doesn't
> >> sit and wait for the operation to finish. But while the gen_server is
> >> busy with the cast message, it doesn't serve any other call, right?
> >>
> >> So, would it be appropriate to create a process that will do the time
> >> consuming operation and then notify the gen_server?
> >
> > The pattern I use in this case is to still use gen_server:call (if the
> > caller needs to be blocked), start a separate process for the
> > time-consuming stuff, return {noreply, ...} from the handle_call (so
> > the gen_server can handle other calls), then call gen_server:reply
> > from the started process when the time-consuming operation finished.
> > Of course, the applicability of this pattern depends on what you
> > actually do.
> >
>
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