[erlang-questions] Generic server and selective receives

[ludovic@REDACTED]

Hi,

I would like some help to implement a message-buffer in erlang. This
process can be sent messages, and stores them in mailbox. A buffer can
have one client, or can have no client. When there's no client, I
would prevent the process to do anything but accept a new client or
timeout after a small amount of time. So I have two sets of receive
clauses.

Now, I would like to implement this as a gen_server. But I don't know
how. The Idea is to timeout quickly if no message of the expected
clauses-set comes.

* I thought of a gen_fsm but it will crash if it's sent a message when
in the "no client" state, right ? (Plus i may want to handle more
receive clauses in the "no client" part)
* I thougt about time calculations but it's seems too complicated for
no reason ; I prefer use the simple gen_* timeouts.
* I could keep my current implementation and adapt the module to fit
in a supervision tree but I believe I willll miss common OTP features.

So, I hope this is a common pattern and that someone will tell me a
good solution.

Thank you.

-- lud

This is my current implementation (but not the actual code).

     loop(#state{client_pid=undefined}) ->
         receive
             {set_client,Pid} ->
                 loop(State#state{client_pid=Pid})
         after 10000 ->
             io:fwrite("Terminating\n")
         end;

     loop(State=#state{client_pid=Client,mailbox=Mailbox}) ->
         receive
             {set_client,Pid} ->
                 %% here we can change the client or set it to undefined
                 loop(State#state{client_pid=Pid});
             {message,M} ->
                 Client ! you_have_messages,
                 loop(State#state{mailbox=[M|Mailbox]});
             %% A handful of other clauses
             ...
                 ...
                 ...
         after way more time than 1000 ->
             io:fwrite("Terminating too\n")
         end;


Now i'll pray for this mail to be seen in the current huge amount of 
emails (and very intersting by the way) on the list.