How to force a thread waiting for signal

dual

Hello everyone, I have a client-server application. The server side generates a thread that has to wait for readyRead from client in order to receive Json and Files from the client (it's a remote backup application).
Obviously thread closes while waiting for readyread, because it has nothing else to do.
How can I force it to wait the signal? Possibly avoiding busy-waiting

I tried using waitForReadyRead but the main problem is that the signal is not reemitted when calling the function within a slot connected to the readyRead signal.

Can emitting user-defined signals in order to bypass the waitForReadyRead's limitations be a possible solution?
Something like this:

connect(this, &sharing::mySignal, this, &sharing::readFile);
void sharing::readFile() {
/*
Reading a block of the file...
*/
clientConnection->waitForReadyRead();
emit mySign();
}

Any idea?

Christian Ehrlicher

First you can create the thread after you completely red the json and a second option is to emit a signal once the json is ready and connect it to a slot in your thread.

dual

Thanks for answering but I don't think that your proposals can be suitable for my situation: the thread receives an undefined number of communications from client, so it has to keep listen until the client doesn't shut the connection down.

Christian Ehrlicher

@dual said in How to force a thread waiting for signal:

the thread receives an undefined number of communications from client,

What do you mean with this?

You have a client connection receiving data. Once the data was successfully received send it to your worker thread and let it do the work. Where's the problem?

dual

@Christian-Ehrlicher Server has to manage multiple clients, let me explain the whole architecture: I have a server (with its qTcpServer) that waits for incoming connections. When a connection is found, a thread is generated and a socketDescriptor is passed. This new thread will exchange data with the client, until the client closes the connection. For this reason I cannot receive the data in the main thread, because I have to manage multiple connections at the same time

Christian Ehrlicher

And where do you do the actual work? When each connection has an own thread (which is somewhat over-engineered and will not scale well for more than lets say 1k connections) then you can do the calculation inside this thread or start another one once the full data was received.

dual

@Christian-Ehrlicher Since it is a remote backup project, the client will ask the server to store/delete a file.
The usual scenario is:
Client establishes a connection with the server
The server creates a thread to talk with client
The client sends a json to tell the server that it will send a file to store
Server sends ack
Client sends the file
Server receives the file (with multiple readyRead signal) and then stores the file in a directory (same thread will do this work)
Server sends ack to the client
The client can send another json or close the connection

So the main problem is that the thread server side must wait with readyRead for json or data without returning

Christian Ehrlicher

@dual said in How to force a thread waiting for signal:

So the main problem is that the thread server side must wait with readyRead for json or data without returning

What do you mean with 'wait' here? Where should your thread return to?

dual

@Christian-Ehrlicher I'd like to find a good way to let the thread wait for the next json/block-of-file from the client without closing.
With "returning" I mean that the thread will close and return to the main thread.

Sorry for my late reply but my reputation is not high enough to post quicker

Christian Ehrlicher

Why should the thread close? Simply let the thread run the event loop and do your stuff via signals and slots as described in the documentation...

dual

@Christian-Ehrlicher Actually I'm using std::thread because I'm more confident with the stdlib for threads. I'll try QThread instead, maybe they can exploit my problem

Christian Ehrlicher

There is no difference between std::thread and QThread in your case at all. You need a running event loop to process Qt signals and slots with std::thread and with QThread.

SimonSchroeder

@Christian-Ehrlicher Actually, there is a slight difference between std::thread and QThread: If you take a plain QThread object and call start() on it, the default implementation of run() will launch an event loop. std::thread does not know about Qt and thus you have to start the event loop yourself.

I suggest using QThread to get an event loop.

dual

@SimonSchroeder thank you for answering. I tried to use QThread but it closes before receiving readyread signal. This is my implementation:

/* Main thread: */
    int sd = tcpServer->nextPendingConnection()->socketDescriptor();
    std::cout<<"Socket descriptor: "<<sd<<std::endl;
    thread = QThread::create([sd]{

        sharing s(sd);

    });
    thread->start();

/* class sharing: */
sharing::sharing(int socketDescriptor){
    clientConnection = new QTcpSocket;
    if (!clientConnection->setSocketDescriptor(socketDescriptor)) {
        std::cout<<"Error on setting Socket Descriptor..."<<std::endl;
        return;
    }

    in.setDevice(clientConnection);
    in.setVersion(QDataStream::Qt_5_5);

    connect(clientConnection, &QIODevice::readyRead, this, &sharing::receive);
}

sharing is the class in charge of creating the QTcpSocket and of managing the file receiving. After the construction of sharing, I'd expect the thread to wait until readyread is emitted but it dosn't.

/edit: Edited by moderator: Please use the code - tags for better readability

Christian Ehrlicher

As we already told you you need a running event loop in your thread - no matter if it's a QThread or std::thread or whatever. So please start one.

dual

@Christian-Ehrlicher What about this sentence?

@SimonSchroeder said in How to force a thread waiting for signal:

If you take a plain QThread object and call start() on it, the default implementation of run() will launch an event loop

Also online i've found that Qthread has a eventLoop on the default run() method. This point is not clear to me.
By the way, do you suggest to place a eventLoop in the sharing constructor?

Christian Ehrlicher

@dual said in How to force a thread waiting for signal:

This point is not clear to me.

What is not clear? QThread's run method simply executes an eventloop.

By the way, do you suggest to place a eventLoop in the sharing constructor?

No, it should go into the thread's main function.

SimonSchroeder

What your last code does is placing only the constructor call into a separate thread. It will not continue running. What you should do is more like this:

QThread *thread = new QThread();
thread->start();

sharing *s = new sharing(sd);
s->moveToThread(thread);

I haven't check with the exact syntax, so you need to check if this compiles. Notice that your sharing object also needs to be a pointer to outlive the current scope. It also should inherit from QObject so that you can move it to the other thread. Only then will your new thread's event loop handle its slots.

You should also think about the lifetime of the thread and sharing objects. You need to delete both when the connection handled by this thread is closed.

dual

@SimonSchroeder I did some tries but still it doesn't work as expected.

In server.h (that is the main thread object) I defined

class server : public QObject
{
    Q_OBJECT
    QThread workerThread;
private:
   sharing *worker;
   void newClient();
}

and in server.cpp

void server::newClient()
{
    int sd = tcpServer->nextPendingConnection()->socketDescriptor();
    std::cout<<"Socket descriptor: "<<sd<<std::endl;
    if(workerThread.isRunning()){
        std::cout<<"thread is running.. my thread id " << std::this_thread::get_id()<<std::endl;
    }
    else
        std::cout<<"thread is not running.."<<std::endl;


    worker = new sharing(sd);
    connect(&workerThread, &QThread::started, worker, &sharing::doWork);
    connect(&workerThread, &QThread::finished, worker, &QObject::deleteLater);
    worker->moveToThread(&workerThread);

    workerThread.start();
    //workerThread.wait();
}

where the if-else part is used as debug in order to check if the thread is still running when a new client tries to connect.

While in sharing.cpp I have

sharing::sharing(int socketDescriptor):socketDescriptor(socketDescriptor){
}

void sharing::doWork(){
    std::cout<<"Connecting... "<<std::endl;
    clientConnection = new QTcpSocket;
    if (!clientConnection->setSocketDescriptor(socketDescriptor)) {
        std::cout<<"Error on setting Socket Descriptor..."<<std::endl;
        return;
    }

    in.setDevice(clientConnection);
    in.setVersion(QDataStream::Qt_5_5);

    connect(clientConnection, &QIODevice::readyRead, this, &sharing::receive);
    std::cout<<"Connected "<<std::endl;
}

and in sharing::receive I have a switch to read json received by the client. Sharing class inherits from QObject.

At the moment the code works only if the workerThread.wait(); is not commented, while sharing will not receive any other readyRead when the newClient function ends. But the thread is still running when I create a new client, so I think that the eventLoop is correctly working.
Of course this code is not good to manage multiple clients, it is just a preliminary version because I want to reach a working version of multi-thread communication between a client and the server.

Christian Ehrlicher

@dual said in How to force a thread waiting for signal:

tcpServer->nextPendingConnection()->socketDescriptor();

This is wrong since this already creates a QTcpSocket which is repsonsible for your socket and receives the readyRead signals.
You want to override QTcpServer::incomingConnection() as described in the threaded fortune server example.