[SOLVED]Communicating application shutdown

DRoscoe

I have an application "A" and I am trying to communicate to application "B
that "A" is shutting down. The following code shows what I am trying to send

void TapDisplay::aboutToQuitApp()
{
  // Send an EXIT command to Tap Engine
  TapUserEventMessage*
                exit_message = new TapUserEventMessage(TapRequestAction::EXIT);
  emit outboundEngineData(exit_message);

  // This is where we clean up due to a signal from the main application that
  // we are shutting down
  if (engine_comm_handler)
  {
    engine_comm_handler->close();
  }
}

The problem is, I think the "A" is shutting down before the message has a chance to be sent to "B". The message is not being sent by "A", and thus "B" is unaware that "A" has gone away. The communication is occurring over a socket connection

Is there a better way to do this, so that I have enough time for message propagation to "B" before pulling the plug on "A"?

Thanks!
-Dave

matze42

Is application "B" in your hands as well ?

If yes, when closing the socket properly, application "B" will get a socket error "QAbstractSocket::RemoteHostClosedError", when the socket is closed by any means by application "A".

From your code this seems to be a sufficient information, cause there's not something like a "reason" - like "User pressed closed button" - transmitted.

Or am I wrong ?

DRoscoe

I can't use the loss of socket connection as an exit trigger. Under normal operations, the connection can be lost. In that case I don't want the Application "B" to close. When a connection is re-established from application "A", data will resume flowing. Only willfully closing application "A" should send the exit signal to application "B". I need to have that EXIT message sent successfully.

ManhNT

You can overide the method closeEvent of the widget.
void MainWindow::closeEvent(QCloseEvent* event)
{
// your code here
event->accept();
}

If you don't want it to close for some reasons, simply replace the accept() call with event->ignore();

DRoscoe

I am not using widgets, it's a QtQuick application.

mcosta

Hi,

a solution could be send the message synchronously (without using signals)

void TapDisplay::aboutToQuitApp()
{
  // Send an EXIT command to Tap Engine
  TapUserEventMessage*
                exit_message = new TapUserEventMessage(TapRequestAction::EXIT);

  // Some method that returns after the message is sent
  engine_comm_handler->sendMessage(exit_messsge);

  // This is where we clean up due to a signal from the main application that
  // we are shutting down
  if (engine_comm_handler)
  {
    engine_comm_handler->close();
  }
}

matze42

Do you have an application layer acknowledgement of messages in your protocol ?

If yes, take the acknowledge of the exit message as a trigger for an exit signal, which may be connected to some slot calling exit on the application.
Leads to the question, what to do, if the acknowledge timeouts ...

If no, I guess that there's not any chance to know, whether the message arrived at application "B" or not.
Even a waitForBytesWritten on the socket layer returns usually when the data are written to the internal TCP/IP buffer of the OS, and not when the data arrived the peer.

DRoscoe

@mcosta Thank you! That seems to have mostly done the trick. I had to also add a call to flush() on the socket to make sure the transfer occurred. It's working fine now.

Thanks!