Mercurial > urweb
diff demo/prose @ 697:755a71c99be5
Threads demo
author | Adam Chlipala <adamc@hcoop.net> |
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date | Sun, 05 Apr 2009 10:48:11 -0400 |
parents | bab524996fca |
children | 9b29ce0babb8 |
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--- a/demo/prose Sun Apr 05 09:26:00 2009 -0400 +++ b/demo/prose Sun Apr 05 10:48:11 2009 -0400 @@ -234,3 +234,15 @@ <p><tt>BatchFun.Make</tt> handles the plumbing of allocating the local state, using it to create widgets, and reading the state values when the user clicks "Batch it."</p> <p><tt>batchG.ur</tt> contains an example instantiation, which is just as easy to write as in the <tt>Crud1</tt> example.</p> + +threads.urp + +<p>Ur/Web makes it easy to write multi-threaded client-side code. This example demonstrates two threads writing to a page at once.</p> + +<p>First, we define a useful component for sections of pages that can have lines of text added to them dynamically. This is the <tt>Buffer</tt> module. It contains an abstract type of writable regions, along with functions to create a region, retrieve a signal representing its HTML rendering, and add a new line to it.</p> + +<p>The entry point to the main module <tt>Threads</tt> begins by creating a buffer. The function <tt>loop</tt> implements writing to that buffer periodically, incrementing a counter each time. The arguments to <tt>loop</tt> specify a prefix for the messages and the number of milliseconds to wait between writes.</p> + +<p>We specify some client-side code to run on page load using the <tt>onload</tt> attribute of <tt><body></tt>. The <tt>onload</tt> code in this example spawns two separate threads running the <tt>loop</tt> code with different prefixes, update intervals, and starting counters.</p> + +<p>Old hands at concurrent programming may be worried at the lack of synchronization in this program. Ur/Web uses <i>cooperative multi-threading</i>, not the more common <i>preemptive</i> multi-threading. Only one thread runs at a time, and only particular function calls can trigger context switches. In this example, <tt>sleep</tt> is the only such function that appears.</p>