Buffered output and formatting.
Serialization primitives built for speed and memory-efficiency.
Buf_write is designed for writing fast and memory-efficient serializers. It is based on the Faraday library, but adapted for Eio. Its core type and related operation gives the user fine-grained control over copying and allocation behavior while serializing user-defined types, and presents the output in a form that makes it possible to use vectorized write operations, such as the writev
system call, or any other platform or application-specific output APIs.
A Buf_write serializer manages an internal buffer and a queue of output buffers. The output buffers may be a sub range of the serializer's internal buffer or one that is user-provided. Buffered writes such as string
, char
, cstruct
, etc., copy the source bytes into the serializer's internal buffer. Unbuffered writes are done with schedule_cstruct
, which performs no copying. Instead, it enqueues the source bytes into the serializer's write queue directly.
Example:
module Write = Eio.Buf_write
let () =
Eio_mock.Backend.run @@ fun () ->
let stdout = Eio_mock.Flow.make "stdout" in
Write.with_flow stdout (fun w ->
Write.string w "foo";
Write.string w "bar";
Eio.Fiber.yield ();
Write.string w "baz";
)
This combines the first two writes, giving:
+stdout: wrote "foobar"
+stdout: wrote "baz"
The type of a serializer.
Raised when waiting for a flush to complete if the buffer is destroyed instead.
Running
val with_flow : ?initial_size:int -> _ Flow.sink -> (t -> 'a) -> 'a
with_flow flow fn
runs fn writer
, where writer
is a buffer that flushes to flow
.
Concurrently with fn
, it also runs a fiber that copies from writer
to flow
. If this fiber runs out of data to copy then it will suspend itself. Writing to writer
will automatically schedule it to be resumed. This means that pending data is flushed automatically before the process sleeps.
When fn
returns, writer
is automatically closed and any remaining data is flushed before with_flow
itself returns.
Buffered Writes
A serializer manages an internal buffer for coalescing small writes. The size of this buffer is determined when the serializer is created. If the buffer does not contain sufficient space to service a caller's buffered write, the serializer will allocate a new buffer of the sufficient size and use it for the current and subsequent writes. The old buffer will be garbage collected once all of its contents have been flush
ed.
val string : t -> ?off:int -> ?len:int -> string -> unit
string t ?off ?len str
copies str
into the serializer's internal buffer.
val bytes : t -> ?off:int -> ?len:int -> Stdlib.Bytes.t -> unit
bytes t ?off ?len bytes
copies bytes
into the serializer's internal buffer. It is safe to modify bytes
after this call returns.
cstruct t cs
copies cs
into the serializer's internal buffer. It is safe to modify cs
after this call returns. For large cstructs, it may be more efficient to use schedule_cstruct
.
val printf : t -> ('a, Stdlib.Format.formatter, unit) Stdlib.format -> 'a
printf t fmt ...
formats the arguments according to the format string fmt
.
It supports all formatting and pretty-printing features of the Format module. The formatter's internal buffer is flushed to t
after the call, without flushing t
itself. Explicit flushes (e.g. using @.
or %!
) perform a full (blocking) flush of t
.
make_formatter t
creates a new formatter that writes to t
.
Flushing the formatter also flushes t
itself.
val write_gen :
t ->
blit:('a -> src_off:int -> Cstruct.buffer -> dst_off:int -> len:int -> unit) ->
off:int ->
len:int ->
'a ->
unit
write_gen t ~blit ~off ~len x
copies x
into the serializer's internal buffer using the provided blit
operation. See Bigstring.blit
for documentation of the arguments.
val char : t -> char -> unit
char t c
copies c
into the serializer's internal buffer.
val uint8 : t -> int -> unit
uint8 t n
copies the lower 8 bits of n
into the serializer's internal buffer.
Little endian serializers
Unbuffered Writes
Unbuffered writes do not involve copying bytes to the serializer's internal buffer.
schedule_cstruct t cs
schedules cs
to be written. cs
is not copied in this process, so cs
should only be modified after t
has been flush
ed.
Querying A Serializer's State
val free_bytes_in_buffer : t -> int
free_bytes_in_buffer t
returns the free space, in bytes, of the serializer's write buffer. If a write call has a length that exceeds this value, the serializer will allocate a new buffer that will replace the serializer's internal buffer for that and subsequent calls.
val has_pending_output : t -> bool
has_pending_output t
is true
if t
's output queue is non-empty. It may be the case that t
's queued output is being serviced by some other thread of control, but has not yet completed.
val pending_bytes : t -> int
pending_bytes t
is the size of the next write, in bytes, that t
will surface to the caller via await_batch
.
Control Operations
pause t
causes t
to stop surfacing writes to the user. This gives the serializer an opportunity to collect additional writes before sending them to the underlying device, which will increase the write batch size.
As one example, code may want to call this function if it's about to release the OCaml lock and perform a blocking system call, but would like to batch output across that system call.
Call unpause
to resume writing later. Note that calling flush
or close
will automatically call unpause
too.
unpause t
resumes writing data after a previous call to pause
.
flush t
waits until all prior writes have been successfully completed. If t
has no pending writes, flush
returns immediately. If t
is paused then it is unpaused first.
close t
closes t
. All subsequent write calls will raise, and any subsequent pause
calls will be ignored. If the serializer has any pending writes, user code will have an opportunity to service them before receiving End_of_file
. Flush callbacks will continue to be invoked while output is shift
ed out of t
as needed.
val is_closed : t -> bool
is_closed t
is true
if close
has been called on t
and false
otherwise. A closed t
may still have pending output.
Low-level API
Low-level operations for running a serializer.
create ~sw len
creates a serializer with a fixed-length internal buffer of length len
. See the Buffered writes section for details about what happens when len
is not large enough to support a write.
of_buffer ~sw buf
creates a serializer, using buf
as its internal buffer. The serializer takes ownership of buf
until the serializer has been closed and flushed of all output.
abort t
is like close
followed by drain
, except that any pending flush operations fail instead of completing successfully.
await_batch t
returns a list of buffers that should be written. If no data is currently available, it waits until some is. After performing a write, call shift
with the number of bytes written. You must accurately report the number of bytes written. Failure to do so will result in the same bytes being surfaced multiple times.
val shift : t -> int -> unit
shift t n
removes the first n
bytes in t
's write queue. Any flush operations called within this span of the write queue will be scheduled to resume.
Convenience Functions
These functions are included for testing, debugging, and general development. They are not the suggested way of driving a serializer in a production setting.
val serialize :
t ->
(Cstruct.t list -> (int, [ `Closed ]) Stdlib.result) ->
(unit, [> `Closed ]) Stdlib.result
serialize t writev
calls writev bufs
each time t
is ready to write. In the event that writev
indicates a partial write, serialize
will call Fiber.yield
before continuing.
val serialize_to_string : t -> string
serialize_to_string t
runs t
, collecting the output into a string and returning it. serializie_to_string t
immediately closes t
.
serialize_to_cstruct t
runs t
, collecting the output into a cstruct and returning it. serialize_to_cstruct t
immediately closes t
.
drain t
removes all pending writes from t
, returning the number of bytes that were enqueued to be written and freeing any scheduled buffers in the process. Note that this does not close t
itself, and does not return until t
has been closed.