18.5.1. Event loops

The event loop is the central execution device provided by asyncio. It provides multiple facilities, amongst which:

  • Registering, executing and cancelling delayed calls (timeouts)
  • Creating client and server transports for various kinds of communication
  • Launching subprocesses and the associated transports for communication with an external program
  • Delegating costly function calls to a pool of threads

18.5.1.1. Event loop functions

The easiest way to get an event loop is to call the get_event_loop() function.

asyncio.get_event_loop()

Get the event loop for current context. Returns an event loop object implementing BaseEventLoop interface, or raises an exception in case no event loop has been set for the current context and the current policy does not specify to create one. It should never return None.

asyncio.set_event_loop(loop)

XXX

asyncio.new_event_loop()

XXX

18.5.1.2. Event loop policy

asyncio.get_event_loop_policy()

XXX

asyncio.set_event_loop_policy(policy)

XXX

18.5.1.3. Run an event loop

BaseEventLoop.run_forever()

Run until stop() is called.

BaseEventLoop.run_until_complete(future)

Run until the Future is done.

If the argument is a coroutine, it is wrapped in a Task.

Return the Future’s result, or raise its exception.

BaseEventLoop.is_running()

Returns running status of event loop.

BaseEventLoop.stop()

Stop running the event loop.

Every callback scheduled before stop() is called will run. Callback scheduled after stop() is called won’t. However, those callbacks will run if run_forever() is called again later.

BaseEventLoop.close()

Close the event loop. The loop should not be running.

This clears the queues and shuts down the executor, but does not wait for the executor to finish.

This is idempotent and irreversible. No other methods should be called after this one.

18.5.1.4. Calls

BaseEventLoop.call_soon(callback, *args)

Arrange for a callback to be called as soon as possible.

This operates as a FIFO queue, callbacks are called in the order in which they are registered. Each callback will be called exactly once.

Any positional arguments after the callback will be passed to the callback when it is called.

BaseEventLoop.call_soon_threadsafe(callback, *args)

Like call_soon(), but thread safe.

18.5.1.5. Delayed calls

The event loop has its own internal clock for computing timeouts. Which clock is used depends on the (platform-specific) event loop implementation; ideally it is a monotonic clock. This will generally be a different clock than time.time().

BaseEventLoop.call_later(delay, callback, *args)

Arrange for the callback to be called after the given delay seconds (either an int or float).

A “handle” is returned: an opaque object with a cancel() method that can be used to cancel the call.

callback will be called exactly once per call to call_later(). If two callbacks are scheduled for exactly the same time, it is undefined which will be called first.

The optional positional args will be passed to the callback when it is called. If you want the callback to be called with some named arguments, use a closure or functools.partial().

BaseEventLoop.call_at(when, callback, *args)

Arrange for the callback to be called at the given absolute timestamp when (an int or float), using the same time reference as time().

This method’s behavior is the same as call_later().

BaseEventLoop.time()

Return the current time, as a float value, according to the event loop’s internal clock.

See also

The asyncio.sleep() function.

18.5.1.6. Creating connections

BaseEventLoop.create_connection(protocol_factory, host=None, port=None, *, ssl=None, family=0, proto=0, flags=0, sock=None, local_addr=None, server_hostname=None)

Create a streaming transport connection to a given Internet host and port. protocol_factory must be a callable returning a protocol instance.

This method returns a coroutine which will try to establish the connection in the background. When successful, the coroutine returns a (transport, protocol) pair.

The chronological synopsis of the underlying operation is as follows:

  1. The connection is established, and a transport is created to represent it.
  2. protocol_factory is called without arguments and must return a protocol instance.
  3. The protocol instance is tied to the transport, and its connection_made() method is called.
  4. The coroutine returns successfully with the (transport, protocol) pair.

The created transport is an implementation-dependent bidirectional stream.

Note

protocol_factory can be any kind of callable, not necessarily a class. For example, if you want to use a pre-created protocol instance, you can pass lambda: my_protocol.

Options allowing to change how the connection is created:

  • ssl: if given and not false, a SSL/TLS transport is created (by default a plain TCP transport is created). If ssl is a ssl.SSLContext object, this context is used to create the transport; if ssl is True, a context with some unspecified default settings is used.
  • server_hostname, is only for use together with ssl, and sets or overrides the hostname that the target server’s certificate will be matched against. By default the value of the host argument is used. If host is empty, there is no default and you must pass a value for server_hostname. If server_hostname is an empty string, hostname matching is disabled (which is a serious security risk, allowing for man-in-the-middle-attacks).
  • family, proto, flags are the optional address family, protocol and flags to be passed through to getaddrinfo() for host resolution. If given, these should all be integers from the corresponding socket module constants.
  • sock, if given, should be an existing, already connected socket.socket object to be used by the transport. If sock is given, none of host, port, family, proto, flags and local_addr should be specified.
  • local_addr, if given, is a (local_host, local_port) tuple used to bind the socket to locally. The local_host and local_port are looked up using getaddrinfo(), similarly to host and port.

18.5.1.7. Creating listening connections

BaseEventLoop.create_server(protocol_factory, host=None, port=None, *, family=socket.AF_UNSPEC, flags=socket.AI_PASSIVE, sock=None, backlog=100, ssl=None, reuse_address=None)

A coroutine which creates a TCP server bound to host and port.

The return value is a AbstractServer object which can be used to stop the service.

If host is an empty string or None all interfaces are assumed and a list of multiple sockets will be returned (most likely one for IPv4 and another one for IPv6).

family can be set to either AF_INET or AF_INET6 to force the socket to use IPv4 or IPv6. If not set it will be determined from host (defaults to AF_UNSPEC).

flags is a bitmask for getaddrinfo().

sock can optionally be specified in order to use a preexisting socket object.

backlog is the maximum number of queued connections passed to listen() (defaults to 100).

ssl can be set to an SSLContext to enable SSL over the accepted connections.

reuse_address tells the kernel to reuse a local socket in TIME_WAIT state, without waiting for its natural timeout to expire. If not specified will automatically be set to True on UNIX.

This method returns a coroutine.

BaseEventLoop.create_datagram_endpoint(protocol_factory, local_addr=None, remote_addr=None, *, family=0, proto=0, flags=0)

Create datagram connection.

This method returns a coroutine.

18.5.1.8. Resolve name

BaseEventLoop.getaddrinfo(host, port, *, family=0, type=0, proto=0, flags=0)

XXX

BaseEventLoop.getnameinfo(sockaddr, flags=0)

XXX

18.5.1.9. Running subprocesses

Run subprocesses asynchronously using the subprocess module.

BaseEventLoop.subprocess_exec(protocol_factory, *args, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, universal_newlines=False, shell=False, bufsize=0, **kwargs)

XXX

This method returns a coroutine.

See the constructor of the subprocess.Popen class for parameters.

BaseEventLoop.subprocess_shell(protocol_factory, cmd, *, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, universal_newlines=False, shell=True, bufsize=0, **kwargs)

XXX

This method returns a coroutine.

See the constructor of the subprocess.Popen class for parameters.

BaseEventLoop.connect_read_pipe(protocol_factory, pipe)

Register read pipe in eventloop.

protocol_factory should instantiate object with Protocol interface. pipe is file-like object already switched to nonblocking. Return pair (transport, protocol), where transport support ReadTransport interface.

This method returns a coroutine.

BaseEventLoop.connect_write_pipe(protocol_factory, pipe)

Register write pipe in eventloop.

protocol_factory should instantiate object with BaseProtocol interface. Pipe is file-like object already switched to nonblocking. Return pair (transport, protocol), where transport support WriteTransport interface.

This method returns a coroutine.

18.5.1.10. Executor

Call a function in an Executor (pool of threads or pool of processes). By default, an event loop uses a thread pool executor (ThreadPoolExecutor).

BaseEventLoop.run_in_executor(executor, callback, *args)

Arrange for a callback to be called in the specified executor.

executor is a Executor instance, the default executor is used if executor is None.

BaseEventLoop.set_default_executor(executor)

Set the default executor used by run_in_executor().

18.5.1.11. Example: Hello World (callback)

Print Hello World every two seconds, using a callback:

import asyncio

def print_and_repeat(loop):
    print('Hello World')
    loop.call_later(2, print_and_repeat, loop)

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.call_soon(print_and_repeat, loop)
loop.run_forever()