update the section on timeouts

The section that describes how to work with timeouts was
misleading and could easily trick users to use the wrong API.
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Stenberg 2010-04-12 11:09:55 +02:00
parent cf9145973b
commit f9db721c1c

View File

@ -16,28 +16,16 @@ Implementation of the curl_multi_socket API
information about what socket to wait for what action on, and the callback
only gets called if the status of that socket has changed.
In the API draft from before, we have a timeout argument on a per socket
basis and we also allowed curl_multi_socket_action() to pass in an 'easy
handle' instead of socket to allow libcurl to shortcut a lookup and work on
the affected easy handle right away. Both these turned out to be bad ideas.
The timeout argument was removed from the socket callback since after much
thinking I came to the conclusion that we really don't want to handle
timeouts on a per socket basis. We need it on a per transfer (easy handle)
basis and thus we can't provide it in the callbacks in a nice way. Instead,
we have to offer a curl_multi_timeout() that returns the largest amount of
time we should wait before we call the "timeout action" of libcurl, to
trigger the proper internal timeout action on the affected transfer. To get
this to work, I added a struct to each easy handle in which we store an
"expire time" (if any). The structs are then "splay sorted" so that we can
add and remove times from the linked list and yet somewhat swiftly figure
out 1 - how long time there is until the next timer expires and 2 - which
timer (handle) should we take care of now. Of course, the upside of all this
is that we get a curl_multi_timeout() that should also work with old-style
applications that use curl_multi_perform().
We also added a timer callback that makes libcurl call the application when
the timeout value changes, and you set that with curl_multi_setopt().
the timeout value changes, and you set that with curl_multi_setopt() and the
CURLMOPT_TIMERFUNCTION option. To get this to work, Internally, there's an
added a struct to each easy handle in which we store an "expire time" (if
any). The structs are then "splay sorted" so that we can add and remove
times from the linked list and yet somewhat swiftly figure out both how long
time there is until the next nearest timer expires and which timer (handle)
we should take care of now. Of course, the upside of all this is that we get
a curl_multi_timeout() that should also work with old-style applications
that use curl_multi_perform().
We created an internal "socket to easy handles" hash table that given
a socket (file descriptor) return the easy handle that waits for action on