zmq_poller(3) =========== NAME ---- zmq_poller - input/output multiplexing SYNOPSIS -------- *void *zmq_poller_new (void);* *int zmq_poller_destroy (void **'poller_p');* *int zmq_poller_add (void *'poller', void *'socket', void *'user_data', short 'events'); *int zmq_poller_modify (void *'poller', void *'socket', short 'events');* *int zmq_poller_remove (void *'poller', void *'socket');* *int zmq_poller_add_fd (void *'poller', int 'fd', void *'user_data', short 'events');* *int zmq_poller_modify_fd (void *'poller', int 'fd', short 'events');* *int zmq_poller_remove_fd (void *'poller', int 'fd');* *int zmq_poller_wait (void *'poller', zmq_poller_event_t *'event', long 'timeout');* *int zmq_poller_wait_all (void *'poller', zmq_poller_event_t *'events', int 'n_events', long 'timeout');* *int zmq_poller_fd (void *'poller', zmq_fd_t *'fd');* DESCRIPTION ----------- The _zmq_poller_*_ functions provide a mechanism for applications to multiplex input/output events in a level-triggered fashion over a set of sockets. _zmq_poller_new_ and _zmq_poller_destroy_ manage the lifetime of a poller instance. _zmq_poller_new_ creates and returns a new poller instance, while _zmq_poller_destroy_ destroys it. A pointer to a valid poller must be passed as the _poller_p_ argument of _zmq_poller_destroy_. In particular, _zmq_poller_destroy_ may not be called multiple times for the same poller instance. _zmq_poller_destroy_ sets the passed pointer to NULL in case of a successful execution. _zmq_poller_destroy_ implicitly unregisters all registered sockets and file descriptors. _zmq_poller_add_, _zmq_poller_modify_ and _zmq_poller_remove_ manage the 0MQ sockets registered with a poller. _zmq_poller_add_ registers a new _socket_ with a given _poller_. Both _poller_ and _socket_ must point to valid 0MQ objects. The _events_ parameter specifies which event types the client wants to subscribe to. It is legal to specify no events (i.e. 0), and activate them later with _zmq_poller_modify_. In addition, _user_data_ may be specified, which is not used by the poller, but passed back to the caller when an event was signalled in a call to _zmq_poller_wait_ or _zmq_poller_wait_all_. _user_data_ may be NULL. If it is not NULL, it must be a valid pointer. Otherwise, behaviour is undefined. You must only add a socket to a single poller instance once (unless _zmq_poller_remove_ has been called for that socket before). You may add a socket to multiple poller instances, if the socket itself is explicitly thread-safe (Server, Client, ...). If the socket is not, you may invoke undefined behavior. _zmq_poller_modify_ modifies the subscribed events for a socket. It is legal to specify no events (i.e. 0) to disable events temporarily, and reactivate them later with another call to _zmq_poller_modify_. _zmq_poller_remove_ removes a socket registration completely. _zmq_poller_remove_ must be called before a socket is closed with _zmq_close_. Note that it is not necessary to call _zmq_poller_remove_ for any socket before calling _zmq_poller_destroy_. Also note that calling _zmq_poller_remove_ is not equivalent to calling _zmq_poller_modify_ with no events. _zmq_poller_modify_ does not free resources associated with the socket registration, and requires that the _socket_ remains valid. _zmq_poller_add_fd_, _zmq_poller_modify_fd_ and _zmq_poller_remove_fd_ are analogous to the previous functions but manage regular file descriptiors registered with a poller. On Windows, these functions can only be used with WinSock sockets. In the following, 0MQ sockets added with _zmq_poller_add_ and file descriptors added with _zmq_poller_add_fd_ are referred to as 'registered objects'. The *zmq_poller_event_t* structure is defined as follows: ["literal", subs="quotes"] typedef struct { void *socket; #if defined _WIN32 SOCKET fd; #else int fd; #endif void *user_data; short events; } zmq_poller_event_t; For each registered object, _zmq_poller_wait_all()_ shall examine the registered objects for the event(s) currently registered. If none of the registered events have occurred, _zmq_poller_wait_all_ shall wait 'timeout' milliseconds for an event to occur on any of the registered objects. If the value of 'timeout' is `0`, _zmq_poller_wait_all_ shall return immediately. If the value of 'timeout' is `-1`, _zmq_poller_wait_all_ shall block indefinitely until one event has occurred on any of the registered objects. The 'events' argument _zmq_poller_wait_all_ must be a pointer to an array of at least 'n_events' elements. Behaviour is undefined if 'events' does not point to an array of at least 'n_events' elements. _zmq_poller_wait_all_ returns at most 'n_events' events. If more than 'n_events' events were signalled, only an unspecified subset of the signalled events is returned through 'events'. A caller is advised to ensure that 'n_events' is equal to the number of registered objects. Otherwise, a livelock situation may result: If more than 'n_events' registered objects have an active event on each call to _zmq_poller_wait_all_, it might happen that the same subset of registered objects is always returned, and the caller never notices the events on the others. _zmq_poller_wait_all_ returns the number of valid elements. The valid elements are placed in positions '0' to 'n_events - 1' in the 'events' array. All members of a valid element are set to valid values by _zmq_poller_wait_all_. The client does therefore not need to initialize the contents of the events array before a call to _zmq_poller_wait_all_. It is unspecified whether the the remaining elements of 'events' are written to by _zmq_poller_wait_all_. _zmq_poller_fd_ queries the file descriptor associated with the zmq_poller, and stores it in the address pointer to by 'fd'. The zmq_poller is only guaranteed to have a file descriptor if at least one thread-safe socket is currently registered. Note that closing a socket that is registered in a poller leads to undefined behavior. The socket must be unregistered first. EVENT TYPES ----------- The 'events' parameter of _zmq_poller_add_ and _zmq_poller_modify_, and the 'events' member of the zmq_poller_event_t structure are bit masks constructed by OR'ing a combination of the following event flags: *ZMQ_POLLIN*:: For 0MQ sockets, at least one message may be received from the 'socket' without blocking. For standard sockets this is equivalent to the 'POLLIN' flag of the _poll()_ system call and generally means that at least one byte of data may be read from 'fd' without blocking. *ZMQ_POLLOUT*:: For 0MQ sockets, at least one message may be sent to the 'socket' without blocking. For standard sockets this is equivalent to the 'POLLOUT' flag of the _poll()_ system call and generally means that at least one byte of data may be written to 'fd' without blocking. *ZMQ_POLLERR*:: For 0MQ sockets this flag has no effect on the _zmq_poller_add_ and _zmq_poller_modify_ functions, and is never set in the 'events' member of the zmq_poller_event_t structure. For standard sockets, this flag is passed through _zmq_poller_wait_all_ to the underlying _poll()_ system call and generally means that some sort of error condition is present on the socket specified by 'fd'. *ZMQ_POLLPRI*:: For 0MQ sockets this flag has no effect on the _zmq_poller_add_ and _zmq_poller_modify_ functions, and is never set in the 'events' member of the zmq_poller_event_t structure. For standard sockets this means there is urgent data to read. Refer to the POLLPRI flag for more informations. For a file descriptor, refer to your OS documentation: as an example, GPIO interrupts are signaled through a POLLPRI event. This flag has no effect on Windows. NOTE: The _zmq_poller_*_ functions may be implemented or emulated using operating system interfaces other than _poll()_, and as such may be subject to the limits of those interfaces in ways not defined in this documentation. THREAD SAFETY ------------- Like most other 0MQ objects, a poller is not thread-safe. All operations must be called from the same thread. Otherwise, behaviour is undefined. In addition to that, if you want to add a socket to multiple existing poller instances, the socket itself needs to be thread-safe (Server, Client, ...). Otherwise, behaviour is undefined. RETURN VALUE ------------ _zmq_poller_new_ returns a valid pointer to a poller, or NULL in case of a failure. All functions that return an int, return -1 in case of a failure. In that case, zmq_errno() can be used to query the type of the error as described below. _zmq_poller_wait_all_ returns the number of events signalled and returned in the events array. It never returns 0. All other functions return 0 in case of a successful execution. ERRORS ------ On _zmq_poller_new_: *ENOMEM*:: A new poller could not be allocated successfully. On _zmq_poller_destroy_: *EFAULT*:: _poller_p_ did not point to a valid poller. Note that passing an invalid pointer (e.g. pointer to deallocated memory) may cause undefined behaviour (e.g. an access violation). On _zmq_poller_add_, _zmq_poller_modify_ and _zmq_poller_remove_: *EFAULT*:: _poller_ did not point to a valid poller. Note that passing an invalid pointer (e.g. pointer to deallocated memory) may cause undefined behaviour (e.g. an access violation). *ENOTSOCK*:: _socket_ did not point to a valid socket. Note that passing an invalid pointer (e.g. pointer to deallocated memory) may cause undefined behaviour (e.g. an access violation). On _zmq_poller_add_: *EMFILE*:: TODO On _zmq_poller_add_ or _zmq_poller_add_fd_: *ENOMEM*:: Necessary resources could not be allocated. *EINVAL*:: _socket_ resp. _fd_ was already registered with the poller. On _zmq_poller_modify_, _zmq_poller_modify_fd_, _zmq_poller_remove_ or _zmq_poller_remove_fd_: *EINVAL*:: _socket_ resp. _fd_ was not registered with the poller. On _zmq_poller_add_fd_, _zmq_poller_modify_fd_ and _zmq_poller_remove_fd_: *EBADF**: The _fd_ specified was the retired fd. On _zmq_poller_wait_ and _zmq_poller_wait_all_: *ENOMEM*:: Necessary resources could not be allocated. *ETERM*:: At least one of the registered objects is a 'socket' whose associated 0MQ 'context' was terminated. *EFAULT*:: The provided 'events' was NULL, or 'poller' did not point to a valid poller, or there are no registered objects and 'timeout' was negative. *EINTR*:: The operation was interrupted by delivery of a signal before any events were available. *EAGAIN*:: No registered event was signalled before the timeout was reached. On _zmq_poller_fd: *EINVAL*:: The poller has no associated file descriptor. *EFAULT*:: The provided 'poller' did not point to a valid poller. EXAMPLE ------- .Polling indefinitely for input events on both a 0MQ socket and a standard socket. ---- void *poller = zmq_poller_new (); zmq_poller_event_t events [2]; /* First item refers to 0MQ socket 'socket' */ zmq_poller_add (poller, socket, NULL, ZMQ_POLLIN); /* Second item refers to standard socket 'fd' */ zmq_poller_add_fd (poller, fd, NULL, ZMQ_POLLIN); /* Poll for events indefinitely */ int rc = zmq_poller_wait_all (items, events, 2, -1); assert (rc >= 0); /* Returned events will be stored in 'events' */ zmq_poller_destroy (&poller); ---- SEE ALSO -------- linkzmq:zmq_socket[3] linkzmq:zmq_send[3] linkzmq:zmq_recv[3] linkzmq:zmq[7] AUTHORS ------- This page was written by the 0MQ community. To make a change please read the 0MQ Contribution Policy at .