Goroutines and Channels

The fun just starts

https://talks.obedmr.com/

Based on:

The Go Programming Language Book

Presentation and code examples:

https://github.com/CodersSquad/hello-gophers

Goroutines and Channels

Concurrent programming is the expression of a program as a composition of several autonomous activities.

Golang provides 2 styles of concurrent programming:

  • CSP - Communicating Sequential Processes
  • Shared Memory multithreading

Goroutines

In Go, each concurrently executing activity is called a goroutine.

When a program starts, its only goroutine is the one that calls the main function. It's called the main goroutine.

  f()       // call f(); wait for it to return
  go f()    // create a new goroutine that calls f(); don't wait

Example 1 - spinner

Source code: spinner.go

func main() {
	go spinner(100 * time.Millisecond)
	const n = 45
	fibN := fib(n) // slow
	fmt.Printf("\rFibonacci(%d) = %d\n", n, fibN)
}

func fib(x int) int {
	if x < 2 {
		return x
	}
	return fib(x-1) + fib(x-2)
}

func spinner(delay time.Duration) {
	for {
		for _, r := range `-\|/` {
			fmt.Printf("\r%c", r)
			time.Sleep(delay)
		}
	}
}

Example 2 - Concurrent Clock Server

Source code: clock1.go

func main() {
	listener, err := net.Listen("tcp", "localhost:9090")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
	for {
		conn, err := listener.Accept()
		if err != nil {
			log.Print(err) // e.g., connection aborted
			continue
		}
		handleConn(conn) // handle one connection at a time
	}
}

func handleConn(c net.Conn) {
	defer c.Close()
	for {
		_, err := io.WriteString(c, time.Now().Format("15:04:05\n"))
		if err != nil {
			return // e.g., client disconnected
		}
		time.Sleep(1 * time.Second)
	}
}

Test with netcat.sh

./netcat.sh

Test with netcat1.go

func mustCopy(dst io.Writer, src io.Reader) {
	if _, err := io.Copy(dst, src); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

func main() {
	conn, err := net.Dial("tcp", "localhost:9090")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
	defer conn.Close()
	mustCopy(os.Stdout, conn)
}

This is the real concurrent one

Source code: clock2.go

func main() {
	listener, err := net.Listen("tcp", "localhost:9090")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
	for {
		conn, err := listener.Accept()
		if err != nil {
			log.Print(err) // e.g., connection aborted
			continue
		}
		go handleConn(conn) // handle connections concurrently
	}
}

Let's philosophize

Go Proverbs

  • Don't communicate by sharing memory, share memory by communicating.

  • Concurrency is not parallelism.

  • Channels orchestrate; mutexes serialize.

Channels

If goroutines are the activities of a concurrent Go program, channels are the connections between them.

  • A channel is a communication mechanism that lets one goroutine send values to another goroutine.

  • A channel is a reference to the data structure created by make

  • A channel has 2 operations, send and receive, also known as communications.

Channels in code

  ch := make(chan int) // ch has type 'chan int'

  ch <- x  // a send statement

  x = <-ch // a receive expression in an assignment statement
  <-ch     // a receive statement; result is discarded

  close(ch) // To close a channel

Unbuffered and Buffered Channels

Channels created with simple make is called as unbuffered channel.

But make could use a second parameter which indicates the channel's capacity. If this capacity is non-zero, make will created a buffered channel.

  ch = make(chan int)    // unbuffered channel
  ch = make(chan int, 0) // unbuffered channel
  ch = make(chan int, 3) // buffered channel with capacity 3

Example 3 - Unbuffered Channels

Source code: netcat2.go

func main() {
        ...
	done := make(chan int)
	go func() {
		io.Copy(os.Stdout, conn) // NOTE: ignoring errors
		log.Println("done")
		done <- 2 // signal the main goroutine
	}()
	x := 1
	x = <-done // wait for background goroutine to finish
	log.Println("Channel Closed with value: ", x)
	close(done)
}

Pipelines

Pipelines are used to connect goroutines together so that the output of one can be the input to another.

Example 4 - Pipelines

Source code: pipeline.go

func main() {
	naturals := make(chan int)
	squares := make(chan int)

	// Counter
	go counter(naturals)
	// Squarer
	go squarer(naturals, squares)
	// Printer (in main goroutine)
	for x := range squares {
		fmt.Println(x)
	}
}

Counter goroutine code

func counter(naturals chan int) {
	for x := 0; x < 100; x++ {
		naturals <- x
	}
	close(naturals)
}

Squarer goroutine code

func squarer(naturals, squares chan int) {
	for x := range naturals {
		squares <- x * x
	}
	close(squares)
}

Let's code: ClockWall

Follow the instructions in the link:
https://github.com/CodersSquad/go-clockwall

More topics for second part

  • Buffered and Unbuffered channels
  • Pipelines
  • Unidirectional Channel types
  • Looping in Parallel
  • Cancellation
  • Concurrency with Shared Variables (third part)

Take a look on The Go Programming Language book

Thanks

  • Obed N Muñoz Reynoso
    • Cloud Software Engineer
    • obed.n.munoz@gmail | tec | intel.com