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I am trying to understand threading in Python. I've looked at the documentation and examples, but quite frankly, many examples are overly sophisticated and I'm having trouble understanding them.
How do you clearly show tasks being divided for multi-threading?
Since this question was asked in 2010, there has been real simplification in how to do simple multithreading with Python with map and pool.
The code below comes from an article/blog post that you should definitely check out (no affiliation) - Parallelism in one line: A Better Model for Day to Day Threading Tasks. I'll summarize below - it ends up being just a few lines of code:
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
pool = ThreadPool(4)
results = pool.map(my_function, my_array)
Which is the multithreaded version of:
results = []
for item in my_array:
results.append(my_function(item))
Description
Map is a cool little function, and the key to easily injecting parallelism into your Python code. For those unfamiliar, map is something lifted from functional languages like Lisp. It is a function which maps another function over a sequence.
Map handles the iteration over the sequence for us, applies the function, and stores all of the results in a handy list at the end.
Implementation
Parallel versions of the map function are provided by two libraries:multiprocessing, and also its little known, but equally fantastic step child:multiprocessing.dummy.
multiprocessing.dummy is exactly the same as multiprocessing module, but uses threads instead (an important distinction - use multiple processes for CPU-intensive tasks; threads for (and during) I/O):
multiprocessing.dummy replicates the API of multiprocessing, but is no more than a wrapper around the threading module.
import urllib2
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
urls = [
'http://www.python.org',
'http://www.python.org/about/',
'http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2003/04/17/metaclasses.html',
'http://www.python.org/doc/',
'http://www.python.org/download/',
'http://www.python.org/getit/',
'http://www.python.org/community/',
'https://wiki.python.org/moin/',
]
# Make the Pool of workers
pool = ThreadPool(4)
# Open the URLs in their own threads
# and return the results
results = pool.map(urllib2.urlopen, urls)
# Close the pool and wait for the work to finish
pool.close()
pool.join()
And the timing results:
Single thread: 14.4 seconds
4 Pool: 3.1 seconds
8 Pool: 1.4 seconds
13 Pool: 1.3 seconds
Passing multiple arguments (works like this only in Python 3.3 and later):
To pass multiple arrays:
results = pool.starmap(function, zip(list_a, list_b))
Or to pass a constant and an array:
results = pool.starmap(function, zip(itertools.repeat(constant), list_a))
If you are using an earlier version of Python, you can pass multiple arguments via this workaround).
(Thanks to user136036 for the helpful comment.)
Here's a simple example: you need to try a few alternative URLs and return the contents of the first one to respond.
import Queue
import threading
import urllib2
# Called by each thread
def get_url(q, url):
q.put(urllib2.urlopen(url).read())
theurls = ["http://google.com", "http://yahoo.com"]
q = Queue.Queue()
for u in theurls:
t = threading.Thread(target=get_url, args = (q,u))
t.daemon = True
t.start()
s = q.get()
print s
This is a case where threading is used as a simple optimization: each subthread is waiting for a URL to resolve and respond, to put its contents on the queue; each thread is a daemon (won't keep the process up if the main thread ends -- that's more common than not); the main thread starts all subthreads, does a get on the queue to wait until one of them has done a put, then emits the results and terminates (which takes down any subthreads that might still be running, since they're daemon threads).
Proper use of threads in Python is invariably connected to I/O operations (since CPython doesn't use multiple cores to run CPU-bound tasks anyway, the only reason for threading is not blocking the process while there's a wait for some I/O). Queues are almost invariably the best way to farm out work to threads and/or collect the work's results, by the way, and they're intrinsically threadsafe, so they save you from worrying about locks, conditions, events, semaphores, and other inter-thread coordination/communication concepts.
NOTE: For actual parallelization in Python, you should use the multiprocessing module to fork multiple processes that execute in parallel (due to the global interpreter lock, Python threads provide interleaving, but they are in fact executed serially, not in parallel, and are only useful when interleaving I/O operations).
However, if you are merely looking for interleaving (or are doing I/O operations that can be parallelized despite the global interpreter lock), then the threading module is the place to start. As a really simple example, let's consider the problem of summing a large range by summing subranges in parallel:
import threading
class SummingThread(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self,low,high):
super(SummingThread, self).__init__()
self.low=low
self.high=high
self.total=0
def run(self):
for i in range(self.low,self.high):
self.total+=i
thread1 = SummingThread(0,500000)
thread2 = SummingThread(500000,1000000)
thread1.start() # This actually causes the thread to run
thread2.start()
thread1.join() # This waits until the thread has completed
thread2.join()
# At this point, both threads have completed
result = thread1.total + thread2.total
print result
Note that the above is a very stupid example, as it does absolutely no I/O and will be executed serially albeit interleaved (with the added overhead of context switching) in CPython due to the global interpreter lock.
Like others mentioned, CPython can use threads only for I/O waits due to GIL.
If you want to benefit from multiple cores for CPU-bound tasks, use multiprocessing:
from multiprocessing import Process
def f(name):
print 'hello', name
if __name__ == '__main__':
p = Process(target=f, args=('bob',))
p.start()
p.join()
Just a note: A queue is not required for threading.
This is the simplest example I could imagine that shows 10 processes running concurrently.
import threading
from random import randint
from time import sleep
def print_number(number):
# Sleeps a random 1 to 10 seconds
rand_int_var = randint(1, 10)
sleep(rand_int_var)
print "Thread " + str(number) + " slept for " + str(rand_int_var) + " seconds"
thread_list = []
for i in range(1, 10):
# Instantiates the thread
# (i) does not make a sequence, so (i,)
t = threading.Thread(target=print_number, args=(i,))
# Sticks the thread in a list so that it remains accessible
thread_list.append(t)
# Starts threads
for thread in thread_list:
thread.start()
# This blocks the calling thread until the thread whose join() method is called is terminated.
# From http://docs.python.org/2/library/threading.html#thread-objects
for thread in thread_list:
thread.join()
# Demonstrates that the main process waited for threads to complete
print "Done"
The answer from Alex Martelli helped me. However, here is a modified version that I thought was more useful (at least to me).
Updated: works in both Python 2 and Python 3
try:
# For Python 3
import queue
from urllib.request import urlopen
except:
# For Python 2
import Queue as queue
from urllib2 import urlopen
import threading
worker_data = ['http://google.com', 'http://yahoo.com', 'http://bing.com']
# Load up a queue with your data. This will handle locking
q = queue.Queue()
for url in worker_data:
q.put(url)
# Define a worker function
def worker(url_queue):
queue_full = True
while queue_full:
try:
# Get your data off the queue, and do some work
url = url_queue.get(False)
data = urlopen(url).read()
print(len(data))
except queue.Empty:
queue_full = False
# Create as many threads as you want
thread_count = 5
for i in range(thread_count):
t = threading.Thread(target=worker, args = (q,))
t.start()
Given a function, f, thread it like this:
import threading
threading.Thread(target=f).start()
To pass arguments to f
threading.Thread(target=f, args=(a,b,c)).start()
I found this very useful: create as many threads as cores and let them execute a (large) number of tasks (in this case, calling a shell program):
import Queue
import threading
import multiprocessing
import subprocess
q = Queue.Queue()
for i in range(30): # Put 30 tasks in the queue
q.put(i)
def worker():
while True:
item = q.get()
# Execute a task: call a shell program and wait until it completes
subprocess.call("echo " + str(item), shell=True)
q.task_done()
cpus = multiprocessing.cpu_count() # Detect number of cores
print("Creating %d threads" % cpus)
for i in range(cpus):
t = threading.Thread(target=worker)
t.daemon = True
t.start()
q.join() # Block until all tasks are done
Python 3 has the facility of launching parallel tasks. This makes our work easier.
It has thread pooling and process pooling.
The following gives an insight:
ThreadPoolExecutor Example (source)
import concurrent.futures
import urllib.request
URLS = ['http://www.foxnews.com/',
'http://www.cnn.com/',
'http://europe.wsj.com/',
'http://www.bbc.co.uk/',
'http://some-made-up-domain.com/']
# Retrieve a single page and report the URL and contents
def load_url(url, timeout):
with urllib.request.urlopen(url, timeout=timeout) as conn:
return conn.read()
# We can use a with statement to ensure threads are cleaned up promptly
with concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5) as executor:
# Start the load operations and mark each future with its URL
future_to_url = {executor.submit(load_url, url, 60): url for url in URLS}
for future in concurrent.futures.as_completed(future_to_url):
url = future_to_url[future]
try:
data = future.result()
except Exception as exc:
print('%r generated an exception: %s' % (url, exc))
else:
print('%r page is %d bytes' % (url, len(data)))
ProcessPoolExecutor (source)
import concurrent.futures
import math
PRIMES = [
112272535095293,
112582705942171,
112272535095293,
115280095190773,
115797848077099,
1099726899285419]
def is_prime(n):
if n % 2 == 0:
return False
sqrt_n = int(math.floor(math.sqrt(n)))
for i in range(3, sqrt_n + 1, 2):
if n % i == 0:
return False
return True
def main():
with concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor() as executor:
for number, prime in zip(PRIMES, executor.map(is_prime, PRIMES)):
print('%d is prime: %s' % (number, prime))
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
I saw a lot of examples here where no real work was being performed, and they were mostly CPU-bound. Here is an example of a CPU-bound task that computes all prime numbers between 10 million and 10.05 million. I have used all four methods here:
import math
import timeit
import threading
import multiprocessing
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, ProcessPoolExecutor
def time_stuff(fn):
"""
Measure time of execution of a function
"""
def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
t0 = timeit.default_timer()
fn(*args, **kwargs)
t1 = timeit.default_timer()
print("{} seconds".format(t1 - t0))
return wrapper
def find_primes_in(nmin, nmax):
"""
Compute a list of prime numbers between the given minimum and maximum arguments
"""
primes = []
# Loop from minimum to maximum
for current in range(nmin, nmax + 1):
# Take the square root of the current number
sqrt_n = int(math.sqrt(current))
found = False
# Check if the any number from 2 to the square root + 1 divides the current numnber under consideration
for number in range(2, sqrt_n + 1):
# If divisible we have found a factor, hence this is not a prime number, lets move to the next one
if current % number == 0:
found = True
break
# If not divisible, add this number to the list of primes that we have found so far
if not found:
primes.append(current)
# I am merely printing the length of the array containing all the primes, but feel free to do what you want
print(len(primes))
#time_stuff
def sequential_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
Use the main process and main thread to compute everything in this case
"""
find_primes_in(nmin, nmax)
#time_stuff
def threading_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
If the minimum is 1000 and the maximum is 2000 and we have four workers,
1000 - 1250 to worker 1
1250 - 1500 to worker 2
1500 - 1750 to worker 3
1750 - 2000 to worker 4
so let’s split the minimum and maximum values according to the number of workers
"""
nrange = nmax - nmin
threads = []
for i in range(8):
start = int(nmin + i * nrange/8)
end = int(nmin + (i + 1) * nrange/8)
# Start the thread with the minimum and maximum split up to compute
# Parallel computation will not work here due to the GIL since this is a CPU-bound task
t = threading.Thread(target = find_primes_in, args = (start, end))
threads.append(t)
t.start()
# Don’t forget to wait for the threads to finish
for t in threads:
t.join()
#time_stuff
def processing_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
Split the minimum, maximum interval similar to the threading method above, but use processes this time
"""
nrange = nmax - nmin
processes = []
for i in range(8):
start = int(nmin + i * nrange/8)
end = int(nmin + (i + 1) * nrange/8)
p = multiprocessing.Process(target = find_primes_in, args = (start, end))
processes.append(p)
p.start()
for p in processes:
p.join()
#time_stuff
def thread_executor_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
Split the min max interval similar to the threading method, but use a thread pool executor this time.
This method is slightly faster than using pure threading as the pools manage threads more efficiently.
This method is still slow due to the GIL limitations since we are doing a CPU-bound task.
"""
nrange = nmax - nmin
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers = 8) as e:
for i in range(8):
start = int(nmin + i * nrange/8)
end = int(nmin + (i + 1) * nrange/8)
e.submit(find_primes_in, start, end)
#time_stuff
def process_executor_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
Split the min max interval similar to the threading method, but use the process pool executor.
This is the fastest method recorded so far as it manages process efficiently + overcomes GIL limitations.
RECOMMENDED METHOD FOR CPU-BOUND TASKS
"""
nrange = nmax - nmin
with ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers = 8) as e:
for i in range(8):
start = int(nmin + i * nrange/8)
end = int(nmin + (i + 1) * nrange/8)
e.submit(find_primes_in, start, end)
def main():
nmin = int(1e7)
nmax = int(1.05e7)
print("Sequential Prime Finder Starting")
sequential_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
print("Threading Prime Finder Starting")
threading_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
print("Processing Prime Finder Starting")
processing_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
print("Thread Executor Prime Finder Starting")
thread_executor_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
print("Process Executor Finder Starting")
process_executor_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Here are the results on my Mac OS X four-core machine
Sequential Prime Finder Starting
9.708213827005238 seconds
Threading Prime Finder Starting
9.81836523200036 seconds
Processing Prime Finder Starting
3.2467174359990167 seconds
Thread Executor Prime Finder Starting
10.228896902000997 seconds
Process Executor Finder Starting
2.656402041000547 seconds
Using the blazing new concurrent.futures module
def sqr(val):
import time
time.sleep(0.1)
return val * val
def process_result(result):
print(result)
def process_these_asap(tasks):
import concurrent.futures
with concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor() as executor:
futures = []
for task in tasks:
futures.append(executor.submit(sqr, task))
for future in concurrent.futures.as_completed(futures):
process_result(future.result())
# Or instead of all this just do:
# results = executor.map(sqr, tasks)
# list(map(process_result, results))
def main():
tasks = list(range(10))
print('Processing {} tasks'.format(len(tasks)))
process_these_asap(tasks)
print('Done')
return 0
if __name__ == '__main__':
import sys
sys.exit(main())
The executor approach might seem familiar to all those who have gotten their hands dirty with Java before.
Also on a side note: To keep the universe sane, don't forget to close your pools/executors if you don't use with context (which is so awesome that it does it for you)
For me, the perfect example for threading is monitoring asynchronous events. Look at this code.
# thread_test.py
import threading
import time
class Monitor(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self, mon):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.mon = mon
def run(self):
while True:
if self.mon[0] == 2:
print "Mon = 2"
self.mon[0] = 3;
You can play with this code by opening an IPython session and doing something like:
>>> from thread_test import Monitor
>>> a = [0]
>>> mon = Monitor(a)
>>> mon.start()
>>> a[0] = 2
Mon = 2
>>>a[0] = 2
Mon = 2
Wait a few minutes
>>> a[0] = 2
Mon = 2
Most documentation and tutorials use Python's Threading and Queue module, and they could seem overwhelming for beginners.
Perhaps consider the concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor module of Python 3.
Combined with with clause and list comprehension it could be a real charm.
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
def get_url(url):
# Your actual program here. Using threading.Lock() if necessary
return ""
# List of URLs to fetch
urls = ["url1", "url2"]
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers = 5) as executor:
# Create threads
futures = {executor.submit(get_url, url) for url in urls}
# as_completed() gives you the threads once finished
for f in as_completed(futures):
# Get the results
rs = f.result()
With borrowing from this post we know about choosing between the multithreading, multiprocessing, and async/asyncio and their usage.
Python 3 has a new built-in library in order to make concurrency and parallelism — concurrent.futures
So I'll demonstrate through an experiment to run four tasks (i.e. .sleep() method) by Threading-Pool:
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
from time import sleep, time
def concurrent(max_worker):
futures = []
tic = time()
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=max_worker) as executor:
futures.append(executor.submit(sleep, 2)) # Two seconds sleep
futures.append(executor.submit(sleep, 1))
futures.append(executor.submit(sleep, 7))
futures.append(executor.submit(sleep, 3))
for future in as_completed(futures):
if future.result() is not None:
print(future.result())
print(f'Total elapsed time by {max_worker} workers:', time()-tic)
concurrent(5)
concurrent(4)
concurrent(3)
concurrent(2)
concurrent(1)
Output:
Total elapsed time by 5 workers: 7.007831811904907
Total elapsed time by 4 workers: 7.007944107055664
Total elapsed time by 3 workers: 7.003149509429932
Total elapsed time by 2 workers: 8.004627466201782
Total elapsed time by 1 workers: 13.013478994369507
[NOTE]:
As you can see in the above results, the best case was 3 workers for those four tasks.
If you have a process task instead of I/O bound or blocking (multiprocessing instead of threading) you can change the ThreadPoolExecutor to ProcessPoolExecutor.
I would like to contribute with a simple example and the explanations I've found useful when I had to tackle this problem myself.
In this answer you will find some information about Python's GIL (global interpreter lock) and a simple day-to-day example written using multiprocessing.dummy plus some simple benchmarks.
Global Interpreter Lock (GIL)
Python doesn't allow multi-threading in the truest sense of the word. It has a multi-threading package, but if you want to multi-thread to speed your code up, then it's usually not a good idea to use it.
Python has a construct called the global interpreter lock (GIL).
The GIL makes sure that only one of your 'threads' can execute at any one time. A thread acquires the GIL, does a little work, then passes the GIL onto the next thread.
This happens very quickly so to the human eye it may seem like your threads are executing in parallel, but they are really just taking turns using the same CPU core.
All this GIL passing adds overhead to execution. This means that if you want to make your code run faster then using the threading
package often isn't a good idea.
There are reasons to use Python's threading package. If you want to run some things simultaneously, and efficiency is not a concern,
then it's totally fine and convenient. Or if you are running code that needs to wait for something (like some I/O) then it could make a lot of sense. But the threading library won't let you use extra CPU cores.
Multi-threading can be outsourced to the operating system (by doing multi-processing), and some external application that calls your Python code (for example, Spark or Hadoop), or some code that your Python code calls (for example: you could have your Python code call a C function that does the expensive multi-threaded stuff).
Why This Matters
Because lots of people spend a lot of time trying to find bottlenecks in their fancy Python multi-threaded code before they learn what the GIL is.
Once this information is clear, here's my code:
#!/bin/python
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool
from subprocess import PIPE,Popen
import time
import os
# In the variable pool_size we define the "parallelness".
# For CPU-bound tasks, it doesn't make sense to create more Pool processes
# than you have cores to run them on.
#
# On the other hand, if you are using I/O-bound tasks, it may make sense
# to create a quite a few more Pool processes than cores, since the processes
# will probably spend most their time blocked (waiting for I/O to complete).
pool_size = 8
def do_ping(ip):
if os.name == 'nt':
print ("Using Windows Ping to " + ip)
proc = Popen(['ping', ip], stdout=PIPE)
return proc.communicate()[0]
else:
print ("Using Linux / Unix Ping to " + ip)
proc = Popen(['ping', ip, '-c', '4'], stdout=PIPE)
return proc.communicate()[0]
os.system('cls' if os.name=='nt' else 'clear')
print ("Running using threads\n")
start_time = time.time()
pool = Pool(pool_size)
website_names = ["www.google.com","www.facebook.com","www.pinterest.com","www.microsoft.com"]
result = {}
for website_name in website_names:
result[website_name] = pool.apply_async(do_ping, args=(website_name,))
pool.close()
pool.join()
print ("\n--- Execution took {} seconds ---".format((time.time() - start_time)))
# Now we do the same without threading, just to compare time
print ("\nRunning NOT using threads\n")
start_time = time.time()
for website_name in website_names:
do_ping(website_name)
print ("\n--- Execution took {} seconds ---".format((time.time() - start_time)))
# Here's one way to print the final output from the threads
output = {}
for key, value in result.items():
output[key] = value.get()
print ("\nOutput aggregated in a Dictionary:")
print (output)
print ("\n")
print ("\nPretty printed output: ")
for key, value in output.items():
print (key + "\n")
print (value)
Here is the very simple example of CSV import using threading. (Library inclusion may differ for different purpose.)
Helper Functions:
from threading import Thread
from project import app
import csv
def import_handler(csv_file_name):
thr = Thread(target=dump_async_csv_data, args=[csv_file_name])
thr.start()
def dump_async_csv_data(csv_file_name):
with app.app_context():
with open(csv_file_name) as File:
reader = csv.DictReader(File)
for row in reader:
# DB operation/query
Driver Function:
import_handler(csv_file_name)
Here is multi threading with a simple example which will be helpful. You can run it and understand easily how multi threading is working in Python. I used a lock for preventing access to other threads until the previous threads finished their work. By the use of this line of code,
tLock = threading.BoundedSemaphore(value=4)
you can allow a number of processes at a time and keep hold to the rest of the threads which will run later or after finished previous processes.
import threading
import time
#tLock = threading.Lock()
tLock = threading.BoundedSemaphore(value=4)
def timer(name, delay, repeat):
print "\r\nTimer: ", name, " Started"
tLock.acquire()
print "\r\n", name, " has the acquired the lock"
while repeat > 0:
time.sleep(delay)
print "\r\n", name, ": ", str(time.ctime(time.time()))
repeat -= 1
print "\r\n", name, " is releaseing the lock"
tLock.release()
print "\r\nTimer: ", name, " Completed"
def Main():
t1 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer1", 2, 5))
t2 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer2", 3, 5))
t3 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer3", 4, 5))
t4 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer4", 5, 5))
t5 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer5", 0.1, 5))
t1.start()
t2.start()
t3.start()
t4.start()
t5.start()
print "\r\nMain Complete"
if __name__ == "__main__":
Main()
None of the previous solutions actually used multiple cores on my GNU/Linux server (where I don't have administrator rights). They just ran on a single core.
I used the lower level os.fork interface to spawn multiple processes. This is the code that worked for me:
from os import fork
values = ['different', 'values', 'for', 'threads']
for i in range(len(values)):
p = fork()
if p == 0:
my_function(values[i])
break
As a python3 version of the second anwser:
import queue as Queue
import threading
import urllib.request
# Called by each thread
def get_url(q, url):
q.put(urllib.request.urlopen(url).read())
theurls = ["http://google.com", "http://yahoo.com", "http://www.python.org","https://wiki.python.org/moin/"]
q = Queue.Queue()
def thread_func():
for u in theurls:
t = threading.Thread(target=get_url, args = (q,u))
t.daemon = True
t.start()
s = q.get()
def non_thread_func():
for u in theurls:
get_url(q,u)
s = q.get()
And you can test it:
start = time.time()
thread_func()
end = time.time()
print(end - start)
start = time.time()
non_thread_func()
end = time.time()
print(end - start)
non_thread_func() should cost 4 times the time spent than thread_func()
import threading
import requests
def send():
r = requests.get('https://www.stackoverlow.com')
thread = []
t = threading.Thread(target=send())
thread.append(t)
t.start()
It's very easy to understand. Here are the two simple ways to do threading.
import time
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
import threading
def a(a=1, b=2):
print(a)
time.sleep(5)
print(b)
return a+b
def b(**kwargs):
if "a" in kwargs:
print("am b")
else:
print("nothing")
to_do=[]
executor = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=4)
ex1=executor.submit(a)
to_do.append(ex1)
ex2=executor.submit(b, **{"a":1})
to_do.append(ex2)
for future in as_completed(to_do):
print("Future {} and Future Return is {}\n".format(future, future.result()))
print("threading")
to_do=[]
to_do.append(threading.Thread(target=a))
to_do.append(threading.Thread(target=b, kwargs={"a":1}))
for threads in to_do:
threads.start()
for threads in to_do:
threads.join()
This code below can run 10 threads concurrently printing the numbers from 0 to 99:
from threading import Thread
def test():
for i in range(0, 100):
print(i)
thread_list = []
for _ in range(0, 10):
thread = Thread(target=test)
thread_list.append(thread)
for thread in thread_list:
thread.start()
for thread in thread_list:
thread.join()
And, this code below is the shorthand for loop version of the above code running 10 threads concurrently printing the numbers from 0 to 99:
from threading import Thread
def test():
[print(i) for i in range(0, 100)]
thread_list = [Thread(target=test) for _ in range(0, 10)]
[thread.start() for thread in thread_list]
[thread.join() for thread in thread_list]
This is the result below:
...
99
83
97
84
98
99
85
86
87
88
...
The easiest way of using threading/multiprocessing is to use more high level libraries like autothread.
import autothread
from time import sleep as heavyworkload
#autothread.multithreaded() # <-- This is all you need to add
def example(x: int, y: int):
heavyworkload(1)
return x*y
Now, you can feed your functions lists of ints. Autothread will handle everything for you and just give you the results computed in parallel.
result = example([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], 10)
I writing an app based on the asyncio framework. This app interacts with an API that has a rate limit(maximum 2 calls per sec). So I moved methods which interact with an API to the celery for using it as rate limiter. But it is looks like as an overhead.
There are any ways to create a new asyncio event loop(or something else) that guarantees execution of a coroutins not more then n per second?
The accepted answer is accurate. Note however that, usually, one would want to get as close to 2QPS as possible. This method doesn't offer any parallelisation, which could be a problem if make_io_call() takes longer than a second to execute. A better solution would be to pass a semaphore to make_io_call, that it can use to know whether it can start executing or not.
Here is such an implementation: RateLimitingSemaphore will only release its context once the rate limit drops below the requirement.
import asyncio
from collections import deque
from datetime import datetime
class RateLimitingSemaphore:
def __init__(self, qps_limit, loop=None):
self.loop = loop or asyncio.get_event_loop()
self.qps_limit = qps_limit
# The number of calls that are queued up, waiting for their turn.
self.queued_calls = 0
# The times of the last N executions, where N=qps_limit - this should allow us to calculate the QPS within the
# last ~ second. Note that this also allows us to schedule the first N executions immediately.
self.call_times = deque()
async def __aenter__(self):
self.queued_calls += 1
while True:
cur_rate = 0
if len(self.call_times) == self.qps_limit:
cur_rate = len(self.call_times) / (self.loop.time() - self.call_times[0])
if cur_rate < self.qps_limit:
break
interval = 1. / self.qps_limit
elapsed_time = self.loop.time() - self.call_times[-1]
await asyncio.sleep(self.queued_calls * interval - elapsed_time)
self.queued_calls -= 1
if len(self.call_times) == self.qps_limit:
self.call_times.popleft()
self.call_times.append(self.loop.time())
async def __aexit__(self, exc_type, exc, tb):
pass
async def test(qps):
executions = 0
async def io_operation(semaphore):
async with semaphore:
nonlocal executions
executions += 1
semaphore = RateLimitingSemaphore(qps)
start = datetime.now()
await asyncio.wait([io_operation(semaphore) for i in range(5*qps)])
dt = (datetime.now() - start).total_seconds()
print('Desired QPS:', qps, 'Achieved QPS:', executions / dt)
if __name__ == "__main__":
asyncio.get_event_loop().run_until_complete(test(100))
asyncio.get_event_loop().close()
Will print Desired QPS: 100 Achieved QPS: 99.82723898022084
I believe you are able to write a cycle like this:
while True:
t0 = loop.time()
await make_io_call()
dt = loop.time() - t0
if dt < 0.5:
await asyncio.sleep(0.5 - dt, loop=loop)
I've started programming in Python a few weeks ago and was trying to use Semaphores to synchronize two simple threads, for learning purposes. Here is what I've got:
import threading
sem = threading.Semaphore()
def fun1():
while True:
sem.acquire()
print(1)
sem.release()
def fun2():
while True:
sem.acquire()
print(2)
sem.release()
t = threading.Thread(target = fun1)
t.start()
t2 = threading.Thread(target = fun2)
t2.start()
But it keeps printing just 1's. How can I intercale the prints?
It is working fine, its just that its printing too fast for you to see . Try putting a time.sleep() in both functions (a small amount) to sleep the thread for that much amount of time, to actually be able to see both 1 as well as 2.
Example -
import threading
import time
sem = threading.Semaphore()
def fun1():
while True:
sem.acquire()
print(1)
sem.release()
time.sleep(0.25)
def fun2():
while True:
sem.acquire()
print(2)
sem.release()
time.sleep(0.25)
t = threading.Thread(target = fun1)
t.start()
t2 = threading.Thread(target = fun2)
t2.start()
Also, you can use Lock/mutex method as follows:
import threading
import time
mutex = threading.Lock() # is equal to threading.Semaphore(1)
def fun1():
while True:
mutex.acquire()
print(1)
mutex.release()
time.sleep(.5)
def fun2():
while True:
mutex.acquire()
print(2)
mutex.release()
time.sleep(.5)
t1 = threading.Thread(target=fun1).start()
t2 = threading.Thread(target=fun2).start()
Simpler style using "with":
import threading
import time
mutex = threading.Lock() # is equal to threading.Semaphore(1)
def fun1():
while True:
with mutex:
print(1)
time.sleep(.5)
def fun2():
while True:
with mutex:
print(2)
time.sleep(.5)
t1 = threading.Thread(target=fun1).start()
t2 = threading.Thread(target=fun2).start()
[NOTE]:
The difference between mutex, semaphore, and lock
In fact, I want to find asyncio.Semaphores, not threading.Semaphore,
and I believe someone may want it too.
So, I decided to share the asyncio.Semaphores, hope you don't mind.
from asyncio import (
Task,
Semaphore,
)
import asyncio
from typing import List
async def shopping(sem: Semaphore):
while True:
async with sem:
print(shopping.__name__)
await asyncio.sleep(0.25) # Transfer control to the loop, and it will assign another job (is idle) to run.
async def coding(sem: Semaphore):
while True:
async with sem:
print(coding.__name__)
await asyncio.sleep(0.25)
async def main():
sem = Semaphore(value=1)
list_task: List[Task] = [asyncio.create_task(_coroutine(sem)) for _coroutine in (shopping, coding)]
"""
# Normally, we will wait until all the task has done, but that is impossible in your case.
for task in list_task:
await task
"""
await asyncio.sleep(2) # So, I let the main loop wait for 2 seconds, then close the program.
asyncio.run(main())
output
shopping
coding
shopping
coding
shopping
coding
shopping
coding
shopping
coding
shopping
coding
shopping
coding
shopping
coding
16*0.25 = 2
I used this code to demonstrate how 1 thread can use a Semaphore and the other thread will wait (non-blocking) until the Sempahore is available.
This was written using Python3.6; Not tested on any other version.
This will only work is the synchronization is being done from the same thread, IPC from separate processes will fail using this mechanism.
import threading
from time import sleep
sem = threading.Semaphore()
def fun1():
print("fun1 starting")
sem.acquire()
for loop in range(1,5):
print("Fun1 Working {}".format(loop))
sleep(1)
sem.release()
print("fun1 finished")
def fun2():
print("fun2 starting")
while not sem.acquire(blocking=False):
print("Fun2 No Semaphore available")
sleep(1)
else:
print("Got Semphore")
for loop in range(1, 5):
print("Fun2 Working {}".format(loop))
sleep(1)
sem.release()
t1 = threading.Thread(target = fun1)
t2 = threading.Thread(target = fun2)
t1.start()
t2.start()
t1.join()
t2.join()
print("All Threads done Exiting")
When I run this - I get the following output.
fun1 starting
Fun1 Working 1
fun2 starting
Fun2 No Semaphore available
Fun1 Working 2
Fun2 No Semaphore available
Fun1 Working 3
Fun2 No Semaphore available
Fun1 Working 4
Fun2 No Semaphore available
fun1 finished
Got Semphore
Fun2 Working 1
Fun2 Working 2
Fun2 Working 3
Fun2 Working 4
All Threads done Exiting
Existing answers are wastefully sleeping
I noticed that almost all answers use some form of time.sleep or asyncio.sleep, which blocks the thread. This should be avoided in real software, because blocking your thread for 0.25, 0.5 or 1 second is unnecessary/wasteful - you could be doing more processing, especially if your application is IO bound - it already blocks when it does IO AND you are introducing arbitrary delays (latency) in your processing time. If all your threads are sleeping, your app isn't doing anything. Also, these variables are quite arbitrary, which is why each answer has a different value they sleep (block the thread for).
The answers are using it as a way to get Python's bytecode interpreter to pre-empt the thread after each print line, so that it alternates deterministically between running the 2 threads. By default, the interpreter pre-empts a thread every 5ms (sys.getswitchinterval() returns 0.005), and remember that these threads never run in parallel, because of Python's GIL
Solution to problem
How can I intercale the prints?
So my answer would be, you do not want to use semaphores to print (or process) something in a certain order reliably, because you cannot rely on thread prioritization in Python. See Controlling scheduling priority of python threads? for more. time.sleep(arbitrarilyLargeEnoughNumber) doesn't really work when you have more than 2 concurrent pieces of code, since you don't know which one will run next - see * below. If the order matters, use a queue, and worker threads:
from threading import Thread
import queue
q = queue.Queue()
def enqueue():
while True:
q.put(1)
q.put(2)
def reader():
while True:
value = q.get()
print(value)
enqueuer_thread = Thread(target = enqueue)
reader_thread_1 = Thread(target = reader)
reader_thread_2 = Thread(target = reader)
reader_thread_3 = Thread(target = reader)
enqueuer_thread.start()
reader_thread_1.start()
reader_thread_2.start()
reader_thread_3.start()
...
Unfortunately in this problem, you don't get to use Semaphore.
*An extra check for you
If you try a modification of the top voted answer but with an extra function/thread to print(3), you'll get:
1
2
3
1
3
2
1
3
...
Within a few prints, the ordering is broken - it's 1-3-2.
You need to use 2 semaphores to do what you want to do, and you need to initialize them at 0.
import threading
SEM_FUN1 = threading.Semaphore(0)
SEM_FUN2 = threading.Semaphore(0)
def fun1() -> None:
for _ in range(5):
SEM_FUN1.acquire()
print(1)
SEM_FUN2.release()
def fun2() -> None:
for _ in range(5):
SEM_FUN2.acquire()
print(2)
SEM_FUN1.release()
threading.Thread(target=fun1).start()
threading.Thread(target=fun2).start()
SEM_FUN1.release() # Trigger fun1
Output:
I want to do a infinite loop function.
Here is my code
def do_request():
# my code here
print(result)
while True:
do_request()
When use while True to do this, it's a little slow, so I want to use a thread pool to concurrently execute the function do_request(). How to do this ?
Just like use ab (Apache Bench) to test HTTP server.
Finally, I've solved this problem. I use a variable to limit the thread number.
Here is my final code, solved my problem.
import threading
import time
thread_num = 0
lock = threading.Lock()
def do_request():
global thread_num
# -------------
# my code here
# -------------
with lock:
thread_num -= 1
while True:
if thread_num <= 50:
with lock:
thread_num += 1
t = threading.Thread(target=do_request)
t.start()
else:
time.sleep(0.01)
Thanks for all replies.
You can use threading in Python to implement this.
Can be something similar to this (when using two extra threads only):
import threading
# define threads
task1 = threading.Thread(target = do_request)
task2 = threading.Thread(target = do_request)
# start both threads
task1.start()
task2.start()
# wait for threads to complete
task1.join()
task2.join()
Basically, you start as many threads as you need (make sure you don't get too many, so your system can handle it), then you .join() them to wait for tasks to complete.
Or you can get fancier with multiprocessing Python module.
Try the following code:
import multiprocessing as mp
import time
def do_request():
while(True):
print('I\'m making requests')
time.sleep(0.5)
p = mp.Process(target=do_request)
p.start()
for ii in range(10):
print 'I\'m also doing other things though'
time.sleep(0.7)
print 'Now it is time to kill the service thread'
p.terminate()
The main thread stars a service thread that does the request and goes on until it has to, and then it finishes up the service thread.
Maybe you can use the concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor
import time
def wait_on_b(hello):
time.sleep(1)
print(hello) # b will never complete because it is waiting on a.
return 5
def wait_on_a():
time.sleep(1)
print(a.result()) # a will never complete because it is waiting on b.
return 6
executor = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=2)
a = executor.submit(wait_on_b, 3)
b = executor.submit(wait_on_a)
How about this?
from threading import Thread, Event
class WorkerThread(Thread):
def __init__(self, logger, func):
Thread.__init__(self)
self.stop_event = Event()
self.logger = logger
self.func = func
def run(self):
self.logger("Going to start the infinite loop...")
#Your code
self.func()
concur_task = WorkerThread(logger, func = do_request)
concur_task.start()
To end this thread...
concur_task.stop_event.set()
concur_task.join(10) #or any value you like
I am trying to understand threading in Python. I've looked at the documentation and examples, but quite frankly, many examples are overly sophisticated and I'm having trouble understanding them.
How do you clearly show tasks being divided for multi-threading?
Since this question was asked in 2010, there has been real simplification in how to do simple multithreading with Python with map and pool.
The code below comes from an article/blog post that you should definitely check out (no affiliation) - Parallelism in one line: A Better Model for Day to Day Threading Tasks. I'll summarize below - it ends up being just a few lines of code:
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
pool = ThreadPool(4)
results = pool.map(my_function, my_array)
Which is the multithreaded version of:
results = []
for item in my_array:
results.append(my_function(item))
Description
Map is a cool little function, and the key to easily injecting parallelism into your Python code. For those unfamiliar, map is something lifted from functional languages like Lisp. It is a function which maps another function over a sequence.
Map handles the iteration over the sequence for us, applies the function, and stores all of the results in a handy list at the end.
Implementation
Parallel versions of the map function are provided by two libraries:multiprocessing, and also its little known, but equally fantastic step child:multiprocessing.dummy.
multiprocessing.dummy is exactly the same as multiprocessing module, but uses threads instead (an important distinction - use multiple processes for CPU-intensive tasks; threads for (and during) I/O):
multiprocessing.dummy replicates the API of multiprocessing, but is no more than a wrapper around the threading module.
import urllib2
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
urls = [
'http://www.python.org',
'http://www.python.org/about/',
'http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2003/04/17/metaclasses.html',
'http://www.python.org/doc/',
'http://www.python.org/download/',
'http://www.python.org/getit/',
'http://www.python.org/community/',
'https://wiki.python.org/moin/',
]
# Make the Pool of workers
pool = ThreadPool(4)
# Open the URLs in their own threads
# and return the results
results = pool.map(urllib2.urlopen, urls)
# Close the pool and wait for the work to finish
pool.close()
pool.join()
And the timing results:
Single thread: 14.4 seconds
4 Pool: 3.1 seconds
8 Pool: 1.4 seconds
13 Pool: 1.3 seconds
Passing multiple arguments (works like this only in Python 3.3 and later):
To pass multiple arrays:
results = pool.starmap(function, zip(list_a, list_b))
Or to pass a constant and an array:
results = pool.starmap(function, zip(itertools.repeat(constant), list_a))
If you are using an earlier version of Python, you can pass multiple arguments via this workaround).
(Thanks to user136036 for the helpful comment.)
Here's a simple example: you need to try a few alternative URLs and return the contents of the first one to respond.
import Queue
import threading
import urllib2
# Called by each thread
def get_url(q, url):
q.put(urllib2.urlopen(url).read())
theurls = ["http://google.com", "http://yahoo.com"]
q = Queue.Queue()
for u in theurls:
t = threading.Thread(target=get_url, args = (q,u))
t.daemon = True
t.start()
s = q.get()
print s
This is a case where threading is used as a simple optimization: each subthread is waiting for a URL to resolve and respond, to put its contents on the queue; each thread is a daemon (won't keep the process up if the main thread ends -- that's more common than not); the main thread starts all subthreads, does a get on the queue to wait until one of them has done a put, then emits the results and terminates (which takes down any subthreads that might still be running, since they're daemon threads).
Proper use of threads in Python is invariably connected to I/O operations (since CPython doesn't use multiple cores to run CPU-bound tasks anyway, the only reason for threading is not blocking the process while there's a wait for some I/O). Queues are almost invariably the best way to farm out work to threads and/or collect the work's results, by the way, and they're intrinsically threadsafe, so they save you from worrying about locks, conditions, events, semaphores, and other inter-thread coordination/communication concepts.
NOTE: For actual parallelization in Python, you should use the multiprocessing module to fork multiple processes that execute in parallel (due to the global interpreter lock, Python threads provide interleaving, but they are in fact executed serially, not in parallel, and are only useful when interleaving I/O operations).
However, if you are merely looking for interleaving (or are doing I/O operations that can be parallelized despite the global interpreter lock), then the threading module is the place to start. As a really simple example, let's consider the problem of summing a large range by summing subranges in parallel:
import threading
class SummingThread(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self,low,high):
super(SummingThread, self).__init__()
self.low=low
self.high=high
self.total=0
def run(self):
for i in range(self.low,self.high):
self.total+=i
thread1 = SummingThread(0,500000)
thread2 = SummingThread(500000,1000000)
thread1.start() # This actually causes the thread to run
thread2.start()
thread1.join() # This waits until the thread has completed
thread2.join()
# At this point, both threads have completed
result = thread1.total + thread2.total
print result
Note that the above is a very stupid example, as it does absolutely no I/O and will be executed serially albeit interleaved (with the added overhead of context switching) in CPython due to the global interpreter lock.
Like others mentioned, CPython can use threads only for I/O waits due to GIL.
If you want to benefit from multiple cores for CPU-bound tasks, use multiprocessing:
from multiprocessing import Process
def f(name):
print 'hello', name
if __name__ == '__main__':
p = Process(target=f, args=('bob',))
p.start()
p.join()
Just a note: A queue is not required for threading.
This is the simplest example I could imagine that shows 10 processes running concurrently.
import threading
from random import randint
from time import sleep
def print_number(number):
# Sleeps a random 1 to 10 seconds
rand_int_var = randint(1, 10)
sleep(rand_int_var)
print "Thread " + str(number) + " slept for " + str(rand_int_var) + " seconds"
thread_list = []
for i in range(1, 10):
# Instantiates the thread
# (i) does not make a sequence, so (i,)
t = threading.Thread(target=print_number, args=(i,))
# Sticks the thread in a list so that it remains accessible
thread_list.append(t)
# Starts threads
for thread in thread_list:
thread.start()
# This blocks the calling thread until the thread whose join() method is called is terminated.
# From http://docs.python.org/2/library/threading.html#thread-objects
for thread in thread_list:
thread.join()
# Demonstrates that the main process waited for threads to complete
print "Done"
The answer from Alex Martelli helped me. However, here is a modified version that I thought was more useful (at least to me).
Updated: works in both Python 2 and Python 3
try:
# For Python 3
import queue
from urllib.request import urlopen
except:
# For Python 2
import Queue as queue
from urllib2 import urlopen
import threading
worker_data = ['http://google.com', 'http://yahoo.com', 'http://bing.com']
# Load up a queue with your data. This will handle locking
q = queue.Queue()
for url in worker_data:
q.put(url)
# Define a worker function
def worker(url_queue):
queue_full = True
while queue_full:
try:
# Get your data off the queue, and do some work
url = url_queue.get(False)
data = urlopen(url).read()
print(len(data))
except queue.Empty:
queue_full = False
# Create as many threads as you want
thread_count = 5
for i in range(thread_count):
t = threading.Thread(target=worker, args = (q,))
t.start()
Given a function, f, thread it like this:
import threading
threading.Thread(target=f).start()
To pass arguments to f
threading.Thread(target=f, args=(a,b,c)).start()
I found this very useful: create as many threads as cores and let them execute a (large) number of tasks (in this case, calling a shell program):
import Queue
import threading
import multiprocessing
import subprocess
q = Queue.Queue()
for i in range(30): # Put 30 tasks in the queue
q.put(i)
def worker():
while True:
item = q.get()
# Execute a task: call a shell program and wait until it completes
subprocess.call("echo " + str(item), shell=True)
q.task_done()
cpus = multiprocessing.cpu_count() # Detect number of cores
print("Creating %d threads" % cpus)
for i in range(cpus):
t = threading.Thread(target=worker)
t.daemon = True
t.start()
q.join() # Block until all tasks are done
Python 3 has the facility of launching parallel tasks. This makes our work easier.
It has thread pooling and process pooling.
The following gives an insight:
ThreadPoolExecutor Example (source)
import concurrent.futures
import urllib.request
URLS = ['http://www.foxnews.com/',
'http://www.cnn.com/',
'http://europe.wsj.com/',
'http://www.bbc.co.uk/',
'http://some-made-up-domain.com/']
# Retrieve a single page and report the URL and contents
def load_url(url, timeout):
with urllib.request.urlopen(url, timeout=timeout) as conn:
return conn.read()
# We can use a with statement to ensure threads are cleaned up promptly
with concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5) as executor:
# Start the load operations and mark each future with its URL
future_to_url = {executor.submit(load_url, url, 60): url for url in URLS}
for future in concurrent.futures.as_completed(future_to_url):
url = future_to_url[future]
try:
data = future.result()
except Exception as exc:
print('%r generated an exception: %s' % (url, exc))
else:
print('%r page is %d bytes' % (url, len(data)))
ProcessPoolExecutor (source)
import concurrent.futures
import math
PRIMES = [
112272535095293,
112582705942171,
112272535095293,
115280095190773,
115797848077099,
1099726899285419]
def is_prime(n):
if n % 2 == 0:
return False
sqrt_n = int(math.floor(math.sqrt(n)))
for i in range(3, sqrt_n + 1, 2):
if n % i == 0:
return False
return True
def main():
with concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor() as executor:
for number, prime in zip(PRIMES, executor.map(is_prime, PRIMES)):
print('%d is prime: %s' % (number, prime))
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
I saw a lot of examples here where no real work was being performed, and they were mostly CPU-bound. Here is an example of a CPU-bound task that computes all prime numbers between 10 million and 10.05 million. I have used all four methods here:
import math
import timeit
import threading
import multiprocessing
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, ProcessPoolExecutor
def time_stuff(fn):
"""
Measure time of execution of a function
"""
def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
t0 = timeit.default_timer()
fn(*args, **kwargs)
t1 = timeit.default_timer()
print("{} seconds".format(t1 - t0))
return wrapper
def find_primes_in(nmin, nmax):
"""
Compute a list of prime numbers between the given minimum and maximum arguments
"""
primes = []
# Loop from minimum to maximum
for current in range(nmin, nmax + 1):
# Take the square root of the current number
sqrt_n = int(math.sqrt(current))
found = False
# Check if the any number from 2 to the square root + 1 divides the current numnber under consideration
for number in range(2, sqrt_n + 1):
# If divisible we have found a factor, hence this is not a prime number, lets move to the next one
if current % number == 0:
found = True
break
# If not divisible, add this number to the list of primes that we have found so far
if not found:
primes.append(current)
# I am merely printing the length of the array containing all the primes, but feel free to do what you want
print(len(primes))
#time_stuff
def sequential_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
Use the main process and main thread to compute everything in this case
"""
find_primes_in(nmin, nmax)
#time_stuff
def threading_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
If the minimum is 1000 and the maximum is 2000 and we have four workers,
1000 - 1250 to worker 1
1250 - 1500 to worker 2
1500 - 1750 to worker 3
1750 - 2000 to worker 4
so let’s split the minimum and maximum values according to the number of workers
"""
nrange = nmax - nmin
threads = []
for i in range(8):
start = int(nmin + i * nrange/8)
end = int(nmin + (i + 1) * nrange/8)
# Start the thread with the minimum and maximum split up to compute
# Parallel computation will not work here due to the GIL since this is a CPU-bound task
t = threading.Thread(target = find_primes_in, args = (start, end))
threads.append(t)
t.start()
# Don’t forget to wait for the threads to finish
for t in threads:
t.join()
#time_stuff
def processing_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
Split the minimum, maximum interval similar to the threading method above, but use processes this time
"""
nrange = nmax - nmin
processes = []
for i in range(8):
start = int(nmin + i * nrange/8)
end = int(nmin + (i + 1) * nrange/8)
p = multiprocessing.Process(target = find_primes_in, args = (start, end))
processes.append(p)
p.start()
for p in processes:
p.join()
#time_stuff
def thread_executor_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
Split the min max interval similar to the threading method, but use a thread pool executor this time.
This method is slightly faster than using pure threading as the pools manage threads more efficiently.
This method is still slow due to the GIL limitations since we are doing a CPU-bound task.
"""
nrange = nmax - nmin
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers = 8) as e:
for i in range(8):
start = int(nmin + i * nrange/8)
end = int(nmin + (i + 1) * nrange/8)
e.submit(find_primes_in, start, end)
#time_stuff
def process_executor_prime_finder(nmin, nmax):
"""
Split the min max interval similar to the threading method, but use the process pool executor.
This is the fastest method recorded so far as it manages process efficiently + overcomes GIL limitations.
RECOMMENDED METHOD FOR CPU-BOUND TASKS
"""
nrange = nmax - nmin
with ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers = 8) as e:
for i in range(8):
start = int(nmin + i * nrange/8)
end = int(nmin + (i + 1) * nrange/8)
e.submit(find_primes_in, start, end)
def main():
nmin = int(1e7)
nmax = int(1.05e7)
print("Sequential Prime Finder Starting")
sequential_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
print("Threading Prime Finder Starting")
threading_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
print("Processing Prime Finder Starting")
processing_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
print("Thread Executor Prime Finder Starting")
thread_executor_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
print("Process Executor Finder Starting")
process_executor_prime_finder(nmin, nmax)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Here are the results on my Mac OS X four-core machine
Sequential Prime Finder Starting
9.708213827005238 seconds
Threading Prime Finder Starting
9.81836523200036 seconds
Processing Prime Finder Starting
3.2467174359990167 seconds
Thread Executor Prime Finder Starting
10.228896902000997 seconds
Process Executor Finder Starting
2.656402041000547 seconds
Using the blazing new concurrent.futures module
def sqr(val):
import time
time.sleep(0.1)
return val * val
def process_result(result):
print(result)
def process_these_asap(tasks):
import concurrent.futures
with concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor() as executor:
futures = []
for task in tasks:
futures.append(executor.submit(sqr, task))
for future in concurrent.futures.as_completed(futures):
process_result(future.result())
# Or instead of all this just do:
# results = executor.map(sqr, tasks)
# list(map(process_result, results))
def main():
tasks = list(range(10))
print('Processing {} tasks'.format(len(tasks)))
process_these_asap(tasks)
print('Done')
return 0
if __name__ == '__main__':
import sys
sys.exit(main())
The executor approach might seem familiar to all those who have gotten their hands dirty with Java before.
Also on a side note: To keep the universe sane, don't forget to close your pools/executors if you don't use with context (which is so awesome that it does it for you)
For me, the perfect example for threading is monitoring asynchronous events. Look at this code.
# thread_test.py
import threading
import time
class Monitor(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self, mon):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.mon = mon
def run(self):
while True:
if self.mon[0] == 2:
print "Mon = 2"
self.mon[0] = 3;
You can play with this code by opening an IPython session and doing something like:
>>> from thread_test import Monitor
>>> a = [0]
>>> mon = Monitor(a)
>>> mon.start()
>>> a[0] = 2
Mon = 2
>>>a[0] = 2
Mon = 2
Wait a few minutes
>>> a[0] = 2
Mon = 2
Most documentation and tutorials use Python's Threading and Queue module, and they could seem overwhelming for beginners.
Perhaps consider the concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor module of Python 3.
Combined with with clause and list comprehension it could be a real charm.
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
def get_url(url):
# Your actual program here. Using threading.Lock() if necessary
return ""
# List of URLs to fetch
urls = ["url1", "url2"]
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers = 5) as executor:
# Create threads
futures = {executor.submit(get_url, url) for url in urls}
# as_completed() gives you the threads once finished
for f in as_completed(futures):
# Get the results
rs = f.result()
With borrowing from this post we know about choosing between the multithreading, multiprocessing, and async/asyncio and their usage.
Python 3 has a new built-in library in order to make concurrency and parallelism — concurrent.futures
So I'll demonstrate through an experiment to run four tasks (i.e. .sleep() method) by Threading-Pool:
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
from time import sleep, time
def concurrent(max_worker):
futures = []
tic = time()
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=max_worker) as executor:
futures.append(executor.submit(sleep, 2)) # Two seconds sleep
futures.append(executor.submit(sleep, 1))
futures.append(executor.submit(sleep, 7))
futures.append(executor.submit(sleep, 3))
for future in as_completed(futures):
if future.result() is not None:
print(future.result())
print(f'Total elapsed time by {max_worker} workers:', time()-tic)
concurrent(5)
concurrent(4)
concurrent(3)
concurrent(2)
concurrent(1)
Output:
Total elapsed time by 5 workers: 7.007831811904907
Total elapsed time by 4 workers: 7.007944107055664
Total elapsed time by 3 workers: 7.003149509429932
Total elapsed time by 2 workers: 8.004627466201782
Total elapsed time by 1 workers: 13.013478994369507
[NOTE]:
As you can see in the above results, the best case was 3 workers for those four tasks.
If you have a process task instead of I/O bound or blocking (multiprocessing instead of threading) you can change the ThreadPoolExecutor to ProcessPoolExecutor.
I would like to contribute with a simple example and the explanations I've found useful when I had to tackle this problem myself.
In this answer you will find some information about Python's GIL (global interpreter lock) and a simple day-to-day example written using multiprocessing.dummy plus some simple benchmarks.
Global Interpreter Lock (GIL)
Python doesn't allow multi-threading in the truest sense of the word. It has a multi-threading package, but if you want to multi-thread to speed your code up, then it's usually not a good idea to use it.
Python has a construct called the global interpreter lock (GIL).
The GIL makes sure that only one of your 'threads' can execute at any one time. A thread acquires the GIL, does a little work, then passes the GIL onto the next thread.
This happens very quickly so to the human eye it may seem like your threads are executing in parallel, but they are really just taking turns using the same CPU core.
All this GIL passing adds overhead to execution. This means that if you want to make your code run faster then using the threading
package often isn't a good idea.
There are reasons to use Python's threading package. If you want to run some things simultaneously, and efficiency is not a concern,
then it's totally fine and convenient. Or if you are running code that needs to wait for something (like some I/O) then it could make a lot of sense. But the threading library won't let you use extra CPU cores.
Multi-threading can be outsourced to the operating system (by doing multi-processing), and some external application that calls your Python code (for example, Spark or Hadoop), or some code that your Python code calls (for example: you could have your Python code call a C function that does the expensive multi-threaded stuff).
Why This Matters
Because lots of people spend a lot of time trying to find bottlenecks in their fancy Python multi-threaded code before they learn what the GIL is.
Once this information is clear, here's my code:
#!/bin/python
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool
from subprocess import PIPE,Popen
import time
import os
# In the variable pool_size we define the "parallelness".
# For CPU-bound tasks, it doesn't make sense to create more Pool processes
# than you have cores to run them on.
#
# On the other hand, if you are using I/O-bound tasks, it may make sense
# to create a quite a few more Pool processes than cores, since the processes
# will probably spend most their time blocked (waiting for I/O to complete).
pool_size = 8
def do_ping(ip):
if os.name == 'nt':
print ("Using Windows Ping to " + ip)
proc = Popen(['ping', ip], stdout=PIPE)
return proc.communicate()[0]
else:
print ("Using Linux / Unix Ping to " + ip)
proc = Popen(['ping', ip, '-c', '4'], stdout=PIPE)
return proc.communicate()[0]
os.system('cls' if os.name=='nt' else 'clear')
print ("Running using threads\n")
start_time = time.time()
pool = Pool(pool_size)
website_names = ["www.google.com","www.facebook.com","www.pinterest.com","www.microsoft.com"]
result = {}
for website_name in website_names:
result[website_name] = pool.apply_async(do_ping, args=(website_name,))
pool.close()
pool.join()
print ("\n--- Execution took {} seconds ---".format((time.time() - start_time)))
# Now we do the same without threading, just to compare time
print ("\nRunning NOT using threads\n")
start_time = time.time()
for website_name in website_names:
do_ping(website_name)
print ("\n--- Execution took {} seconds ---".format((time.time() - start_time)))
# Here's one way to print the final output from the threads
output = {}
for key, value in result.items():
output[key] = value.get()
print ("\nOutput aggregated in a Dictionary:")
print (output)
print ("\n")
print ("\nPretty printed output: ")
for key, value in output.items():
print (key + "\n")
print (value)
Here is the very simple example of CSV import using threading. (Library inclusion may differ for different purpose.)
Helper Functions:
from threading import Thread
from project import app
import csv
def import_handler(csv_file_name):
thr = Thread(target=dump_async_csv_data, args=[csv_file_name])
thr.start()
def dump_async_csv_data(csv_file_name):
with app.app_context():
with open(csv_file_name) as File:
reader = csv.DictReader(File)
for row in reader:
# DB operation/query
Driver Function:
import_handler(csv_file_name)
Here is multi threading with a simple example which will be helpful. You can run it and understand easily how multi threading is working in Python. I used a lock for preventing access to other threads until the previous threads finished their work. By the use of this line of code,
tLock = threading.BoundedSemaphore(value=4)
you can allow a number of processes at a time and keep hold to the rest of the threads which will run later or after finished previous processes.
import threading
import time
#tLock = threading.Lock()
tLock = threading.BoundedSemaphore(value=4)
def timer(name, delay, repeat):
print "\r\nTimer: ", name, " Started"
tLock.acquire()
print "\r\n", name, " has the acquired the lock"
while repeat > 0:
time.sleep(delay)
print "\r\n", name, ": ", str(time.ctime(time.time()))
repeat -= 1
print "\r\n", name, " is releaseing the lock"
tLock.release()
print "\r\nTimer: ", name, " Completed"
def Main():
t1 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer1", 2, 5))
t2 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer2", 3, 5))
t3 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer3", 4, 5))
t4 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer4", 5, 5))
t5 = threading.Thread(target=timer, args=("Timer5", 0.1, 5))
t1.start()
t2.start()
t3.start()
t4.start()
t5.start()
print "\r\nMain Complete"
if __name__ == "__main__":
Main()
None of the previous solutions actually used multiple cores on my GNU/Linux server (where I don't have administrator rights). They just ran on a single core.
I used the lower level os.fork interface to spawn multiple processes. This is the code that worked for me:
from os import fork
values = ['different', 'values', 'for', 'threads']
for i in range(len(values)):
p = fork()
if p == 0:
my_function(values[i])
break
As a python3 version of the second anwser:
import queue as Queue
import threading
import urllib.request
# Called by each thread
def get_url(q, url):
q.put(urllib.request.urlopen(url).read())
theurls = ["http://google.com", "http://yahoo.com", "http://www.python.org","https://wiki.python.org/moin/"]
q = Queue.Queue()
def thread_func():
for u in theurls:
t = threading.Thread(target=get_url, args = (q,u))
t.daemon = True
t.start()
s = q.get()
def non_thread_func():
for u in theurls:
get_url(q,u)
s = q.get()
And you can test it:
start = time.time()
thread_func()
end = time.time()
print(end - start)
start = time.time()
non_thread_func()
end = time.time()
print(end - start)
non_thread_func() should cost 4 times the time spent than thread_func()
import threading
import requests
def send():
r = requests.get('https://www.stackoverlow.com')
thread = []
t = threading.Thread(target=send())
thread.append(t)
t.start()
It's very easy to understand. Here are the two simple ways to do threading.
import time
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
import threading
def a(a=1, b=2):
print(a)
time.sleep(5)
print(b)
return a+b
def b(**kwargs):
if "a" in kwargs:
print("am b")
else:
print("nothing")
to_do=[]
executor = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=4)
ex1=executor.submit(a)
to_do.append(ex1)
ex2=executor.submit(b, **{"a":1})
to_do.append(ex2)
for future in as_completed(to_do):
print("Future {} and Future Return is {}\n".format(future, future.result()))
print("threading")
to_do=[]
to_do.append(threading.Thread(target=a))
to_do.append(threading.Thread(target=b, kwargs={"a":1}))
for threads in to_do:
threads.start()
for threads in to_do:
threads.join()
This code below can run 10 threads concurrently printing the numbers from 0 to 99:
from threading import Thread
def test():
for i in range(0, 100):
print(i)
thread_list = []
for _ in range(0, 10):
thread = Thread(target=test)
thread_list.append(thread)
for thread in thread_list:
thread.start()
for thread in thread_list:
thread.join()
And, this code below is the shorthand for loop version of the above code running 10 threads concurrently printing the numbers from 0 to 99:
from threading import Thread
def test():
[print(i) for i in range(0, 100)]
thread_list = [Thread(target=test) for _ in range(0, 10)]
[thread.start() for thread in thread_list]
[thread.join() for thread in thread_list]
This is the result below:
...
99
83
97
84
98
99
85
86
87
88
...
The easiest way of using threading/multiprocessing is to use more high level libraries like autothread.
import autothread
from time import sleep as heavyworkload
#autothread.multithreaded() # <-- This is all you need to add
def example(x: int, y: int):
heavyworkload(1)
return x*y
Now, you can feed your functions lists of ints. Autothread will handle everything for you and just give you the results computed in parallel.
result = example([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], 10)