I've heard that Python multi-threading is a bit tricky, and I am not sure what is the best way to go about implementing what I need. Let's say I have a function called IO_intensive_function that does some API call which may take a while to get a response.
Say the process of queuing jobs can look something like this:
import thread
for job_args in jobs:
thread.start_new_thread(IO_intense_function, (job_args))
Would the IO_intense_function now just execute its task in the background and allow me to queue in more jobs?
I also looked at this question, which seems like the approach is to just do the following:
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
pool = ThreadPool(2)
results = pool.map(IO_intensive_function, jobs)
As I don't need those tasks to communicate with each other, the only goal is to send my API requests as fast as possible. Is this the most efficient way? Thanks.
Edit: The way I am making the API request is through a Thrift service.
I had to create code to do something similar recently. I've tried to make it generic below. Note I'm a novice coder, so please forgive the inelegance. What you may find valuable, however, is some of the error processing I found it necessary to embed to capture disconnects, etc.
I also found it valuable to perform the json processing in a threaded manner. You have the threads working for you, so why go "serial" again for a processing step when you can extract the info in parallel.
It is possible I will have mis-coded in making it generic. Please don't hesitate to ask follow-ups and I will clarify.
import requests
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
from src_code.config import Config
with open(Config.API_PATH + '/api_security_key.pem') as f:
my_key = f.read().rstrip("\n")
f.close()
base_url = "https://api.my_api_destination.com/v1"
headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer %s" % my_key}
itm = list()
itm.append(base_url)
itm.append(headers)
def call_API(call_var):
base_url = call_var[0]
headers = call_var[1]
call_specific_tag = call_var[2]
endpoint = f'/api_path/{call_specific_tag}'
connection_tries = 0
for i in range(3):
try:
dat = requests.get((base_url + endpoint), headers=headers).json()
except:
connection_tries += 1
print(f'Call for {api_specific_tag} failed after {i} attempt(s). Pausing for 240 seconds.')
time.sleep(240)
else:
break
tag = list()
vars_to_capture_01 = list()
vars_to_capture_02 = list()
connection_tries = 0
try:
if 'record_id' in dat:
vars_to_capture_01.append(dat['record_id'])
vars_to_capture_02.append(dat['second_item_of_interest'])
else:
vars_to_capture_01.append(call_specific_tag)
print(f'Call specific tag {call_specific_tag} is unavailable. Successful pull.')
vars_to_capture_02.append(-1)
except:
print(f'{call_specific_tag} is unavailable. Unsuccessful pull.')
vars_to_capture_01.append(call_specific_tag)
vars_to_capture_02.append(-1)
time.sleep(240)
pack = list()
pack.append(vars_to_capture_01)
pack.append(vars_to_capture_02)
return pack
vars_to_capture_01 = list()
vars_to_capture_02 = list()
i = 0
max_i = len(all_tags)
while i < max_i:
ind_rng = range(i, min((i + 10), (max_i)), 1)
itm_lst = (itm.copy())
call_var = [itm_lst + [all_tags[q]] for q in ind_rng]
#packed = call_API(call_var[0]) # for testing of function without pooling
pool = ThreadPool(len(call_var))
packed = pool.map(call_API, call_var)
pool.close()
pool.join()
for pack in packed:
try:
vars_to_capture_01.append(pack[0][0])
except:
print(f'Unpacking error for {all_tags[i]}.')
vars_to_capture_02.append(pack[1][0])