How do I create thread-safe asyncio background tasks?

I have an event loop running in a separate thread from the main thread, and I would like to add a background task to this event loop from the main thread using the asyncio.create_task function.

I am able to achieve this using the asyncio.run_coroutine_threadsafe function, but that ends up returning a concurrent.futures._base.Future object as opposed to the asyncio.Task object that the asyncio.create_task function returns.

I would really like to have a Task object returned as I'm making use of the "name" attribute of the Task object in my application logic. Is there any way to implement this?

1. We first create a daemon thread in which a new event loop runs.
2. Function submit runs an arbitrary coroutine in the event loop/thread created in step 1. If argument return_result is True (the default), submit waits for the coroutine to complete and returns its result. Otherwise, submit return a Future and the caller can get the coroutine's result by executing the future's result method. This function is used by the functions described next.
3. Function create_task creates a task in the daemon thread and returns that task.
4. The returned task can be awaited and the task's result return by calling await_task with the return_result argument set to True (the default). This will block the main thread until the result can be returned. Alternatively, await_task can be called with return_result=False, in which case a Future will be returned whose result can be obtained later.

import asyncio
import threading

_event_loop = asyncio.new_event_loop()
threading.Thread(target=_event_loop.run_forever, name="Async Runner", daemon=True).start()

def submit(coro, return_result=True):
    """Run a coroutine in the "other thread". If return_result is True,
    we return the result. Otherwise we return the future."""
    future = asyncio.run_coroutine_threadsafe(coro, _event_loop)
    return future.result() if return_result else future

def create_task(coro):
    """Creates a task in the other thread and return the task."""
    async def task_creator():
        return asyncio.create_task(coro)

    return submit(task_creator())

def await_task(task, return_result=True):
    """Submit to the return_result thread a coroutine to await the
    passed thread. If wait is True, we wait for the task to complete
    and return the result. Otherwise, we return to the caller a future
    whose result can be obtained when the caller wants."""
    async def waiter():
        return await task

    return submit(waiter(), return_result=return_result)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    async def some_coro():
        await asyncio.sleep(1)
        return 'Done'

    async def main():
        task = create_task(some_coro())

        # We choose to have a future returned instead
        # of the actual result from executing the task:
        future = await_task(task, return_result=False)
        ... # Do other work
        print(future.result())

    asyncio.run(main())

Prints:

Done

Update

Here is another implementation where waiting for the submitted task to complete does not block the main thread by using asyncio.to_thread. Now all functions are async:

import asyncio
import threading

_event_loop = asyncio.new_event_loop()
threading.Thread(target=_event_loop.run_forever, name="Async Runner", daemon=True).start()

async def submit(coro):
    """Run a coroutine in the "other thread and await its result"""
    def submitter():
        future = asyncio.run_coroutine_threadsafe(coro, _event_loop)
        return future.result()

    return await asyncio.to_thread(submitter)

async def create_task(coro):
    """Creates a task in the other thread and return the task."""
    async def task_creator():
        return asyncio.create_task(coro)

    return await submit(task_creator())

async def await_task(task):
    """Await the task running in the other thread and return its result."""
    async def waiter():
        return await task

    return await submit(waiter())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    async def some_coro():
        await asyncio.sleep(1)
        return 'Done'

    async def main():
        task = await create_task(some_coro())
        ... # Do other work
        print(await await_task(task))

    asyncio.run(main())