Poolex

Poolex is a library for managing a pool of processes. Inspired by poolboy.

Requirements

Installation

Add :poolex to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:poolex, "~> 0.1.0"}
  ]
end

Usage

This example is based on the Elixir School's poolboy guide.

Defining the worker

We describe an actor that can easily become a bottleneck in our application, since it has a rather long execution time on a blocking call.

defmodule PoolexExample.Worker do
  use GenServer

  def start do
    GenServer.start(__MODULE__, nil)
  end

  def init(_args) do
    {:ok, nil}
  end

  def handle_call({:square_root, x}, _from, state) do
    IO.puts("process #{inspect(self())} calculating square root of #{x}")
    Process.sleep(1_000)
    {:reply, :math.sqrt(x), state}
  end
end

Configuring Poolex

defmodule PoolexExample.Application do
  @moduledoc false

  use Application

  defp worker_config do
    [
      worker_module: PoolexExample.Worker,
      workers_count: 5
    ]
  end

  def start(_type, _args) do
    children = [
      %{
        id: :worker_pool,
        start: {Poolex, :start_link, [:worker_pool, worker_config()]}
      }
    ]

    Supervisor.start_link(children, strategy: :one_for_one)
  end
end

List of possible configuration options:

Using Poolex

Poolex.run/3 is the function that you can use to interface with the worker pool.

• The first parameter is the pool ID (see Poolex configuration).
• The second parameter is a function that takes the pid of the worker and performs the necessary operation with it.
• The third parameter is a keyword of run options.
  • :timeout -- Worker timeout on the side of the calling process. For example, if the timeout is 1000 and no free workers have appeared in the pool for a second, then the execution will abort with raising an error. The default value for this parameter is 5 seconds.

defmodule PoolexExample.Test do
  @timeout 60_000

  def start do
    1..20
    |> Enum.map(fn i -> async_call_square_root(i) end)
    |> Enum.each(fn task -> await_and_inspect(task) end)
  end

  defp async_call_square_root(i) do
    Task.async(fn ->
      Poolex.run(
        :worker_pool,
        fn pid ->
          # Let's wrap the genserver call in a try - catch block. This allows us to trap any exceptions
          # that might be thrown and return the worker back to poolboy in a clean manner. It also allows
          # the programmer to retrieve the error and potentially fix it.
          try do
            GenServer.call(pid, {:square_root, i})
          catch
            e, r ->
              IO.inspect("poolboy transaction caught error: #{inspect(e)}, #{inspect(r)}")
              :ok
          end
        end,
        timeout: @timeout
      )
    end)
  end

  defp await_and_inspect(task), do: task |> Task.await(@timeout) |> IO.inspect()
end

Run the test function and see the result.

iex -S mix

iex> PoolexExample.Test.start
process #PID<0.227.0> calculating square root of 5
process #PID<0.223.0> calculating square root of 1
process #PID<0.225.0> calculating square root of 3
process #PID<0.224.0> calculating square root of 2
process #PID<0.226.0> calculating square root of 4
1.0
1.4142135623730951
1.7320508075688772
2.0
2.23606797749979
2.449489742783178
...