AsynchronousFileReader

Simple thread based asynchronous file reader for Python.

Canonical example use case: you running a longer running child process with the subprocess module and want to monitor its standard output and error along the way. A tricky issue with this kind of parallel "flows" is the risk on deadlocks if you are not careful with the order things are done. For example, you want to read from the subprocess standard output pipe, but the buffer of the standard error pipe is full and the operating system wants you to read that first. Kaboom, deadlock.

If it's ok to get the complete standard output and error content in one fell swoop, the communicate() method, as recommended by the subprocess.Popen documentation, is the way to go. However, if you want to monitor the streams line by line, you need other tricks. On the web you can find many solutions, with varying degrees of complexity, abstraction and dependencies.

AsynchronousFileReader provides a simple solution with limited code and no dependencies outside the standard library. It reads the files or pipes line by line in separate threads (so one pipe can't block another) and allows the main thread to fetch these lines as they become available.

Example/Demo

The script demo.py provides an example of how to use it. The script acts both as "child" process (producer mode) and monitoring process (consume mode). Just run it without arguments and watch it go.

Basically, the usage pattern is as follows:

# `file` is a file-like object (it just has to provide a readline() method actually)
reader = AsynchronousFileReader(file)
while not reader.eof():
    for line in reader.readlines():
        # Do something with `line` here
        store(line)

    # Do something else in the meantime while waiting for more input.
    other_time_consuming_stuff()

# Be tidy and join the thread.
reader.join()

Features

• supports both Python 2.x and 3.x
• only depends on standard library (threading and Queue)
• simple, one file implementation