NAME
    "IO::Async" - perform asynchronous filehandle IO and other operations

SYNOPSIS
     use IO::Async::Stream;
     use IO::Async::Loop;

     my $loop = IO::Async::Loop->new();

     $loop->connect(
        host     => "some.other.host",
        service  => 12345,
        socktype => 'stream',

        on_connected => sub {
           my ( $socket ) = @_;

           my $stream = IO::Async::Stream->new(
              handle => $socket,

              on_read => sub {
                 my ( $self, $buffref, $closed ) = @_;

                 return 0 unless( $buffref =~ s/^(.*\n)// );

                 print "Received a line $1";

                 return 1;
              }
           );

           $stream->write( "An initial line here\n" );

           $loop->add( $stream );
        },

        ...
     );

     $loop->loop_forever();

DESCRIPTION
    This collection of modules allows programs to be written that perform
    asynchronous filehandle IO operations. A typical program using them
    would consist of a single subclass of IO::Async::Loop to act as a
    container of other objects, which perform the actual IO work required by
    the program. As well as IO handles, the loop also supports timers and
    signal handlers, and includes more higher-level functionallity built on
    top of these basic parts.

    Because there are a lot of classes in this collection, the following
    overview gives a brief description of each.

  Notifiers
    The base class of all the event handling subclasses is
    IO::Async::Notifier. It does not perform any IO operations itself, but
    instead acts as a base class to build the specific IO functionallity
    upon. It can also coordinate a collection of other Notifiers contained
    within it, forming a tree structure.

    The following sections describe particular types of Notifier.

  File Handle IO
    An IO::Async::Handle object is a Notifier that represents a single IO
    handle being managed. While in most cases it will represent a single
    filehandle, such as a socket (for example, an IO::Socket::INET
    connection), it is possible to have separate reading and writing handles
    (most likely for a program's "STDIN" and "STDOUT" streams, or a pair of
    pipes connected to a child process).

    The IO::Async::Stream class is a subclass of IO::Async::Handle which
    maintains internal incoming and outgoing data buffers. In this way, it
    implements bidirectional buffering of a byte stream, such as a TCP
    socket. The class automatically handles reading of incoming data into
    the incoming buffer, and writing of the outgoing buffer. Methods or
    callbacks are used to inform when new incoming data is available, or
    when the outgoing buffer is empty.

    The IO::Async::Listener class is another subclass of IO::Async::Handle
    which facilitates the use of "listen()"-mode sockets. When a new
    connection is available on the socket it will "accept()" it and pass the
    new client socket to its callback function.

  Timers
    An IO::Async::Timer::Countdown object represents a count time timer,
    which will invoke a callback after a given delay. It can be stopped and
    restarted.

    An IO::Async::Timer::Periodic object invokes a callback at regular
    intervals from its initial start time. It is reliable and will not drift
    due to the time taken to run the callback.

    The IO::Async::Loop also supports methods for managing timed events on a
    lower level. Events may be absolute, or relative in time to the time
    they are installed.

  Signals
    An IO::Async::Signal object represents a POSIX signal, which will invoke
    a callback when the given signal is received by the process. Multiple
    objects watching the same signal can be used; they will all invoke in no
    particular order.

  Merge Points
    The IO::Async::MergePoint object class allows for a program to wait on
    the completion of multiple seperate subtasks. It allows for each subtask
    to return some data, which will be collected and given to the callback
    provided to the merge point, which is called when every subtask has
    completed.

  Loops
    The IO::Async::Loop object class represents an abstract collection of
    IO::Async::Notifier objects, and manages the actual filehandle IO
    watchers, timers, signal handlers, and other functionallity. It performs
    all of the abstract collection management tasks, and leaves the actual
    OS interactions to a particular subclass for the purpose.

    IO::Async::Loop::Poll uses an IO::Poll object for this test.

    IO::Async::Loop::Select uses the "select()" syscall.

    Other subclasses of loop may appear on CPAN under their own dists; such
    as IO::Async::Loop::Glib which acts as a proxy for the "Glib::MainLoop"
    of a Glib-based program, or IO::Async::Loop::Ppoll which uses the
    IO::Ppoll object to handle signals safely on Linux.

    As well as these general-purpose classes, the IO::Async::Loop
    constructor also supports looking for OS-specific subclasses, in case a
    more efficient implementation exists for the specific OS it runs on.

  Child Processes
    The IO::Async::Loop object provides a number of methods to facilitate
    the running of child processes. "spawn_child" is primarily a wrapper
    around the typical "fork()"/"exec()" style of starting child processes,
    "open_child" builds on this to provide management of child process file
    handles and streams connected to them, and finally "run_child" builds on
    that to provide a method similar to perl's "readpipe()" (which is used
    to implement backticks ``).

  Detached Code
    The "IO::Async" framework generally provides mechanisms for multiplexing
    IO tasks between different handles, so there aren't many occasions when
    it is necessary to run code in another thread or process. Two cases
    where this does become useful are when:

    *   A large amount of computationally-intensive work needs to be
        performed.

    *   An OS or library-level function needs to be called, that will block,
        and no asynchronous version is supplied.

    For these cases, an instance of IO::Async::DetachedCode can be used
    around a code block, to execute it in a detached child process. The code
    in the sub-process runs isolated from the main program, communicating
    only by function call arguments and return values.

  Networking
    The IO::Async::Loop provides several methods for performing
    network-based tasks. Primarily, the "connect" and "listen" methods allow
    the creation of client or server network sockets. Additionally, the
    "resolve" method allows the use of the system's name resolvers in an
    asynchronous way, to resolve names into addresses, or vice versa.

TODO
    This collection of modules is still very much in development. As a
    result, some of the potentially-useful parts or features currently
    missing are:

    *   An IO::Async::Loop subclass to perform integration with Event.
        Consider further ideas on Solaris' *ports*, BSD's *Kevents* and
        anything that might be useful on Win32.

    *   A consideration on how to provide per-OS versions of the utility
        classes. For example, Win32 would probably need an
        extensively-different "ChildManager", or OSes may have specific ways
        to perform asynchronous name resolution operations better than the
        generic "DetachedCode" approach. This should be easier to implement
        now that the IO::Async::Loop magic constructor looks for OS-specific
        subclasses first.

    *   A consideration of whether it is useful and possible to provide
        integration with POE or AnyEvent.

SEE ALSO
    *   Event - Event loop processing

    *   POE - portable multitasking and networking framework for Perl

AUTHOR
    Paul Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>

