Commit 69c791c6 authored by Jeremy Hylton's avatar Jeremy Hylton

Expand some comments and docstrings.

parent 7b10d320
......@@ -61,10 +61,12 @@ class Connection(smac.SizedMessageAsyncConnection):
"""Dispatcher for RPC on object on both sides of socket.
The connection supports synchronous calls, which expect a return,
and asynchronous calls that do not.
and asynchronous calls, which do not.
It uses the Marshaller class to handle encoding and decoding of
method calls are arguments.
method calls are arguments. Marshaller uses pickle to encode
arbitrary Python objects. The code here doesn't ever see the wire
format.
A Connection is designed for use in a multithreaded application,
where a synchronous call must block until a response is ready.
......@@ -74,6 +76,32 @@ class Connection(smac.SizedMessageAsyncConnection):
A socket connection between a client and a server allows either
side to invoke methods on the other side. The processes on each
end of the socket use a Connection object to manage communication.
The Connection deals with decoded RPC messages. They are
represented as four-tuples containing: msgid, flags, method name,
and a tuple of method arguments.
The msgid starts at zero and is incremented by one each time a
method call message is sent. Each side of the connection has a
separate msgid state.
When one side of the connection (the client) calls a method, it
sends a message with a new msgid. The other side (the server),
replies with a message that has the same msgid, the string
".reply" (the global variable REPLY) as the method name, and the
actual return value in the args position. Note that each side of
the Connection can initiate a call, in which case it will be the
client for that particular call.
The protocol also supports asynchronous calls. The client does
not wait for a return value for an asynchronous call. The only
defined flag is ASYNC. If a method call message has the ASYNC
flag set, the server will raise an exception.
If a method call raises an exception, the exception is propagated
back to the client via the REPLY message. The client side will
raise any exception it receives instead of returning the value to
the caller.
"""
__super_init = smac.SizedMessageAsyncConnection.__init__
......@@ -132,7 +160,7 @@ class Connection(smac.SizedMessageAsyncConnection):
# protocol to evolve over time, and let servers handle clients
# using multiple versions of the protocol.
# The mechanism replace the message_input() method for the
# The mechanism replaces the message_input() method for the
# first message received.
# The client sends the protocol version it is using.
......
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