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Django, Channels, and Distributed Systems
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Andrew Godwin
August 21, 2016
Programming
1
700
Django, Channels, and Distributed Systems
A talk I gave at PyBay 2016
Andrew Godwin
August 21, 2016
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Transcript
None
Andrew Godwin Hi, I'm Django core developer Senior Software Engineer
at Used to complain about migrations a lot
Channels
Born from WebSockets
Born from WebSockets Expanded to be more
The "real hard problem"
Asynchronous coordination
You take a request... ...and return a response.
HTTP 1 request response Browser Server request response request response
request response
HTTP 2 request response Browser Server request response request 1
response 2 request 2 response 1
WebSockets receive send Browser Server send receive send send receive
???
Server Client 1 Client 2 Client 3 Client 4
Server Client 1 Client 2 Client 3 Client 4 Server
Server Client 1 Client 2 Client 3 Client 4 Server
The "hard problem"
Broadcast
We need to coordinate between servers
Channels is a foundation for runnng 'async' at scale
Architecture is about tradeoffs
At most once / At least once Ordered / Unordered
FIFO / FILO Expiry / Persistence
WebSockets Service-oriented Architecture Chat/Email integration IoT protocols
What makes it hard?
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS
Stateful connections Internal network Bottlenecks Machines dying
Server Server Django Script ASGI "Send to channel X" "Receive
from channel X" "Send to group Y" "Add channel X to group Y" "Remove channel X from group Y"
Server Server Django Script ASGI ASGI ASGI ASGI Redis
Server Server Django Script ASGI ASGI ASGI ASGI Shared Memory
Server Server Django Script ASGI ASGI ASGI ASGI Shared Memory
Redis Redis
bit.ly/asgi-spec
Channels wraps the low-level ASGI operations
Think of it as the "Django bit" of a larger
whole.
Daphne HTTP/WebSocket Server Channels Django integration asgi-redis Redis backend asgi-ipc
Local memory backend asgiref Shared code and libs
What does Channels provide? Routing Consumers Sessions Auth Helpers By
channel, URL, etc. Standardised message handling Cross-network persistence on sockets Including HTTP cookies on WebSocket runserver, runworker, debugging info
Putting it to use Let's make a chat!
Consumers def on_connect(message): Group("chat").add(message.reply_channel) def on_receive(message): Group("chat").send({"text": message["text"]}) def on_disconnect(message):
Group("chat").discard(message.reply_channel) websocket.connect websocket.receive websocket.disconnect
Routing from channels import route routing = [ route("websocket.connect", on_connect),
route("websocket.receive", on_receive), route("websocket.disconnect", on_disconnect) ]
Class-based from channels import route_class routing = [ route_class(ChatConsumer), ]
from channels.generic.websockets class ChatConsumer(WebsocketConsumer): def connection_groups(self): return ["chat"] def receive(self, text): self.group_send("chat", text=text) Routing
Full worked example github.com/andrewgodwin/channels-examples
Ignoring Django
1. Take a channel layer daphne myproject.asgi:channel_layer
2. Tie it into an event loop Twisted, asyncio, or
while-True
3. Call send/receive It's a communication channel!
Example: SOA Services receive()-block waiting for tasks Clients use send()
with a reply-channel to call an endpoint Servers process and send() the reply
IRC Worker ASGI Worker Worker Email MQTT Scheduler HTTP/WS Custom
Daemon
Channels is a tool for you to use
There's more to be done (and some funding for it)
The tradeoffs may not be for you! (Especially as you
specialise)
1995 You are a desktop app 2005 You are a
website 2015 You are a rich web/mobile app 2025 ?
What are the goals of a framework? Do we adapt?
Thanks. Andrew Godwin @andrewgodwin channels.readthedocs.io github.com/andrewgodwin/channels-examples