Having trouble dynamically allocating channels

help
1

I'm learning Rust by writing a memcached clone. The architecture I have in mind is:

  • a single storage layer (basically a hashmap)
  • a single protocol layer with a driver that drives the storage (performs storage operations using Cmd/Resp structures)
  • a transport layer instantiated thread-per-client (manages the socket)
  • driver and transport communicate via immutable Cmd/Resp structures

I was then going to let the driver and the transports communicate over async channels. Feeding requests to the driver is easy because a channel can have multiple senders. But returning responses to the transports is turning out to be tricky, because the driver needs to have all the sender channel endpoints. That's not a problem with all transports are started upfront, along with the driver, because then I can just create all the channels and give the right endpoint to the right thread.

But if I want to be able to launch transports on demand I'm also creating channels on the fly, and then I need to deliver the sender endpoint to the driver. I can't figure out how, though. I can't access the driver once it has been moved into its own thread. Nor can I send a channel over a channel.

Is this kind of dynamic allocation of channels possible?

I haven't yet looked at other options like MetalIO or other channel implementations as I was trying to make sure I understand what's available in the standard library.

2

Seems to work just fine:

use std::sync::mpsc;
use std::thread;

fn main() {
    let (ptx, crx): (mpsc::Sender<mpsc::Sender<&'static str>>, _) = mpsc::channel();
    let th = thread::spawn(move || {
        let ctx = crx.recv().unwrap();
        ctx.send("hi!").unwrap();
    });
    let (ctx, prx) = mpsc::channel();
    ptx.send(ctx).unwrap();
    let result = prx.recv().unwrap();
    println!("{:?}", result);
    th.join().unwrap();
}
1 Like
3

That's weird, earlier I couldn't get that to work. I must have done something wrong. Thanks!