NAME

Distributed::Process::Client - a class to run a client in a Distributed::Process cluster.

SYNOPSIS

    use Distributed::Process;
    use Distributed::Process::Client;
    use MyTest;

    $c = new Distributed::Process::Client
	-id           => 'client1',
	-worker_class => 'MyTest',
	-port         => 8147,
	-host         => 'localhost',
    ;
    $c->run();

DESCRIPTION

This class handles the client part of the cluster. It derives its handling of the network connection from Distributed::Process::Interface.

A D::P::Worker object must be associated to the Client, by means of the worker() or worker_class() methods, so that the client can run methods from it when requested to do so by the server.

Commands

A D::P::Client object will react on the following commands received on its in_handle().

/run

Calls the worker's run() method. This is method should be overloaded by subclasses of D::P::Worker to perform the real job that is to be distributed on the cluster.

/reset

Calls the worker's reset_result() method to flush its list of results.

/quit

Exits the program.

/get_result

Returns the results from the worker. The results are preceeded with the line /begin_results and followed by the word ok. Each result line gets prefixed with the client's id() and a tab character ("\t", ASCII 0x09).

The worker itself returns its result line prefixed with a timestamp. An example of output could thus be:

/begin_results
client1	20050316-152519	Running method test1
client1	20050316-152522	Time for running test1: 2.1234 seconds
ok

Methods

run

Reads line coming in from handle() and processes them.

Each line is first chomped and split on whitespace, and an action is performed depending on the first word on the line. See the list of known commands above.

handle

in_handle

out_handle

These three are synonyms for the handle() method that returns the IO::Socket::INET object implementing the connection to the server.

The first call to handle() creates this object, effectively establishing the connection to port port() on host host().

worker OBJECT

worker

Sets or returns the current worker object. OBJECT should be an instance of Distributed::Process::Worker or, most probably, of a subclass of it. If OBJECT is not provided, the fist call to worker() will instanciate an object of the class returned by worker_class(), passing to its constructor the arguments returned by worker_args().

worker_args LIST

worker_args ARRAYREF

worker_args

The list of arguments to pass to the worker_class() constructor. If the first argument is an array ref, it will be dereferenced.

Returns the former list of arguments or the current list when invoked without arguments.

Attributes

The following list describes the attributes of this class. They must only be accessed through their accessors. When called with an argument, the accessor methods set their attribute's value to that argument and return its former value. When called without arguments, they return the current value.

id

A unique identifier for the client. This will be prepended to the lines sent back to the server as a response to the /get_result command. The process id ($$) is returned if id() is not set.

worker_class

The name of the class to use when instanciating a D::P::Worker object.

host

port

The host and port where to connect to the server.

SEE ALSO

Distributed::Process::Interface, Distributed::Process::Worker,

AUTHOR

Cédric Bouvier, <cbouvi@cpan.org>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-distributed-process@rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

Copyright 2005 Cédric Bouvier, All Rights Reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.