[TOC] # Final Project: Building a Multithreaded Web Server It’s been a long journey, but we’ve reached the end of the book. In this chapter, we’ll build one more project together to demonstrate some of the concepts we covered in the final chapters, as well as recap some earlier lessons. For our final project, we’ll make a web server that says “hello” and looks like Figure 20-1 in a web browser. !hello from rust at *img/trpl20-01.png* Figure 20-1: Our final shared project Here is our plan for building the web server: 1. Learn a bit about TCP and HTTP. 2. Listen for TCP connections on a socket. 3. Parse a small number of HTTP requests. 4. Create a proper HTTP response. 5. Improve the throughput of our server with a thread pool. Before we get started, we should mention one detail: the method we’ll use won’t be the best way to build a web server with Rust. Community members have published a number of production-ready crates available at *https://crates.io/* that provide more complete web server and thread pool implementations than we’ll build. However, our intention in this chapter is to help you learn, not to take the easy route. Because Rust is a systems programming language, we can choose the level of abstraction we want to work with and can go to a lower level than is possible or practical in other languages. We’ll therefore write the basic HTTP server and thread pool manually so you can learn the general ideas and techniques behind the crates you might use in the future. ## Building a Single-Threaded Web Server We’ll start by getting a single-threaded web server working. Before we begin, let’s look at a quick overview of the protocols involved in building web servers. The details of these protocols are beyond the scope of this book, but a brief overview will give you the information you need. The two main protocols involved in web servers are *Hypertext Transfer Protocol* *(HTTP)* and *Transmission Control Protocol* *(TCP)*. Both protocols are *request-response* protocols, meaning a *client* initiates requests and a *server* listens to the requests and provides a response to the client. The contents of those requests and responses are defined by the protocols. TCP is the lower-level protocol that describes the details of how information gets from one server to another but doesn’t specify what that information is. HTTP builds on top of TCP by defining the contents of the requests and responses. It’s technically possible to use HTTP with other protocols, but in the vast majority of cases, HTTP sends its data over TCP. We’ll work with the raw bytes of TCP and HTTP requests and responses. ### Listening to the TCP Connection Our web server needs to listen to a TCP connection, so that’s the first part we’ll work on. The standard library offers a `std::net` module that lets us do this. Let’s make a new project in the usual fashion: ``` $ cargo new hello Created binary (application) `hello` project $ cd hello ``` Now enter the code in Listing 20-1 in *src/main.rs* to start. This code will listen at the local address `127.0.0.1:7878` for incoming TCP streams. When it gets an incoming stream, it will print `Connection established!`. Filename: src/main.rs ``` use std::net::TcpListener; fn main() { [1] let listener = TcpListener::bind("127.0.0.1:7878").unwrap(); [2] for stream in listener.incoming() { [3] let stream = stream.unwrap(); [4] println!("Connection established!"); } } ``` Listing 20-1: Listening for incoming streams and printing a message when we receive a stream Using `TcpListener`, we can listen for TCP connections at the address `127.0.0.1:7878` [1]. In the address, the section before the colon is an IP address representing your computer (this is the same on every computer and doesn’t represent the authors’ computer specifically), and `7878` is the port. We’ve chosen this port for two reasons: HTTP isn’t normally accepted on this port so our server is unlikely to conflict with any other web server you might have running on your machine, and 7878 is *rust* typed on a telephone. The `bind` function in this scenario works like the `new` function in that it will return a new `TcpListener` instance. The function is called `bind` because, in networking, connecting to a port to listen to is known as “binding to a port.” The `bind` function returns a `Result`, which indicates that it’s possible for binding to fail. For example, connecting to port 80 requires administrator privileges (nonadministrators can listen only on ports higher than 1023), so if we tried to connect to port 80 without being an administrator, binding wouldn’t work. Binding also wouldn’t work, for example, if we ran two instances of our program and so had two programs listening to the same port. Because we’re writing a basic server just for learning purposes, we won’t worry about handling these kinds of errors; instead, we use `unwrap` to stop the program if errors happen. The `incoming` method on `TcpListener` returns an iterator that gives us a sequence of streams [2] (more specifically, streams of type `TcpStream`). A single *stream* represents an open connection between the client and the server. A *connection* is the name for the full request and response process in which a client connects to the server, the server generates a response, and the server closes the connection. As such, we will read from the `TcpStream` to see what the client sent and then write our response to the stream to send data back to the client. Overall, this `for` loop will process each connection in turn and produce a series of streams for us to handle. For now, our handling of the stream consists of calling `unwrap` to terminate our program if the stream has any errors [3]; if there aren’t any errors, the program prints a message [4]. We’ll add more functionality for the success case in the next listing. The reason we might receive errors from the `incoming` method when a client connects to the server is that we’re not actually iterating over connections. Instead, we’re iterating over *connection attempts*. The connection might not be successful for a number of reasons, many of them operating system specific. For example, many operating systems have a limit to the number of simultaneous open connections they can support; new connection attempts beyond that number will produce an error until some of the open connections are closed. Let’s try running this code! Invoke `cargo run` in the terminal and then load *127.0.0.1:7878* in a web browser. The browser should show an error message like “Connection reset,” because the server isn’t currently sending back any data. But when you look at your terminal, you should see several messages that were printed when the browser connected to the server! ``` Running `target/debug/hello` Connection established! Connection established! Connection established! ``` Sometimes, you’ll see multiple messages printed for one browser request; the reason might be that the browser is making a request for the page as well as a request for other resources, like the *favicon.ico* icon that appears in the browser tab. It could also be that the browser is trying to connect to the server multiple times because the server isn’t responding with any data. When `stream` goes out of scope and is dropped at the end of the loop, the connection is closed as part of the `drop` implementation. Browsers sometimes deal with closed connections by retrying, because the problem might be temporary. The important factor is that we’ve successfully gotten a handle to a TCP connection! Remember to stop the program by pressing ctrl-c when you’re done running a particular version of the code. Then restart the program by invoking the `cargo run` command after you’ve made each set of code changes to make sure you’re running the newest code. ### Reading the Request Let’s implement the functionality to read the request from the browser! To separate the concerns of first getting a connection and then taking some action with the connection, we’ll start a new function for processing connections. In this new `handle_connection` function, we’ll read data from the TCP stream and print it so we can see the data being sent from the browser. Change the code to look like Listing 20-2. Filename: src/main.rs ``` [1] use std::{ io::{prelude::*, BufReader}, net::{TcpListener, TcpStream}, }; fn main() { let listener = TcpListener::bind("127.0.0.1:7878").unwrap(); for stream in listener.incoming() { let stream = stream.unwrap(); [2] handle_connection(stream); } } fn handle_connection(mut stream: TcpStream) { [3] let buf_reader = BufReader::new(&mut stream); [4] let http_request: Vec<_> = buf_reader [5] .lines() [6] .map(|result| result.unwrap()) [7] .take_while(|line| !line.is_empty()) .collect(); [8] println!("Request: {:#?}", http_request); } ``` Listing 20-2: Reading from the `TcpStream` and printing the data We bring `std::io::prelude` and `std::io::BufReader` into scope to get access to traits and types that let us read from and write to the stream [1]. In the `for` loop in the `main` function, instead of printing a message that says we made a connection, we now call the new `handle_connection` function and pass the `stream` to it [2]. In the `handle_connection` function, we create a new `BufReader` instance that wraps a mutable reference to the `stream` [3]. `BufReader` adds buffering by managing calls to the `std::io::Read` trait methods for us. We create a variable named `http_request` to collect the lines of the request the browser sends to our server. We indicate that we want to collect these lines in a vector by adding the `Vec<_>` type annotation [4]. `BufReader` implements the `std::io::BufRead` trait, which provides the `lines` method [5]. The `lines` method returns an iterator of `Result` by splitting the stream of data whenever it sees a newline byte. To get each `String`, we map and `unwrap` each `Result` [6]. The `Result` might be an error if the data isn’t valid UTF-8 or if there was a problem reading from the stream. Again, a production program should handle these errors more gracefully, but we’re choosing to stop the program in the error case for simplicity. The browser signals the end of an HTTP request by sending two newline characters in a row, so to get one request from the stream, we take lines until we get a line that is the empty string [7]. Once we’ve collected the lines into the vector, we’re printing them out using pretty debug formatting [8] so we can take a look at the instructions the web browser is sending to our server. Let’s try this code! Start the program and make a request in a web browser again. Note that we’ll still get an error page in the browser, but our program’s output in the terminal will now look similar to this: ``` $ cargo run Compiling hello v0.1.0 (file:///projects/hello) Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.42s Running `target/debug/hello` Request: [ "GET / HTTP/1.1", "Host: 127.0.0.1:7878", "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:99.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/99.0", "Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8", "Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5", "Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br", "DNT: 1", "Connection: keep-alive", "Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1", "Sec-Fetch-Dest: document", "Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate", "Sec-Fetch-Site: none", "Sec-Fetch-User: ?1", "Cache-Control: max-age=0", ] ``` Depending on your browser, you might get slightly different output. Now that we’re printing the request data, we can see why we get multiple connections from one browser request by looking at the path after `GET` in the first line of the request. If the repeated connections are all requesting */*, we know the browser is trying to fetch */* repeatedly because it’s not getting a response from our program. Let’s break down this request data to understand what the browser is asking of our program. ### A Closer Look at an HTTP Request HTTP is a text-based protocol, and a request takes this format: ``` Method Request-URI HTTP-Version CRLF headers CRLF message-body ``` The first line is the *request line* that holds information about what the client is requesting. The first part of the request line indicates the *method* being used, such as `GET` or `POST`, which describes how the client is making this request. Our client used a `GET` request, which means it is asking for information. The next part of the request line is */*, which indicates the *Uniform Resource Identifier* *(URI)* the client is requesting: a URI is almost, but not quite, the same as a *Uniform Resource Locator* *(URL)*. The difference between URIs and URLs isn’t important for our purposes in this chapter, but the HTTP spec uses the term URI, so we can just mentally substitute URL for URI here. The last part is the HTTP version the client uses, and then the request line ends in a *CRLF sequence*. (CRLF stands for *carriage return* and *line feed*, which are terms from the typewriter days!) The CRLF sequence can also be written as `\r\n`, where `\r` is a carriage return and `\n` is a line feed. The CRLF sequence separates the request line from the rest of the request data. Note that when the CRLF is printed, we see a new line start rather than `\r\n`. Looking at the request line data we received from running our program so far, we see that `GET` is the method, */* is the request URI, and `HTTP/1.1` is the version. After the request line, the remaining lines starting from `Host:` onward are headers. `GET` requests have no body. Try making a request from a different browser or asking for a different address, such as *127.0.0.1:7878/test*, to see how the request data changes. Now that we know what the browser is asking for, let’s send back some data! ### Writing a Response We’re going to implement sending data in response to a client request. Responses have the following format: ``` HTTP-Version Status-Code Reason-Phrase CRLF headers CRLF message-body ``` The first line is a *status line* that contains the HTTP version used in the response, a numeric status code that summarizes the result of the request, and a reason phrase that provides a text description of the status code. After the CRLF sequence are any headers, another CRLF sequence, and the body of the response. Here is an example response that uses HTTP version 1.1, has a status code of 200, an OK reason phrase, no headers, and no body: ``` HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n\r\n ``` The status code 200 is the standard success response. The text is a tiny successful HTTP response. Let’s write this to the stream as our response to a successful request! From the `handle_connection` function, remove the `println!` that was printing the request data and replace it with the code in Listing 20-3. Filename: src/main.rs ``` fn handle_connection(mut stream: TcpStream) { let buf_reader = BufReader::new(&mut stream); let http_request: Vec<_> = buf_reader .lines() .map(|result| result.unwrap()) .take_while(|line| !line.is_empty()) .collect(); [1] let response = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n\r\n"; [2] stream.write_all(response.as_bytes()[3]).unwrap(); } ``` Listing 20-3: Writing a tiny successful HTTP response to the stream The first new line defines the `response` variable that holds the success message’s data [1]. Then we call `as_bytes` on our `response` to convert the string data to bytes [3]. The `write_all` method on `stream` takes a `&[u8]` and sends those bytes directly down the connection [2]. Because the `write_all` operation could fail, we use `unwrap` on any error result as before. Again, in a real application you would add error handling here. With these changes, let’s run our code and make a request. We’re no longer printing any data to the terminal, so we won’t see any output other than the output from Cargo. When you load *127.0.0.1:7878* in a web browser, you should get a blank page instead of an error. You’ve just hand-coded receiving an HTTP request and sending a response! ### Returning Real HTML Let’s implement the functionality for returning more than a blank page. Create the new file *hello.html* in the root of your project directory, not in the *src* directory. You can input any HTML you want; Listing 20-4 shows one possibility. Filename: hello.html ``` Hello!

Hello!

Hi from Rust

``` Listing 20-4: A sample HTML file to return in a response This is a minimal HTML5 document with a heading and some text. To return this from the server when a request is received, we’ll modify `handle_connection` as shown in Listing 20-5 to read the HTML file, add it to the response as a body, and send it. Filename: src/main.rs ``` use std::{ [1] fs, io::{prelude::*, BufReader}, net::{TcpListener, TcpStream}, }; // --snip-- fn handle_connection(mut stream: TcpStream) { let buf_reader = BufReader::new(&mut stream); let http_request: Vec<_> = buf_reader .lines() .map(|result| result.unwrap()) .take_while(|line| !line.is_empty()) .collect(); let status_line = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"; let contents = fs::read_to_string("hello.html").unwrap(); let length = contents.len(); [2] let response = format!("{status_line}\r\nContent-Length: {length}\r\n\r\n{contents}"); stream.write_all(response.as_bytes()).unwrap(); } ``` Listing 20-5: Sending the contents of *hello.html* as the body of the response We’ve added `fs` to the `use` statement to bring the standard library’s filesystem module into scope [1]. The code for reading the contents of a file to a string should look familiar; we used it in Chapter 12 when we read the contents of a file for our I/O project in Listing 12-4. Next, we use `format!` to add the file’s contents as the body of the success response [2]. To ensure a valid HTTP response, we add the `Content-Length` header which is set to the size of our response body, in this case the size of `hello.html`. Run this code with `cargo run` and load *127.0.0.1:7878* in your browser; you should see your HTML rendered! Currently, we’re ignoring the request data in `http_request` and just sending back the contents of the HTML file unconditionally. That means if you try requesting *127.0.0.1:7878/something-else* in your browser, you’ll still get back this same HTML response. At the moment, our server is very limited and does not do what most web servers do. We want to customize our responses depending on the request and only send back the HTML file for a well-formed request to */*. ### Validating the Request and Selectively Responding Right now, our web server will return the HTML in the file no matter what the client requested. Let’s add functionality to check that the browser is requesting */* before returning the HTML file and return an error if the browser requests anything else. For this we need to modify `handle_connection`, as shown in Listing 20-6. This new code checks the content of the request received against what we know a request for */* looks like and adds `if` and `else` blocks to treat requests differently. Filename: src/main.rs ``` // --snip-- fn handle_connection(mut stream: TcpStream) { let buf_reader = BufReader::new(&mut stream); [1] let request_line = buf_reader.lines().next().unwrap().unwrap(); [2] if request_line == "GET / HTTP/1.1" { let status_line = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"; let contents = fs::read_to_string("hello.html").unwrap(); let length = contents.len(); let response = format!( "{status_line}\r\nContent-Length: {length}\r\n\r\n{contents}" ); stream.write_all(response.as_bytes()).unwrap(); [3] } else { // some other request } } ``` Listing 20-6: Handling requests to */* differently from other requests We’re only going to be looking at the first line of the HTTP request, so rather than reading the entire request into a vector, we’re calling `next` to get the first item from the iterator [1]. The first `unwrap` takes care of the `Option` and stops the program if the iterator has no items. The second `unwrap` handles the `Result` and has the same effect as the `unwrap` that was in the `map` added in Listing 20-2. Next, we check the `request_line` to see if it equals the request line of a GET request to the */* path [2]. If it does, the `if` block returns the contents of our HTML file. If the `request_line` does *not* equal the GET request to the */* path, it means we’ve received some other request. We’ll add code to the `else` block [3] in a moment to respond to all other requests. Run this code now and request *127.0.0.1:7878*; you should get the HTML in *hello.html*. If you make any other request, such as *127.0.0.1:7878/something-else*, you’ll get a connection error like those you saw when running the code in Listing 20-1 and Listing 20-2. Now let’s add the code in Listing 20-7 to the `else` block to return a response with the status code 404, which signals that the content for the request was not found. We’ll also return some HTML for a page to render in the browser indicating the response to the end user. Filename: src/main.rs ``` // --snip-- } else { [1] let status_line = "HTTP/1.1 404 NOT FOUND"; [2] let contents = fs::read_to_string("404.html").unwrap(); let length = contents.len(); let response = format!( "{status_line}\r\nContent-Length: {length}\r\n\r\n{contents}" ); stream.write_all(response.as_bytes()).unwrap(); } ``` Listing 20-7: Responding with status code 404 and an error page if anything other than */* was requested Here, our response has a status line with status code 404 and the reason phrase `NOT FOUND` [1]. The body of the response will be the HTML in the file *404.html* [1]. You’ll need to create a *404.html* file next to *hello.html* for the error page; again feel free to use any HTML you want or use the example HTML in Listing 20-8. Filename: 404.html ``` Hello!

Oops!

Sorry, I don't know what you're asking for.

``` Listing 20-8: Sample content for the page to send back with any 404 response With these changes, run your server again. Requesting *127.0.0.1:7878* should return the contents of *hello.html*, and any other request, like *127.0.0.1:7878/foo*, should return the error HTML from *404.html*. ### A Touch of Refactoring At the moment the `if` and `else` blocks have a lot of repetition: they’re both reading files and writing the contents of the files to the stream. The only differences are the status line and the filename. Let’s make the code more concise by pulling out those differences into separate `if` and `else` lines that will assign the values of the status line and the filename to variables; we can then use those variables unconditionally in the code to read the file and write the response. Listing 20-9 shows the resulting code after replacing the large `if` and `else` blocks. Filename: src/main.rs ``` // --snip-- fn handle_connection(mut stream: TcpStream) { // --snip-- let (status_line, filename) = if request_line == "GET / HTTP/1.1" { ("HTTP/1.1 200 OK", "hello.html") } else { ("HTTP/1.1 404 NOT FOUND", "404.html") }; let contents = fs::read_to_string(filename).unwrap(); let length = contents.len(); let response = format!("{status_line}\r\nContent-Length: {length}\r\n\r\n{contents}"); stream.write_all(response.as_bytes()).unwrap(); } ``` Listing 20-9: Refactoring the `if` and `else` blocks to contain only the code that differs between the two cases Now the `if` and `else` blocks only return the appropriate values for the status line and filename in a tuple; we then use destructuring to assign these two values to `status_line` and `filename` using a pattern in the `let` statement, as discussed in Chapter 18. The previously duplicated code is now outside the `if` and `else` blocks and uses the `status_line` and `filename` variables. This makes it easier to see the difference between the two cases, and it means we have only one place to update the code if we want to change how the file reading and response writing work. The behavior of the code in Listing 20-9 will be the same as that in Listing 20-8. Awesome! We now have a simple web server in approximately 40 lines of Rust code that responds to one request with a page of content and responds to all other requests with a 404 response. Currently, our server runs in a single thread, meaning it can only serve one request at a time. Let’s examine how that can be a problem by simulating some slow requests. Then we’ll fix it so our server can handle multiple requests at once. ## Turning Our Single-Threaded Server into a Multithreaded Server Right now, the server will process each request in turn, meaning it won’t process a second connection until the first is finished processing. If the server received more and more requests, this serial execution would be less and less optimal. If the server receives a request that takes a long time to process, subsequent requests will have to wait until the long request is finished, even if the new requests can be processed quickly. We’ll need to fix this, but first, we’ll look at the problem in action. ### Simulating a Slow Request in the Current Server Implementation We’ll look at how a slow-processing request can affect other requests made to our current server implementation. Listing 20-10 implements handling a request to */sleep* with a simulated slow response that will cause the server to sleep for 5 seconds before responding. Filename: src/main.rs ``` use std::{ fs, io::{prelude::*, BufReader}, net::{TcpListener, TcpStream}, thread, time::Duration, }; // --snip-- fn handle_connection(mut stream: TcpStream) { // --snip-- let (status_line, filename) = [1] match &request_line[..] { [2] "GET / HTTP/1.1" => ("HTTP/1.1 200 OK", "hello.html"), [3] "GET /sleep HTTP/1.1" => { thread::sleep(Duration::from_secs(5)); ("HTTP/1.1 200 OK", "hello.html") } [4] _ => ("HTTP/1.1 404 NOT FOUND", "404.html"), }; // --snip-- } ``` Listing 20-10: Simulating a slow request by sleeping for 5 seconds We switched from `if` to `match` now that we have three cases [1]. We need to explicitly match on a slice of `request_line` to pattern match against the string literal values; `match` doesn’t do automatic referencing and dereferencing like the equality method does. The first arm [2] is the same as the `if` block from Listing 20-9. The second arm [3] matches a request to */sleep*. When that request is received, the server will sleep for 5 seconds before rendering the successful HTML page. The third arm [4] is the same as the `else` block from Listing 20-9. You can see how primitive our server is: real libraries would handle the recognition of multiple requests in a much less verbose way! Start the server using `cargo run`. Then open two browser windows: one for *http://127.0.0.1:7878/* and the other for *http://127.0.0.1:7878/sleep*. If you enter the */* URI a few times, as before, you’ll see it respond quickly. But if you enter */sleep* and then load */*, you’ll see that */* waits until `sleep` has slept for its full 5 seconds before loading. There are multiple techniques we could use to avoid requests backing up behind a slow request; the one we’ll implement is a thread pool. ### Improving Throughput with a Thread Pool A *thread pool* is a group of spawned threads that are waiting and ready to handle a task. When the program receives a new task, it assigns one of the threads in the pool to the task, and that thread will process the task. The remaining threads in the pool are available to handle any other tasks that come in while the first thread is processing. When the first thread is done processing its task, it’s returned to the pool of idle threads, ready to handle a new task. A thread pool allows you to process connections concurrently, increasing the throughput of your server. We’ll limit the number of threads in the pool to a small number to protect us from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks; if we had our program create a new thread for each request as it came in, someone making 10 million requests to our server could create havoc by using up all our server’s resources and grinding the processing of requests to a halt. Rather than spawning unlimited threads, then, we’ll have a fixed number of threads waiting in the pool. Requests that come in are sent to the pool for processing. The pool will maintain a queue of incoming requests. Each of the threads in the pool will pop off a request from this queue, handle the request, and then ask the queue for another request. With this design, we can process up to `N` requests concurrently, where `N` is the number of threads. If each thread is responding to a long-running request, subsequent requests can still back up in the queue, but we’ve increased the number of long-running requests we can handle before reaching that point. This technique is just one of many ways to improve the throughput of a web server. Other options you might explore are the *fork/join model*, the *single-threaded async I/O model*, or the *multi-threaded async I/O model*. If you’re interested in this topic, you can read more about other solutions and try to implement them; with a low-level language like Rust, all of these options are possible. Before we begin implementing a thread pool, let’s talk about what using the pool should look like. When you’re trying to design code, writing the client interface first can help guide your design. Write the API of the code so it’s structured in the way you want to call it; then implement the functionality within that structure rather than implementing the functionality and then designing the public API. Similar to how we used test-driven development in the project in Chapter 12, we’ll use compiler-driven development here. We’ll write the code that calls the functions we want, and then we’ll look at errors from the compiler to determine what we should change next to get the code to work. Before we do that, however, we’ll explore the technique we’re not going to use as a starting point. #### Spawning a Thread for Each Request First, let’s explore how our code might look if it did create a new thread for every connection. As mentioned earlier, this isn’t our final plan due to the problems with potentially spawning an unlimited number of threads, but it is a starting point to get a working multithreaded server first. Then we’ll add the thread pool as an improvement, and contrasting the two solutions will be easier. Listing 20-11 shows the changes to make to `main` to spawn a new thread to handle each stream within the `for` loop. Filename: src/main.rs ``` fn main() { let listener = TcpListener::bind("127.0.0.1:7878").unwrap(); for stream in listener.incoming() { let stream = stream.unwrap(); thread::spawn(|| { handle_connection(stream); }); } } ``` Listing 20-11: Spawning a new thread for each stream As you learned in Chapter 16, `thread::spawn` will create a new thread and then run the code in the closure in the new thread. If you run this code and load */sleep* in your browser, then */* in two more browser tabs, you’ll indeed see that the requests to */* don’t have to wait for */sleep* to finish. However, as we mentioned, this will eventually overwhelm the system because you’d be making new threads without any limit. #### Creating a Finite Number of Threads We want our thread pool to work in a similar, familiar way so switching from threads to a thread pool doesn’t require large changes to the code that uses our API. Listing 20-12 shows the hypothetical interface for a `ThreadPool` struct we want to use instead of `thread::spawn`. Filename: src/main.rs ``` fn main() { let listener = TcpListener::bind("127.0.0.1:7878").unwrap(); [1] let pool = ThreadPool::new(4); for stream in listener.incoming() { let stream = stream.unwrap(); [2] pool.execute(|| { handle_connection(stream); }); } } ``` Listing 20-12: Our ideal `ThreadPool` interface We use `ThreadPool::new` to create a new thread pool with a configurable number of threads, in this case four [1]. Then, in the `for` loop, `pool.execute` has a similar interface as `thread::spawn` in that it takes a closure the pool should run for each stream [2]. We need to implement `pool.execute` so it takes the closure and gives it to a thread in the pool to run. This code won’t yet compile, but we’ll try so the compiler can guide us in how to fix it. #### Building `ThreadPool` Using Compiler Driven Development Make the changes in Listing 20-12 to *src/main.rs*, and then let’s use the compiler errors from `cargo check` to drive our development. Here is the first error we get: ``` $ cargo check Checking hello v0.1.0 (file:///projects/hello) error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `ThreadPool` --> src/main.rs:10:16 | 10 | let pool = ThreadPool::new(4); | ^^^^^^^^^^ use of undeclared type `ThreadPool` ``` Great! This error tells us we need a `ThreadPool` type or module, so we’ll build one now. Our `ThreadPool` implementation will be independent of the kind of work our web server is doing. So, let’s switch the `hello` crate from a binary crate to a library crate to hold our `ThreadPool` implementation. After we change to a library crate, we could also use the separate thread pool library for any work we want to do using a thread pool, not just for serving web requests. Create a *src/lib.rs* that contains the following, which is the simplest definition of a `ThreadPool` struct that we can have for now: Filename: src/lib.rs ``` pub struct ThreadPool; ``` Then edit *main.rs* file to bring `ThreadPool` into scope from the library crate by adding the following code to the top of *src/main.rs*: Filename: src/main.rs ``` use hello::ThreadPool; ``` This code still won’t work, but let’s check it again to get the next error that we need to address: ``` $ cargo check Checking hello v0.1.0 (file:///projects/hello) error[E0599]: no function or associated item named `new` found for struct `ThreadPool` in the current scope --> src/bin/main.rs:11:28 | 11 | let pool = ThreadPool::new(4); | ^^^ function or associated item not found in `ThreadPool` ``` This error indicates that next we need to create an associated function named `new` for `ThreadPool`. We also know that `new` needs to have one parameter that can accept `4` as an argument and should return a `ThreadPool` instance. Let’s implement the simplest `new` function that will have those characteristics: Filename: src/lib.rs ``` pub struct ThreadPool; impl ThreadPool { pub fn new(size: usize) -> ThreadPool { ThreadPool } } ``` We chose `usize` as the type of the `size` parameter, because we know that a negative number of threads doesn’t make any sense. We also know we’ll use this 4 as the number of elements in a collection of threads, which is what the `usize` type is for, as discussed in the “Integer Types” section of Chapter 3. Let’s check the code again: ``` $ cargo check Checking hello v0.1.0 (file:///projects/hello) error[E0599]: no method named `execute` found for struct `ThreadPool` in the current scope --> src/bin/main.rs:16:14 | 16 | pool.execute(|| { | ^^^^^^^ method not found in `ThreadPool` ``` Now the error occurs because we don’t have an `execute` method on `ThreadPool`. Recall from the “Creating a Finite Number of Threads” section that we decided our thread pool should have an interface similar to `thread::spawn`. In addition, we’ll implement the `execute` function so it takes the closure it’s given and gives it to an idle thread in the pool to run. We’ll define the `execute` method on `ThreadPool` to take a closure as a parameter. Recall from the “Moving Captured Values Out of the Closure and the `Fn` Traits” section in Chapter 13 that we can take closures as parameters with three different traits: `Fn`, `FnMut`, and `FnOnce`. We need to decide which kind of closure to use here. We know we’ll end up doing something similar to the standard library `thread::spawn` implementation, so we can look at what bounds the signature of `thread::spawn` has on its parameter. The documentation shows us the following: ``` pub fn spawn(f: F) -> JoinHandle where F: FnOnce() -> T, F: Send + 'static, T: Send + 'static, ``` The `F` type parameter is the one we’re concerned with here; the `T` type parameter is related to the return value, and we’re not concerned with that. We can see that `spawn` uses `FnOnce` as the trait bound on `F`. This is probably what we want as well, because we’ll eventually pass the argument we get in `execute` to `spawn`. We can be further confident that `FnOnce` is the trait we want to use because the thread for running a request will only execute that request’s closure one time, which matches the `Once` in `FnOnce`. The `F` type parameter also has the trait bound `Send` and the lifetime bound `'static`, which are useful in our situation: we need `Send` to transfer the closure from one thread to another and `'static` because we don’t know how long the thread will take to execute. Let’s create an `execute` method on `ThreadPool` that will take a generic parameter of type `F` with these bounds: Filename: src/lib.rs ``` impl ThreadPool { // --snip-- pub fn execute(&self, f: F) where F: FnOnce() [1] + Send + 'static, { } } ``` We still use the `()` after `FnOnce` [1] because this `FnOnce` represents a closure that takes no parameters and returns the unit type `()`. Just like function definitions, the return type can be omitted from the signature, but even if we have no parameters, we still need the parentheses. Again, this is the simplest implementation of the `execute` method: it does nothing, but we’re trying only to make our code compile. Let’s check it again: ``` $ cargo check Checking hello v0.1.0 (file:///projects/hello) Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.24s ``` It compiles! But note that if you try `cargo run` and make a request in the browser, you’ll see the errors in the browser that we saw at the beginning of the chapter. Our library isn’t actually calling the closure passed to `execute` yet! > Note: A saying you might hear about languages with strict compilers, such as > Haskell and Rust, is “if the code compiles, it works.” But this saying is not > universally true. Our project compiles, but it does absolutely nothing! If we > were building a real, complete project, this would be a good time to start > writing unit tests to check that the code compiles *and* has the behavior we > want. #### Validating the Number of Threads in `new` We aren’t doing anything with the parameters to `new` and `execute`. Let’s implement the bodies of these functions with the behavior we want. To start, let’s think about `new`. Earlier we chose an unsigned type for the `size` parameter, because a pool with a negative number of threads makes no sense. However, a pool with zero threads also makes no sense, yet zero is a perfectly valid `usize`. We’ll add code to check that `size` is greater than zero before we return a `ThreadPool` instance and have the program panic if it receives a zero by using the `assert!` macro, as shown in Listing 20-13. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` impl ThreadPool { /// Create a new ThreadPool. /// /// The size is the number of threads in the pool. /// [1] /// # Panics /// /// The `new` function will panic if the size is zero. pub fn new(size: usize) -> ThreadPool { [2] assert!(size > 0); ThreadPool } // --snip-- } ``` Listing 20-13: Implementing `ThreadPool::new` to panic if `size` is zero We’ve also added some documentation for our `ThreadPool` with doc comments. Note that we followed good documentation practices by adding a section that calls out the situations in which our function can panic [1], as discussed in Chapter 14. Try running `cargo doc --open` and clicking the `ThreadPool` struct to see what the generated docs for `new` look like! Instead of adding the `assert!` macro as we’ve done here [2], we could change `new` into `build` and return a `Result` like we did with `Config::build` in the I/O project in Listing 12-9. But we’ve decided in this case that trying to create a thread pool without any threads should be an unrecoverable error. If you’re feeling ambitious, try to write a function named `build` with the following signature to compare with the `new` function: ``` pub fn build(size: usize) -> Result { ``` #### Creating Space to Store the Threads Now that we have a way to know we have a valid number of threads to store in the pool, we can create those threads and store them in the `ThreadPool` struct before returning the struct. But how do we “store” a thread? Let’s take another look at the `thread::spawn` signature: ``` pub fn spawn(f: F) -> JoinHandle where F: FnOnce() -> T, F: Send + 'static, T: Send + 'static, ``` The `spawn` function returns a `JoinHandle`, where `T` is the type that the closure returns. Let’s try using `JoinHandle` too and see what happens. In our case, the closures we’re passing to the thread pool will handle the connection and not return anything, so `T` will be the unit type `()`. The code in Listing 20-14 will compile but doesn’t create any threads yet. We’ve changed the definition of `ThreadPool` to hold a vector of `thread::JoinHandle<()>` instances, initialized the vector with a capacity of `size`, set up a `for` loop that will run some code to create the threads, and returned a `ThreadPool` instance containing them. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` [1] use std::thread; pub struct ThreadPool { [2] threads: Vec>, } impl ThreadPool { // --snip-- pub fn new(size: usize) -> ThreadPool { assert!(size > 0); [3] let mut threads = Vec::with_capacity(size); for _ in 0..size { // create some threads and store them in the vector } ThreadPool { threads } } // --snip-- } ``` Listing 20-14: Creating a vector for `ThreadPool` to hold the threads We’ve brought `std::thread` into scope in the library crate [1], because we’re using `thread::JoinHandle` as the type of the items in the vector in `ThreadPool` [2]. Once a valid size is received, our `ThreadPool` creates a new vector that can hold `size` items [3]. The `with_capacity` function performs the same task as `Vec::new` but with an important difference: it preallocates space in the vector. Because we know we need to store `size` elements in the vector, doing this allocation up front is slightly more efficient than using `Vec::new`, which resizes itself as elements are inserted. When you run `cargo check` again, it should succeed. #### A `Worker` Struct Responsible for Sending Code from the `ThreadPool` to a Thread We left a comment in the `for` loop in Listing 20-14 regarding the creation of threads. Here, we’ll look at how we actually create threads. The standard library provides `thread::spawn` as a way to create threads, and `thread::spawn` expects to get some code the thread should run as soon as the thread is created. However, in our case, we want to create the threads and have them *wait* for code that we’ll send later. The standard library’s implementation of threads doesn’t include any way to do that; we have to implement it manually. We’ll implement this behavior by introducing a new data structure between the `ThreadPool` and the threads that will manage this new behavior. We’ll call this data structure *Worker*, which is a common term in pooling implementations. The Worker picks up code that needs to be run and runs the code in the Worker’s thread. Think of people working in the kitchen at a restaurant: the workers wait until orders come in from customers, and then they’re responsible for taking those orders and filling them. Instead of storing a vector of `JoinHandle<()>` instances in the thread pool, we’ll store instances of the `Worker` struct. Each `Worker` will store a single `JoinHandle<()>` instance. Then we’ll implement a method on `Worker` that will take a closure of code to run and send it to the already running thread for execution. We’ll also give each worker an `id` so we can distinguish between the different workers in the pool when logging or debugging. Here is the new process that will happen when we create a `ThreadPool`. We’ll implement the code that sends the closure to the thread after we have `Worker` set up in this way: 1. Define a `Worker` struct that holds an `id` and a `JoinHandle<()>`. 2. Change `ThreadPool` to hold a vector of `Worker` instances. 3. Define a `Worker::new` function that takes an `id` number and returns a `Worker` instance that holds the `id` and a thread spawned with an empty closure. 4. In `ThreadPool::new`, use the `for` loop counter to generate an `id`, create a new `Worker` with that `id`, and store the worker in the vector. If you’re up for a challenge, try implementing these changes on your own before looking at the code in Listing 20-15. Ready? Here is Listing 20-15 with one way to make the preceding modifications. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` use std::thread; pub struct ThreadPool { [1] workers: Vec, } impl ThreadPool { // --snip-- pub fn new(size: usize) -> ThreadPool { assert!(size > 0); let mut workers = Vec::with_capacity(size); [2] for id in 0..size { [3] workers.push(Worker::new(id)); } ThreadPool { workers } } // --snip-- } [4] struct Worker { id: usize, thread: thread::JoinHandle<()>, } impl Worker { [5] fn new(id: usize) -> Worker { [6] let thread = thread::spawn(|| {}); Worker { [7] id, [8] thread } } } ``` Listing 20-15: Modifying `ThreadPool` to hold `Worker` instances instead of holding threads directly We’ve changed the name of the field on `ThreadPool` from `threads` to `workers` because it’s now holding `Worker` instances instead of `JoinHandle<()>` instances [1]. We use the counter in the `for` loop [2] as an argument to `Worker::new`, and we store each new `Worker` in the vector named `workers` [3]. External code (like our server in *src/main.rs*) doesn’t need to know the implementation details regarding using a `Worker` struct within `ThreadPool`, so we make the `Worker` struct [4] and its `new` function [5] private. The `Worker::new` function uses the `id` we give it [7] and stores a `JoinHandle<()>` instance [8] that is created by spawning a new thread using an empty closure [6]. > Note: If the operating system can’t create a thread because there aren’t > enough system resources, `thread::spawn` will panic. That will cause our > whole server to panic, even though the creation of some threads might > succeed. For simplicity’s sake, this behavior is fine, but in a production > thread pool implementation, you’d likely want to use `std::thread::Builder` > and its `spawn` method that returns `Result` instead. This code will compile and will store the number of `Worker` instances we specified as an argument to `ThreadPool::new`. But we’re *still* not processing the closure that we get in `execute`. Let’s look at how to do that next. #### Sending Requests to Threads via Channels The next problem we’ll tackle is that the closures given to `thread::spawn` do absolutely nothing. Currently, we get the closure we want to execute in the `execute` method. But we need to give `thread::spawn` a closure to run when we create each `Worker` during the creation of the `ThreadPool`. We want the `Worker` structs that we just created to fetch the code to run from a queue held in the `ThreadPool` and send that code to its thread to run. The channels we learned about in Chapter 16—a simple way to communicate between two threads—would be perfect for this use case. We’ll use a channel to function as the queue of jobs, and `execute` will send a job from the `ThreadPool` to the `Worker` instances, which will send the job to its thread. Here is the plan: 1. The `ThreadPool` will create a channel and hold on to the sender. 2. Each `Worker` will hold on to the receiver. 3. We’ll create a new `Job` struct that will hold the closures we want to send down the channel. 4. The `execute` method will send the job it wants to execute through the sender. 5. In its thread, the `Worker` will loop over its receiver and execute the closures of any jobs it receives. Let’s start by creating a channel in `ThreadPool::new` and holding the sender in the `ThreadPool` instance, as shown in Listing 20-16. The `Job` struct doesn’t hold anything for now but will be the type of item we’re sending down the channel. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` use std::{sync::mpsc, thread}; pub struct ThreadPool { workers: Vec, sender: mpsc::Sender, } struct Job; impl ThreadPool { // --snip-- pub fn new(size: usize) -> ThreadPool { assert!(size > 0); [1] let (sender, receiver) = mpsc::channel(); let mut workers = Vec::with_capacity(size); for id in 0..size { workers.push(Worker::new(id)); } ThreadPool { workers, [2] sender } } // --snip-- } ``` Listing 20-16: Modifying `ThreadPool` to store the sender of a channel that transmits `Job` instances In `ThreadPool::new`, we create our new channel [1] and have the pool hold the sender [2]. This will successfully compile. Let’s try passing a receiver of the channel into each worker as the thread pool creates the channel. We know we want to use the receiver in the thread that the workers spawn, so we’ll reference the `receiver` parameter in the closure. The code in Listing 20-17 won’t quite compile yet. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` impl ThreadPool { // --snip-- pub fn new(size: usize) -> ThreadPool { assert!(size > 0); let (sender, receiver) = mpsc::channel(); let mut workers = Vec::with_capacity(size); for id in 0..size { [1] workers.push(Worker::new(id, receiver)); } ThreadPool { workers, sender } } // --snip-- } // --snip-- impl Worker { fn new(id: usize, receiver: mpsc::Receiver) -> Worker { let thread = thread::spawn(|| { [2] receiver; }); Worker { id, thread } } } ``` Listing 20-17: Passing the receiver to the workers We’ve made some small and straightforward changes: we pass the receiver into `Worker::new` [1], and then we use it inside the closure [2]. When we try to check this code, we get this error: ``` $ cargo check Checking hello v0.1.0 (file:///projects/hello) error[E0382]: use of moved value: `receiver` --> src/lib.rs:27:42 | 22 | let (sender, receiver) = mpsc::channel(); | -------- move occurs because `receiver` has type `std::sync::mpsc::Receiver`, which does not implement the `Copy` trait ... 27 | workers.push(Worker::new(id, receiver)); | ^^^^^^^^ value moved here, in previous iteration of loop ``` The code is trying to pass `receiver` to multiple `Worker` instances. This won’t work, as you’ll recall from Chapter 16: the channel implementation that Rust provides is multiple *producer*, single *consumer*. This means we can’t just clone the consuming end of the channel to fix this code. We also don’t want to send a message multiple times to multiple consumers; we want one list of messages with multiple workers such that each message gets processed once. Additionally, taking a job off the channel queue involves mutating the `receiver`, so the threads need a safe way to share and modify `receiver`; otherwise, we might get race conditions (as covered in Chapter 16). Recall the thread-safe smart pointers discussed in Chapter 16: to share ownership across multiple threads and allow the threads to mutate the value, we need to use `Arc>`. The `Arc` type will let multiple workers own the receiver, and `Mutex` will ensure that only one worker gets a job from the receiver at a time. Listing 20-18 shows the changes we need to make. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` use std::{ sync::{mpsc, Arc, Mutex}, thread, }; // --snip-- impl ThreadPool { // --snip-- pub fn new(size: usize) -> ThreadPool { assert!(size > 0); let (sender, receiver) = mpsc::channel(); [1] let receiver = Arc::new(Mutex::new(receiver)); let mut workers = Vec::with_capacity(size); for id in 0..size { workers.push(Worker::new(id, Arc::clone(&receiver)[2])); } ThreadPool { workers, sender } } // --snip-- } // --snip-- impl Worker { fn new(id: usize, receiver: Arc>>) -> Worker { // --snip-- } } ``` Listing 20-18: Sharing the receiver among the workers using `Arc` and `Mutex` In `ThreadPool::new`, we put the receiver in an `Arc` and a `Mutex` [1]. For each new worker, we clone the `Arc` to bump the reference count so the workers can share ownership of the receiver [2]. With these changes, the code compiles! We’re getting there! #### Implementing the `execute` Method Let’s finally implement the `execute` method on `ThreadPool`. We’ll also change `Job` from a struct to a type alias for a trait object that holds the type of closure that `execute` receives. As discussed in the “Creating Type Synonyms with Type Aliases” section of Chapter 19, type aliases allow us to make long types shorter for ease of use. Look at Listing 20-19. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` // --snip-- type Job = Box; impl ThreadPool { // --snip-- pub fn execute(&self, f: F) where F: FnOnce() + Send + 'static, { [1] let job = Box::new(f); [2] self.sender.send(job).unwrap(); } } // --snip-- ``` Listing 20-19: Creating a `Job` type alias for a `Box` that holds each closure and then sending the job down the channel After creating a new `Job` instance using the closure we get in `execute` [1], we send that job down the sending end of the channel [2]. We’re calling `unwrap` on `send` for the case that sending fails. This might happen if, for example, we stop all our threads from executing, meaning the receiving end has stopped receiving new messages. At the moment, we can’t stop our threads from executing: our threads continue executing as long as the pool exists. The reason we use `unwrap` is that we know the failure case won’t happen, but the compiler doesn’t know that. But we’re not quite done yet! In the worker, our closure being passed to `thread::spawn` still only *references* the receiving end of the channel. Instead, we need the closure to loop forever, asking the receiving end of the channel for a job and running the job when it gets one. Let’s make the change shown in Listing 20-20 to `Worker::new`. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` // --snip-- impl Worker { fn new(id: usize, receiver: Arc>>) -> Worker { let thread = thread::spawn(move || loop { let job = receiver.lock()[1].unwrap()[2].recv()[3].unwrap()[4]; println!("Worker {id} got a job; executing."); job(); }); Worker { id, thread } } } ``` Listing 20-20: Receiving and executing the jobs in the worker’s thread Here, we first call `lock` on the `receiver` to acquire the mutex [1], and then we call `unwrap` to panic on any errors [2]. Acquiring a lock might fail if the mutex is in a *poisoned* state, which can happen if some other thread panicked while holding the lock rather than releasing the lock. In this situation, calling `unwrap` to have this thread panic is the correct action to take. Feel free to change this `unwrap` to an `expect` with an error message that is meaningful to you. If we get the lock on the mutex, we call `recv` to receive a `Job` from the channel [3]. A final `unwrap` moves past any errors here as well [4], which might occur if the thread holding the sender has shut down, similar to how the `send` method returns `Err` if the receiver shuts down. The call to `recv` blocks, so if there is no job yet, the current thread will wait until a job becomes available. The `Mutex` ensures that only one `Worker` thread at a time is trying to request a job. Our thread pool is now in a working state! Give it a `cargo run` and make some requests: ``` $ cargo run Compiling hello v0.1.0 (file:///projects/hello) warning: field is never read: `workers` --> src/lib.rs:7:5 | 7 | workers: Vec, | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | = note: `#[warn(dead_code)]` on by default warning: field is never read: `id` --> src/lib.rs:48:5 | 48 | id: usize, | ^^^^^^^^^ warning: field is never read: `thread` --> src/lib.rs:49:5 | 49 | thread: thread::JoinHandle<()>, | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ warning: `hello` (lib) generated 3 warnings Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 1.40s Running `target/debug/hello` Worker 0 got a job; executing. Worker 2 got a job; executing. Worker 1 got a job; executing. Worker 3 got a job; executing. Worker 0 got a job; executing. Worker 2 got a job; executing. Worker 1 got a job; executing. Worker 3 got a job; executing. Worker 0 got a job; executing. Worker 2 got a job; executing. ``` Success! We now have a thread pool that executes connections asynchronously. There are never more than four threads created, so our system won’t get overloaded if the server receives a lot of requests. If we make a request to */sleep*, the server will be able to serve other requests by having another thread run them. > Note: if you open */sleep* in multiple browser windows simultaneously, they > might load one at a time in 5 second intervals. Some web browsers execute > multiple instances of the same request sequentially for caching reasons. This > limitation is not caused by our web server. After learning about the `while let` loop in Chapter 18, you might be wondering why we didn’t write the worker thread code as shown in Listing 20-21. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` // --snip-- impl Worker { fn new(id: usize, receiver: Arc>>) -> Worker { let thread = thread::spawn(move || { while let Ok(job) = receiver.lock().unwrap().recv() { println!("Worker {id} got a job; executing."); job(); } }); Worker { id, thread } } } ``` Listing 20-21: An alternative implementation of `Worker::new` using `while let` This code compiles and runs but doesn’t result in the desired threading behavior: a slow request will still cause other requests to wait to be processed. The reason is somewhat subtle: the `Mutex` struct has no public `unlock` method because the ownership of the lock is based on the lifetime of the `MutexGuard` within the `LockResult>` that the `lock` method returns. At compile time, the borrow checker can then enforce the rule that a resource guarded by a `Mutex` cannot be accessed unless we hold the lock. However, this implementation can also result in the lock being held longer than intended if we aren’t mindful of the lifetime of the `MutexGuard`. The code in Listing 20-20 that uses `let job = receiver.lock().unwrap().recv().unwrap();` works because with `let`, any temporary values used in the expression on the right hand side of the equals sign are immediately dropped when the `let` statement ends. However, `while let` (and `if let` and `match`) does not drop temporary values until the end of the associated block. In Listing 20-21, the lock remains held for the duration of the call to `job()`, meaning other workers cannot receive jobs. ## Graceful Shutdown and Cleanup The code in Listing 20-20 is responding to requests asynchronously through the use of a thread pool, as we intended. We get some warnings about the `workers`, `id`, and `thread` fields that we’re not using in a direct way that reminds us we’re not cleaning up anything. When we use the less elegant ctrl-c method to halt the main thread, all other threads are stopped immediately as well, even if they’re in the middle of serving a request. Next, then, we’ll implement the `Drop` trait to call `join` on each of the threads in the pool so they can finish the requests they’re working on before closing. Then we’ll implement a way to tell the threads they should stop accepting new requests and shut down. To see this code in action, we’ll modify our server to accept only two requests before gracefully shutting down its thread pool. ### Implementing the `Drop` Trait on `ThreadPool` Let’s start with implementing `Drop` on our thread pool. When the pool is dropped, our threads should all join to make sure they finish their work. Listing 20-22 shows a first attempt at a `Drop` implementation; this code won’t quite work yet. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` impl Drop for ThreadPool { fn drop(&mut self) { [1] for worker in &mut self.workers { [2] println!("Shutting down worker {}", worker.id); [3] worker.thread.join().unwrap(); } } } ``` Listing 20-22: Joining each thread when the thread pool goes out of scope First, we loop through each of the thread pool `workers` [1]. We use `&mut` for this because `self` is a mutable reference, and we also need to be able to mutate `worker`. For each worker, we print a message saying that this particular worker is shutting down [2], and then we call `join` on that worker’s thread [3]. If the call to `join` fails, we use `unwrap` to make Rust panic and go into an ungraceful shutdown. Here is the error we get when we compile this code: ``` error[E0507]: cannot move out of `worker.thread` which is behind a mutable reference --> src/lib.rs:52:13 | 52 | worker.thread.join().unwrap(); | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ move occurs because `worker.thread` has type `JoinHandle<()>`, which does not implement the `Copy` trait ``` The error tells us we can’t call `join` because we only have a mutable borrow of each `worker` and `join` takes ownership of its argument. To solve this issue, we need to move the thread out of the `Worker` instance that owns `thread` so `join` can consume the thread. We did this in Listing 17-15: if `Worker` holds an `Option>` instead, we can call the `take` method on the `Option` to move the value out of the `Some` variant and leave a `None` variant in its place. In other words, a `Worker` that is running will have a `Some` variant in `thread`, and when we want to clean up a `Worker`, we’ll replace `Some` with `None` so the `Worker` doesn’t have a thread to run. So we know we want to update the definition of `Worker` like this: Filename: src/lib.rs ``` struct Worker { id: usize, thread: Option>, } ``` Now let’s lean on the compiler to find the other places that need to change. Checking this code, we get two errors: ``` error[E0599]: no method named `join` found for enum `Option` in the current scope --> src/lib.rs:52:27 | 52 | worker.thread.join().unwrap(); | ^^^^ method not found in `Option>` error[E0308]: mismatched types --> src/lib.rs:72:22 | 72 | Worker { id, thread } | ^^^^^^ expected enum `Option`, found struct `JoinHandle` | = note: expected enum `Option>` found struct `JoinHandle<_>` help: try wrapping the expression in `Some` | 72 | Worker { id, Some(thread) } | +++++ + ``` Let’s address the second error, which points to the code at the end of `Worker::new`; we need to wrap the `thread` value in `Some` when we create a new `Worker`. Make the following changes to fix this error: Filename: src/lib.rs ``` impl Worker { fn new(id: usize, receiver: Arc>>) -> Worker { // --snip-- Worker { id, thread: Some(thread), } } } ``` The first error is in our `Drop` implementation. We mentioned earlier that we intended to call `take` on the `Option` value to move `thread` out of `worker`. The following changes will do so: Filename: src/lib.rs ``` impl Drop for ThreadPool { fn drop(&mut self) { for worker in &mut self.workers { println!("Shutting down worker {}", worker.id); [1] if let Some(thread) = worker.thread.take() { [2] thread.join().unwrap(); } } } } ``` As discussed in Chapter 17, the `take` method on `Option` takes the `Some` variant out and leaves `None` in its place. We’re using `if let` to destructure the `Some` and get the thread [1]; then we call `join` on the thread [2]. If a worker’s thread is already `None`, we know that worker has already had its thread cleaned up, so nothing happens in that case. ### Signaling to the Threads to Stop Listening for Jobs With all the changes we’ve made, our code compiles without any warnings. However, the bad news is this code doesn’t function the way we want it to yet. The key is the logic in the closures run by the threads of the `Worker` instances: at the moment, we call `join`, but that won’t shut down the threads because they `loop` forever looking for jobs. If we try to drop our `ThreadPool` with our current implementation of `drop`, the main thread will block forever waiting for the first thread to finish. To fix this problem, we’ll need a change in the the `ThreadPool` `drop` implementation and then a change in the `Worker` loop. First, we’ll change the `ThreadPool` `drop` implementation to explicitly drop the `sender` before waiting for the threads to finish. Listing 20-23 shows the changes to `ThreadPool` to explicitly drop `sender`. We use the same `Option` and `take` technique as we did with the thread to be able to move `sender` out of `ThreadPool`: Filename: src/lib.rs ``` pub struct ThreadPool { workers: Vec, sender: Option>, } // --snip-- impl ThreadPool { pub fn new(size: usize) -> ThreadPool { // --snip-- ThreadPool { workers, sender: Some(sender), } } pub fn execute(&self, f: F) where F: FnOnce() + Send + 'static, { let job = Box::new(f); self.sender.as_ref().unwrap().send(job).unwrap(); } } impl Drop for ThreadPool { fn drop(&mut self) { [1] drop(self.sender.take()); for worker in &mut self.workers { println!("Shutting down worker {}", worker.id); if let Some(thread) = worker.thread.take() { thread.join().unwrap(); } } } } ``` Listing 20-23: Explicitly drop `sender` before joining the worker threads Dropping `sender` [1] closes the channel, which indicates no more messages will be sent. When that happens, all the calls to `recv` that the workers do in the infinite loop will return an error. In Listing 20-24, we change the `Worker` loop to gracefully exit the loop in that case, which means the threads will finish when the `ThreadPool` `drop` implementation calls `join` on them. Filename: src/lib.rs ``` impl Worker { fn new(id: usize, receiver: Arc>>) -> Worker { let thread = thread::spawn(move || loop { match receiver.lock().unwrap().recv() { Ok(job) => { println!("Worker {id} got a job; executing."); job(); } Err(_) => { println!("Worker {id} disconnected; shutting down."); break; } } }); Worker { id, thread: Some(thread), } } } ``` Listing 20-24: Explicitly break out of the loop when `recv` returns an error To see this code in action, let’s modify `main` to accept only two requests before gracefully shutting down the server, as shown in Listing 20-25. Filename: src/main.rs ``` fn main() { let listener = TcpListener::bind("127.0.0.1:7878").unwrap(); let pool = ThreadPool::new(4); for stream in listener.incoming().take(2) { let stream = stream.unwrap(); pool.execute(|| { handle_connection(stream); }); } println!("Shutting down."); } ``` Listing 20-25: Shut down the server after serving two requests by exiting the loop You wouldn’t want a real-world web server to shut down after serving only two requests. This code just demonstrates that the graceful shutdown and cleanup is in working order. The `take` method is defined in the `Iterator` trait and limits the iteration to the first two items at most. The `ThreadPool` will go out of scope at the end of `main`, and the `drop` implementation will run. Start the server with `cargo run`, and make three requests. The third request should error, and in your terminal you should see output similar to this: ``` $ cargo run Compiling hello v0.1.0 (file:///projects/hello) Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 1.0s Running `target/debug/hello` Worker 0 got a job; executing. Shutting down. Shutting down worker 0 Worker 3 got a job; executing. Worker 1 disconnected; shutting down. Worker 2 disconnected; shutting down. Worker 3 disconnected; shutting down. Worker 0 disconnected; shutting down. Shutting down worker 1 Shutting down worker 2 Shutting down worker 3 ``` You might see a different ordering of workers and messages printed. We can see how this code works from the messages: workers 0 and 3 got the first two requests. The server stopped accepting connections after the second connection, and the `Drop` implementation on `ThreadPool` starts executing before worker 3 even starts its job. Dropping the `sender` disconnects all the workers and tells them to shut down. The workers each print a message when they disconnect, and then the thread pool calls `join` to wait for each worker thread to finish. Notice one interesting aspect of this particular execution: the `ThreadPool` dropped the `sender`, and before any worker received an error, we tried to join worker 0. Worker 0 had not yet gotten an error from `recv`, so the main thread blocked waiting for worker 0 to finish. In the meantime, worker 3 received a job and then all threads received an error. When worker 0 finished, the main thread waited for the rest of the workers to finish. At that point, they had all exited their loops and stopped. Congrats! We’ve now completed our project; we have a basic web server that uses a thread pool to respond asynchronously. We’re able to perform a graceful shutdown of the server, which cleans up all the threads in the pool. See *https://www.nostarch.com/Rust2021/* to download the full code for this chapter for reference. We could do more here! If you want to continue enhancing this project, here are some ideas: * Add more documentation to `ThreadPool` and its public methods. * Add tests of the library’s functionality. * Change calls to `unwrap` to more robust error handling. * Use `ThreadPool` to perform some task other than serving web requests. * Find a thread pool crate on *https://crates.io/* and implement a similar web server using the crate instead. Then compare its API and robustness to the thread pool we implemented. ## Summary Well done! You’ve made it to the end of the book! We want to thank you for joining us on this tour of Rust. You’re now ready to implement your own Rust projects and help with other peoples’ projects. Keep in mind that there is a welcoming community of other Rustaceans who would love to help you with any challenges you encounter on your Rust journey.