Streamly
Streaming
Concurrent
ly
Streamly, short for streaming concurrently, provides monadic streams, with a
simple API, almost identical to standard lists, and an in-built support for
concurrency. By using stream-style combinators on stream composition,
streams can be generated, merged, chained, mapped, zipped, and consumed
concurrently – providing a generalized high level programming framework
unifying streaming and concurrency. Controlled concurrency allows even infinite
streams to be evaluated concurrently. Concurrency is auto scaled based on
feedback from the stream consumer. The programmer does not have to be aware of
threads, locking or synchronization to write scalable concurrent programs.
The basic streaming functionality of streamly is equivalent to that provided by
streaming libraries like
vector,
streaming,
pipes, and
conduit.
In addition to providing streaming functionality, streamly subsumes
the functionality of list transformer libraries like pipes
or
list-t, and also the logic
programming library logict. On
the concurrency side, it subsumes the functionality of the
async package. Because it supports
streaming with concurrency we can write FRP applications similar in concept to
Yampa or
reflex.
Why use streamly?
- Simplicity: Simple list like streaming API, if you know how to use lists
then you know how to use streamly. This library is built with simplicity
and ease of use as a design goal.
- Concurrency: Simple, powerful, and scalable concurrency. Concurrency is
built-in, and not intrusive, concurrent programs are written exactly the
same way as non-concurrent ones.
- Generality: Unifies functionality provided by several disparate packages
(streaming, concurrency, list transformer, logic programming, reactive
programming) in a concise API.
- Performance: Streamly is designed for high performance. It employs stream
fusion optimizations for best possible performance. Serial peformance is
equivalent to the venerable
vector
library in most cases and even better
in some cases. Concurrent performance is unbeatable. See
streaming-benchmarks
for a comparison of popular streaming libraries on micro-benchmarks.
The following chart shows a summary of the cost of key streaming operations
processing a million elements. The timings for streamly and vector are in the
600-700 microseconds range and therefore can barely be seen in the graph.
For more details on streaming library ecosystem and where streamly fits in,
please see
streaming libraries.
Also, see the Comparison with Existing
Packages
section in the streamly tutorial.
For more information on streamly, see:
- Streamly.Tutorial module in the haddock documentation for a detailed introduction
- examples directory in the package for some simple practical examples
Streaming Pipelines
Unlike pipes
or conduit
and like vector
and streaming
, streamly
composes stream data instead of stream processors (functions). A stream is
just like a list and is explicitly passed around to functions that process the
stream. Therefore, no special operator is needed to join stages in a streaming
pipeline, just the standard function application ($
) or reverse function
application (&
) operator is enough. Combinators are provided in
Streamly.Prelude
to transform or fold streams.
The following snippet provides a simple stream composition example that reads
numbers from stdin, prints the squares of even numbers and exits if an even
number more than 9 is entered.
import Streamly
import qualified Streamly.Prelude as S
import Data.Function ((&))
main = runStream $
S.repeatM getLine
& fmap read
& S.filter even
& S.takeWhile (<= 9)
& fmap (\x -> x * x)
& S.mapM print
Concurrent Stream Generation
Monadic construction and generation functions e.g. consM
, unfoldrM
,
replicateM
, repeatM
, iterateM
and fromFoldableM
etc. work concurrently
when used with appropriate stream type combinator (e.g. asyncly
, aheadly
or
parallely
).
The following code finishes in 3 seconds (6 seconds when serial):
> let p n = threadDelay (n * 1000000) >> return n
> S.toList $ aheadly $ p 3 |: p 2 |: p 1 |: S.nil
[3,2,1]
> S.toList $ parallely $ p 3 |: p 2 |: p 1 |: S.nil
[1,2,3]
The following finishes in 10 seconds (100 seconds when serial):
runStream $ asyncly $ S.replicateM 10 $ p 10
Concurrent Streaming Pipelines
Use |&
or |$
to apply stream processing functions concurrently. The
following example prints a "hello" every second; if you use &
instead of
|&
you will see that the delay doubles to 2 seconds instead because of serial
application.
main = runStream $
S.repeatM (threadDelay 1000000 >> return "hello")
|& S.mapM (\x -> threadDelay 1000000 >> putStrLn x)
Mapping Concurrently
We can use mapM
or sequence
functions concurrently on a stream.
> let p n = threadDelay (n * 1000000) >> return n
> runStream $ aheadly $ S.mapM (\x -> p 1 >> print x) (serially $ repeatM (p 1))
Serial and Concurrent Merging
Semigroup and Monoid instances can be used to fold streams serially or
concurrently. In the following example we compose ten actions in the
stream, each with a delay of 1 to 10 seconds, respectively. Since all the
actions are concurrent we see one output printed every second:
import Streamly
import qualified Streamly.Prelude as S
import Control.Concurrent (threadDelay)
main = S.toList $ parallely $ foldMap delay [1..10]
where delay n = S.yieldM $ threadDelay (n * 1000000) >> print n
Streams can be combined together in many ways. We provide some examples
below, see the tutorial for more ways. We use the following delay
function in the examples to demonstrate the concurrency aspects:
import Streamly
import qualified Streamly.Prelude as S
import Control.Concurrent
delay n = S.yieldM $ do
threadDelay (n * 1000000)
tid <- myThreadId
putStrLn (show tid ++ ": Delay " ++ show n)
Serial
main = runStream $ delay 3 <> delay 2 <> delay 1
ThreadId 36: Delay 3
ThreadId 36: Delay 2
ThreadId 36: Delay 1
Parallel
main = runStream . parallely $ delay 3 <> delay 2 <> delay 1
ThreadId 42: Delay 1
ThreadId 41: Delay 2
ThreadId 40: Delay 3
The monad instance composes like a list monad.
import Streamly
import qualified Streamly.Prelude as S
loops = do
x <- S.fromFoldable [1,2]
y <- S.fromFoldable [3,4]
S.yieldM $ putStrLn $ show (x, y)
main = runStream loops
(1,3)
(1,4)
(2,3)
(2,4)
Concurrent Nested Loops
To run the above code with, lookahead style concurrency i.e. each iteration in
the loop can run run concurrently by but the results are presented in the same
order as serial execution:
main = runStream $ aheadly $ loops
To run it with depth first concurrency yielding results asynchronously in the
same order as they become available (deep async composition):
main = runStream $ asyncly $ loops
To run it with breadth first concurrency and yeilding results asynchronously
(wide async composition):
main = runStream $ wAsyncly $ loops
The above streams provide lazy/demand-driven concurrency which is automatically
scaled as per demand and is controlled/bounded so that it can be used on
infinite streams. The following combinator provides strict, unbounded
concurrency irrespective of demand:
main = runStream $ parallely $ loops
To run it serially but interleaving the outer and inner loop iterations
(breadth first serial):
main = runStream $ wSerially $ loops
Magical Concurrency
Streams can perform semigroup (<>) and monadic bind (>>=) operations
concurrently using combinators like asyncly
, parallelly
. For example,
to concurrently generate squares of a stream of numbers and then concurrently
sum the square roots of all combinations of two streams:
import Streamly
import qualified Streamly.Prelude as S
main = do
s <- S.sum $ asyncly $ do
-- Each square is performed concurrently, (<>) is concurrent
x2 <- foldMap (\x -> return $ x * x) [1..100]
y2 <- foldMap (\y -> return $ y * y) [1..100]
-- Each addition is performed concurrently, monadic bind is concurrent
return $ sqrt (x2 + y2)
print s
Of course, the actions running in parallel could be arbitrary IO actions. For
example, to concurrently list the contents of a directory tree recursively:
import Path.IO (listDir, getCurrentDir)
import Streamly
import qualified Streamly.Prelude as S
main = runStream $ aheadly $ getCurrentDir >>= readdir
where readdir d = do
(dirs, files) <- S.yieldM $ listDir d
S.yieldM $ mapM_ putStrLn $ map show files
-- read the subdirs concurrently, (<>) is concurrent
foldMap readdir dirs
In the above examples we do not think in terms of threads, locking or
synchronization, rather we think in terms of what can run in parallel, the rest
is taken care of automatically. When using aheadly
the programmer does
not have to worry about how many threads are to be created, they are
automatically adjusted based on the demand of the consumer.
The concurrency facilities provided by streamly can be compared with
OpenMP and
Cilk but with a more declarative
expression.
Rate Limiting
For bounded concurrent streams, stream yield rate can be specified. For
example, to print hello once every second you can simply write this:
import Streamly
import Streamly.Prelude as S
main = runStream $ asyncly $ avgRate 1 $ S.repeatM $ putStrLn "hello"
For some practical uses of rate control, see
AcidRain.hs
and
CirclingSquare.hs
.
Concurrency of the stream is automatically controlled to match the specified
rate. Rate control works precisely even at throughputs as high as millions of
yields per second. For more sophisticated rate control see the haddock
documentation.
Reactive Programming (FRP)
Streamly is a foundation for first class reactive programming as well by virtue
of integrating concurrency and streaming. See
AcidRain.hs
for a console based FRP game example and
CirclingSquare.hs
for an SDL based animation example.
Contributing
The code is available under BSD-3 license
on github. Join the
gitter chat channel for discussions.
You can find some of the
todo items on the github wiki.
Please ask on the gitter channel or contact the maintainer directly
for more details on each item. All contributions are welcome!
This library was originally inspired by the transient
package authored by
Alberto G. Corona.