Technical components¶

Explanations about the technical components of the project : the ones we have created (internal), and the imported ones (external).

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Internal components¶

Agent¶

The Agent class is in the common.agent.py file.

• I - Purpose
  • Generically handles and creates the asynchronous modules
  • Uses the threading library (see below in External components) to make all modules independent
  • Provides an abstract class to be inherited

• II - Features
  • Uses a config file (pyros_agent_config.ini) to set the network communication interface of all agents
  • Provides a 'work' method to override : this is the entry method of the newly created thread (see 'How to use it' section below)
  • Provides the 'receive' and 'analyze_message' methods to generically receive messages from network and analyze them

• III - How to use it ?

  Each of these points are NECESSARY

  • Create a new class that inherits from Agent
  • In the init method, first call the init method of Agent, passing the name of the agent as second parameter (they are defined in the Agent class, eg: Agent.SCHEDULER)
  • Inside the class, define the messages your agent can receive (eg: MSG_OBS_FINISHED = "Observation finished")
  • Create a method to be called for every message you created
  • In the init, after calling the Agent's init, associate each message to its associated function in the 'self.actions_by_message' dictionary (eg: self.actions_by_message[self.MSG_OBS_FINISHED] = self.observation_finished)
  • Override the method work : this will be the entry function of the new thread, so do whatever you need. This MUST NOT be an infinite loop, because Agent's receive method will be called after this one
  • If ever needed, override the 'shutdown' method, it will be called when your agent receive the Agent.SHUTDOWN message (eg: if you created another thread in the 'work' method, you need to close it)
  • To start the agent, just instantiate your class and do MyClass.start() (the 'work' method will be called)

  The main points to understand are that you can do whatever you want (but non-blocking) in work method (like creating new threads or variables' initialization), then the only entry points are the message-associated methods

• IV - Important : pyros agents launching
  • In pyros, there is maximum 1 agent per application
  • The agent must be started at application start :
    • In the MyApp.apps.py file, create a class inheriting from django.apps.AppConfig
    • Define the 'name' attribute in it, giving it the name of the agent
    • Create a 'ready(self)' method
    • in the ready method, import your agent implementation, instantiate it and start it
      

      from django.apps import AppConfig
      
      class AlertManagerConfig(AppConfig):
          name = 'alert_manager'
      
          def ready(self):
              from alert_manager.agent import AlertManagerAgent
              self.agent = AlertManagerAgent()
              self.agent.start()
      

Sender¶

The Sender class is in the common.sender.py file

• I - Purpose
  • Send a given message to an agent

• II - Features
  • Uses the 'pyros_agent_config.ini' file to get the agents' network interface configuration (ip and port)
  • Provide a 'send_to' static method to send the messages

• III - How to use it ?
  • The targeted agent must be described in 'pyros_agent_config.ini'
  • Use Sender.send_to method, giving as first parameter the name of the targeted agent (eg: Agent.SCHEDULER), and as second parameter the message (eg: Agent.SHUTDOWN)
  • /!\ send_to is a static method, you don't need to instantiate a Sender (just do Sender.send_to(...))

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External components¶

Celery¶

• I - Purpose
  Celery is used to create and handle tasks in different processes/threads.
  Its use is very easy.

• II - Features
  • Create personalized tasks asynchronously
  • Has ETA and countdowns
  • Lots of configurations are possible

• III - How to use it ?

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Threading library¶

• I - Purpose
  • Simply create threads with basic communication
  • Allows to handle concurrent access

• II - Features

  Provides :

  • A Thread class to inherit from, with a run() method that will be called when the thread starts
  • An Event class to set/unset a boolean in order to transmit message to the thread
  • Lock and RLock object to handle concurrent access

• III - How to use it ?

  from threading import Thread, Event

  • Thread
    • Create a class inheriting from Thread
    • Override 'run' method, that will be called at thread start
    • Instantiate your class, and do MyClass.start() to create the thread
  • Event
    • Create an Event variable in your Thread-inheriting class (eg: 'self.stop_event = Event()')
    • After thread starts, you can set/unset the event by doing MyClass.stop_event.set() / .clear()
    • There are a few useful methods, see this link for further information : https://docs.python.org/3/library/threading.html#threading.Event
  • Lock / RLock
    • Still not used, see online documentation : https://docs.python.org/3/library/threading.html#lock-objects

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Socket library¶

• I - Purpose
  • Handle network communication, just giving IP and Port of the interlocutors

• II - Features
  • 'server' system to create an interface, waiting for client connections and sending / receiving data from them
  • 'client' system to connect to a server, and send/receive data from it

• III - How to use it ?
  • Server
    • Instantiate socket and wait for connections
      

      self.server_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)   # create the socket
      self.server_socket.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1) # for the port to be immediately re-usable after closing the socket
      self.server_socket.bind((self.ip, self.receive_port))                    # associate the socket to an ip and a port
      self.server_socket.listen(12)                                            # wait for connections (here, 12 connections can be simultaneously waiting for acceptance)
      

    • Accept connections
      

      conn, addr = self.server_socket.accept() # conn is a new socket created at the connection
      

    • Exchanging messages
      

      conn.send(bytes(message, 'UTF-8'))          # sending
      data = conn.recv(self.buffer_size).decode() # receiving
      

    • Closing sockets when you're done with them
      

      conn.close()
      ...
      server_socket.close()
      

  • Client
    • Instantiate the socket and connect to a server
      

      client_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
      client_socket.connect((dest_ip, dest_receive_port))
      

    • Exchanging messages
      

      client_socket.send(bytes(message, 'UTF-8'))          # sending
      data = client_socket.recv(self.buffer_size).decode() # receiving
      

    • Closing sockets when you're done with them
      

      client_socket.close()
      

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