Implementing Your Own Event Loop From Scratch

Hello Folks,

I've always wondered how an Event Loop works.

"How does it accept a task? How does it delegate that task?"

"How does it continue accepting new tasks without pausing the execution of previously accepted tasks?"

"How does it know that a previous task has completed its execution and the result should be returned to the caller?"

Given that the Event Loop sits at the core of languages such as JavaScript and non-blocking client server Java frameworks such as Netty that are widely used in our day-to-day development, I felt that it's essential to gain a first-hand understanding of its inner workings!

And, hence, I decided to implement an Event Loop from scratch in Java!

Here's how I went ahead with it...

I started with one of the core building blocks of an Event Loop: the Event:

By definition, an Event in a software system is an entity that denotes some sort of activity or a change in the system.

This change might be introduced due a user action or it might be even triggered due a system activity that runs in the background (such as a CRON job).

Events that are produced by a system might be consumed (or processed) by the same system internally or relayed to an external system for further processing.

In either case, the event must contain sufficient information that enables its consumers to process it independently!

Hence, for the sake our implementation, we'll assume that an event holds the following fields:

public final class Event {
    public final String key;
    public final String data;
    public final boolean asynchronous;

    public Event(String key, String data, boolean asynchronous) {
        this.key = key;
        this.data = data;
        this.asynchronous = asynchronous;
    }
}

Looking at the above class, one might wonder what's the significance of the asynchronous field?

Usually, there's a single thread or a process (depending on implementation) backing an Event Loop, i.e., the code of the Event Loop is executed by this single thread or process.

For the sake of simplicity and to avoid unnecessary repetition, we'll assume that a thread is roughly equivalent to a process and henceforth shall use the term "thread" alone.

We can call this thread as the main thread.

If this main thread were to accept & execute a task by itself, it would have to block before accepting a new task, thus resulting in reduced throughput.

Hence, instead of executing the task by itself, the main thread "delegates" the task to a worker thread.

If we assume that an event is generated for each such task, we can say that the event is processed asynchronously.

However, there might be certain tasks that are extremely "lightweight", meaning executing these tasks won't consume much time, and hence, these could be executed synchronously by the main thread.

To represent such tasks, we need a differentiator in their events to treat them differently from the other tasks.

The asynchronous field in the Event class serves this purpose!

Now that we are clear with that, let's move ahead and implement the next building block (and probably the most important one), i.e., the EventLoop:

public class EventLoop {
    ...
}

Let's fill in all the details in the above class line by line...

As we know, an event loop doesn't execute all the tasks itself.

Instead, it delegates these to a worker thread that runs in the background.

But until that delegation happens the Event Loop needs to store these tasks somewhere.

And hence, it needs some sort of data structure to hold this data.

Let's declare a field called events that plays the role of an event store, like so:

public class EventLoop {
    private final Deque<Event> events;
}

For the sake of simplicity, we are assuming that the incoming tasks are prioritised for execution in a "first come, first serve" manner, and hence, the events field in the above class is of type Deque, which is a type of Queue.

Next, the Event Loop needs to know what code to execute in response to an event generated for a given task, i.e., it needs another data structure to map an event to its respective handler!

And the same can be done as shown in the following code snippet:

public class EventLoop {
    private final Deque<Event> events;
    private final Map<String, Function<String, String>> handlers;
}

The handlers field in the above code snippet is defined as a Map of String & Function, wherein the String serves as a unique identifier for an event and the Function holds the code that will serve as a handler (or a processor) for the said event.

Now that we know where to store the events and how to map them to their handlers, are we done here?

Certainly not!

Once the event handlers complete their execution, the results that they generate must be stored somewhere.

But why do we need separate storage for the results?

Why can't the results be sent directly to the callers who had submitted the tasks?

Remember that a majority of the tasks submitted to the Event Loop are executed asynchronously by worker threads that run in the background.

The sole job of these worker threads is to complete the tasks and send a signal to the main thread stating the same.

Now, what would be an effective way of signalling to the main thread that a given task is complete without making any sort of blocking call?

The answer is simple: Use another queue to store the results.

The main thread would be then periodically poll this queue to check for new results.

Let's do that by adding a new field called ‌processedEvents to our EventLoop class as follows:

public class EventLoop {
    private final Deque<Event> events;

    private final Map<String, Function<String, String>> handlers;

    private final Deque<EventResult> processedEvents;
}

Now, let's add a default constructor to the above class to initialise all the fields mentioned above:

public class EventLoop {
    private final Deque<Event> events;
    private final Map<String, Function<String, String>> handlers;
    private final Deque<EventResult> processedEvents;

    EventLoop() {
        events = new ArrayDeque<>();
        handlers = new HashMap<>();
        processedEvents = new ArrayDeque<>();
    }
}

So far so good, now that we have all the data structures in place, let's think about wiring the events with their respective handlers.

Let's add a method to the above class that does this:

public class EventLoop {
    private final Deque<Event> events;
    private final Map<String, Function<String, String>> handlers;
    private final Deque<EventResult> processedEvents;

    EventLoop() {
        events = new ArrayDeque<>();
        handlers = new HashMap<>();
        processedEvents = new ArrayDeque<>();
    }

    public EventLoop on(String key, Function<String, String> handler) {
        handlers.put(key, handler);
        return this;
    }
}

The on() method in the above code populates the handlers fields with an identifier for a given event and the code that should be executed in response to that event.

Next, we need schedule the event for execution, and that can be done by adding another method dispatch() as shown below:

public class EventLoop {
    private final Deque<Event> events;
    private final Map<String, Function<String, String>> handlers;
    private final Deque<EventResult> processedEvents;

    EventLoop() {
        events = new ArrayDeque<>();
        handlers = new HashMap<>();
        processedEvents = new ArrayDeque<>();
    }

    public EventLoop on(String key, Function<String, String> handler) {
        handlers.put(key, handler);
        return this;
    }

    public void dispatch(Event event) {
        events.add(event);
    }
}

Okay, so now we have a neat looking class with all the essential fields and the code to populate those fields.

Will this be enough?

No, not really, we still need some code that will take each event and call its event handler to execute the task for which that event was generated.

So, let's create a method called run() to do that:

public void run() {

    Event event = events.poll();

    if (event != null) {
        System.out.printf("%nReceived Event: %s%n", event.key);

        if (handlers.containsKey(event.key)) {

            var startTime = Instant.now();

            if (event.asynchronous) {
                processAsynchronously(event);
            } else {
                    processSynchronously(event);
            }

            var endTime = Instant.now();

            System.out.printf("%nEvent Loop was blocked for %s ms due to this operation %n%n",Duration.between(startTime, endTime).toMillis());

        } else {
                System.out.printf("No handler found for %s%n%n", event.key);
        }
    }

    var processedEvent = processedEvents.poll();

    if (processedEvent != null) {
        produceOutputFor(processedEvent);
    }
}

But what is this run() method doing exactly?

Let's dissect it line by line:

• The first thing that it needs to do is to check if there are any events that haven't been "processed" yet.

• And to do that, it uses the pop() method of the events field. This method removes the first event in the queue and returns it.

• It's possible that the pop() method might return nothing (null) if there are no unprocessed events, hence the run() method needs to ensure that it has retrieved a valid event before processing it further.

• If the retrieved event is valid, run() prints a message stating the same (useful for debugging purposes, of course).

• Next, it tries to find the event handler for the retrieved event in the handlers field.

• Once the event handler is found, run() needs to decide how to execute it: synchronously or asynchronously?

• To make this decision, it uses the asynchronous field of the event and invokes:

  • processAsynchronously() if asynchronous is set to true
  • processSynchronously() if asynchronous is set to false

• But what do these methods do? Let's have a look at their code:

private void processAsynchronously(Event event) {
    new Thread(() -> processedEvents.add(new EventResult(event.key, handlers.get(event.key).apply(event.data)))).start();
}

private void processSynchronously(Event event) {
    produceOutputFor(new EventResult(event.key, handlers.get(event.key).apply(event.data)));
}

• The processAsynchronously() method creates a new worker thread using the Thread class of Java and passes a lambda function (denoted by () ->) to it that acts a runnable, i.e., code that can be executed concurrently.

• And what does the lambda function do?

• Well, it creates a new instance of the EventResult class (which represents a "processed event") using the event's unique identifier, i.e., event.key and the value produced by the event handler mapped against the event and adds it to the list of processedEvents.

• The processAsynchronously() method then invokes the start() method of this newly created Thread to send a signal to the Java Virtual Machine that this thread needs to be executed without blocking the calling thread (in this case the main thread which is currently executing the code of the processAsynchronously() method).

• Here's a simplified version of the above code for better understanding:

new Thread(() -> {

    var eventHandler = handlers.get(event.key);

    var result = eventHandler.apply(event.data);

    var processedEvent = new EventResult(event.key, result);

    processedEvents.add(processedEvent);

}).start();

• In case you haven't noticed, the event handler is actually invoked using its apply() method, and the event's data is passed to it as an argument.

• But since this invocation happens inside the lambda that's passed to the new Thread instance, the main thread isn't blocked by it, and hence we can say that the event is processed "asynchronously!"

• On the other hand, the processSynchronously() simply invokes another method, produceOutputFor() with a new instance of the EventResult class.

• And the produceOutputFor() simply prints the result of the processed event as illustrated below:

private void produceOutputFor(EventResult eventResult) {
    System.out.printf("%nOutput for Event %s : %s%n", eventResult.key, eventResult.result);
}

• However, unlike the processAsynchronously() method, since the processSynchronously() method invokes the apply() method of the event handler directly in the main thread, the code contained in the event handler and the code inside the produceOutputFor() is executed by the main thread only, thereby resulting in the blocking of the main thread.

• Hence, in this case, we can say that event is executed "synchronously!"

Notice that we are capturing the startTime and endTime in the run() method above and then computing the difference between and printing it as follows:

System.out.printf("%nEvent Loop was blocked for %s ms due to this operation %n%n", Duration.between(startTime,endTime).toMillis());

We'll understand the importance of the above code once we start executing our EventLoop. Until then, let's move ahead...

This is what the final EventLoop class looks like with all the methods described so far:

package event.loop.demo;

import java.time.Duration;
import java.time.Instant;
import java.util.ArrayDeque;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Deque;
import java.util.function.Function;

public class EventLoop {
    private final Deque<Event> events;
    private final Map<String, Function<String, String>> handlers;
    private final Deque<EventResult> processedEvents;

    EventLoop() {
        events = new ArrayDeque<>();
        handlers = new HashMap<>();
        processedEvents = new ArrayDeque<>();
    }

    public EventLoop on(String key, Function<String, String> handler) {
        handlers.put(key, handler);
        return this;
    }

    public void dispatch(Event event) {
        events.add(event);
    }

    public void run() {

        Event event = events.poll();

        if (event != null) {
            System.out.printf("%nReceived Event: %s%n", event.key);

            if (handlers.containsKey(event.key)) {
                var startTime = Instant.now();

                if (event.asynchronous) {
                    processAsynchronously(event);
                } else {
                    processSynchronously(event);
                }

                var endTime = Instant.now();

                System.out.printf("%nEvent Loop was blocked for %s ms due to this operation %n%n",
                        Duration.between(startTime, endTime).toMillis());
            } else {
                System.out.printf("No handler found for %s%n%n", event.key);
            }
        }

        var processedEvent = processedEvents.poll();

        if (processedEvent != null) {
            produceOutputFor(processedEvent);
        }
    }

    private void processAsynchronously(Event event) {
        new Thread(() -> processedEvents.add(new EventResult(event.key, handlers.get(event.key).apply(event.data)))).start();
    }

    private void processSynchronously(Event event) {
        produceOutputFor(new EventResult(event.key, handlers.get(event.key).apply(event.data)));
    }

    private void produceOutputFor(EventResult eventResult) {
        System.out.printf("%nOutput for Event %s : %s%n", eventResult.key, eventResult.result);
    }
}

Now that all the basic building blocks of our Event Loop are ready, let's create a small App to put it to some use:

package event.loop.demo;

import utils.Utils;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

public class App {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        EventLoop eventLoop = new EventLoop();

        var utils = new Utils();

        try (var reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in))) {

            var eventId = 0;

            outer:
            do {
                System.out.println("What kind of task would you like to submit to the Event Loop?");
                System.out.println(" 1. Wish me Hello");
                System.out.println(" 2. Print the contents of a file named hello.txt");
                System.out.println(" 3. Retrieve the latest news from New York Times & print it");
                System.out.println(" 4. Print output of previously submitted asynchronous task");
                System.out.println(" 5. Exit!");
                System.out.print(" > ");

                var usersChoice = reader.readLine();
                var operationType = "1";

                if (utils.userHasNotChosenToExit(usersChoice) && !usersChoice.equals("4")) {

                    System.out.println("How would like to execute this operation?");
                    System.out.println(
                            " 1. Synchronously (this would block the Event Loop until the operation completes)");
                    System.out.println(" 2. Asynchronously (this won't block Event Loop in any way)");
                    System.out.print(" > ");

                    operationType = reader.readLine();
                }

                var uniqueEventKey = "";

                switch (usersChoice) {
                    case "1":
                        uniqueEventKey = utils.generateUniqueEventKey("hello", eventId++);
                        eventLoop
                                .on(uniqueEventKey, data -> String.format("Hello! %s", data))
                                .dispatch(new Event(uniqueEventKey, "How are you doing today?",
                                        utils.isAsynchronous(operationType)));
                        break;
                    case "2":
                        uniqueEventKey = utils.generateUniqueEventKey("read-file", eventId++);
                        eventLoop
                                .on(uniqueEventKey, utils::readFile)
                                .dispatch(
                                        new Event(uniqueEventKey,
                                                "hello.txt",
                                                utils.isAsynchronous(operationType)));
                        break;
                    case "3":
                        uniqueEventKey = utils.generateUniqueEventKey("fetch-latest-news", eventId++);
                        eventLoop
                                .on(uniqueEventKey, utils::fetchLatestNewsItemFromNewYorkTimes)
                                .dispatch(new Event(uniqueEventKey,
                                        System.getenv("API_KEY"),
                                        utils.isAsynchronous(operationType)));
                        break;
                    case "4": break;
                    case "5":
                    default:
                        break outer;
                }

                eventLoop.run();

            } while (true);

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Let's deep dive into the above code to understand what's happening there...

The first thing that we are doing is creating a new instance of our EventLoop class:

EventLoop eventLoop = new EventLoop();

Next, we are creating a new instance of a class called Utils that contains many utility functions as depicted below:

package utils;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import event.loop.demo.NewsItems;
import okhttp3.OkHttpClient;
import okhttp3.Request;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.Scanner;

public class Utils {

    Random random = new Random();

    public String readFile(String fileName) {
        var lines = new StringBuilder();

        var fileURL = getClass().getClassLoader().getResource(fileName);

        if (fileURL != null) {
            try (Scanner file = new Scanner(new File(fileURL.getFile()))) {

                while (file.hasNextLine()) {
                    lines.append(file.nextLine()).append(" ");
                }

            } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        return lines.toString();
    }

    public String fetchLatestNewsItemFromNewYorkTimes(String apiKey) {
        var latestNews = new StringBuilder();
        var httpClient = new OkHttpClient();

        var newsItemIndex = random.nextInt(11);

        var request = new Request.Builder()
                .url(String.format("https://api.nytimes.com/svc/topstories/v2/technology.json?api-key=%s", apiKey))
                .build();

        try {
            var response = httpClient.newCall(request).execute();

            NewsItems newsItems = new ObjectMapper().readValue(response.body().byteStream(), NewsItems.class);

            if (newsItemsAreAvailable(newsItems)) {
                latestNews.append(
                        String.format("%s - %s", newsItems.results.get(newsItemIndex).title, newsItems.results.get(newsItemIndex).byLine));
            }

        } catch (IOException e) {
            latestNews.append("Failed to get latest news");
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return latestNews.toString();
    }

    public String generateUniqueEventKey(String humanReadableEventKey, int eventCount) {
        return String.format("%s-%s", humanReadableEventKey, eventCount);
    }

    public boolean newsItemsAreAvailable(NewsItems newsItems) {
        return (newsItems != null && newsItems.results != null && !newsItems.results.isEmpty());
    }

    public boolean isAsynchronous(String operationType) {
        return operationType.equals("2");
    }
    public boolean userHasNotChosenToExit(String userChoice) {
        return !userChoice.equals("5");
    }
}

Let's have a look at each method in the Utils class to gain a better understanding of the role that it plays in the grand scheme of things:

1. readFile(fileName) - This method will try to read a file whose name is specified as a parameter. For simplicity, we have assumed that the file will be located in the resources folder of this Java project.
2. fetchLatestNewsItemFromNewYorkTimes() - This method retrieves the latest news from The New York Times website using their public API.
3. generateUniqueEventKey(humanReadableEventKey,eventCount) - This method creates a unique key for every event. It does this by using the humanReadableEventKey and the eventCount parameters that are passed to it.
4. newsItemsAreAvailable(newsItems) - This method ensures that the data returned by the The New York Times API is non-empty and non-null (we don't want any NullPointerException or IndexOutOfBoundsException to crash our code).
5. isAsynchronous(operationType) - This methods determines whether user wants the EventLoop to execute a given operation synchronously or asynchronously (we'll get more clarity on this as we proceed with the explanation of the App class).
6. userHasNotChosenToExit(userChoice) - It determines whether the end-user has chosen to exit the program or to continue further.

Coming back to the main() method in the App class, we are seeking user's input via the command line against the following choices:

 1. Wish me Hello
 2. Print the contents of a file named hello.txt
 3. Retrieve the latest news from New York Times & print it
 4. Print output of previously submitted asynchronous task
 5. Exit! 

User can choose to execute these tasks (except the last two) synchronously or asynchronously, and the methods of the Utils class described above help with the same!

When user submits a task and specifies its execution mode (synchronous or asynchronous), we submit it to the EventLoop using the following code:

eventLoop
 .on(uniqueEventKey, eventHandlerForTheTask)
 .dispatch(new Event(uniqueEventKey, eventData, utils.isAsynchronous(operationType)));

The eventHandlerForTheTask in the above code snippet is a placeholder that for the actual event handler that we create based on the type of task chosen by the user, and eventData acts as placeholder for the actual data required to perform the task.

For example, if the user chose the following task...

Retrieve the latest news from New York Times & print it

...then the code for submitting it to the event loop would look something like below:

 eventLoop
    .on(uniqueEventKey,  
       utils::fetchLatestNewsItemFromNewYorkTimes)
    .dispatch(new Event(uniqueEventKey, System.getenv("API_KEY"),  
       utils.isAsynchronous(operationType)));

In the above case, the fetchLatestNewsItemFromNewYorkTimes() method of the Utils class serves as an event handler and the API_KEY is the data that's required for retrieving the latest new from The New York Times API.

The API_KEY can be obtained from Developer Portal of the New York Times

Once the event is dispatched, we invoke the run() method of the EventLoop:

eventLoop.run();

Invoking the run() method starts a "new iteration" of the EventLoop.

Alright!

Enough with all the theory, it's time to see our EventLoop in action:

To start the execution, let's fire up the Terminal and execute the following command:

./gradlew run --console=plain

Next, let's select the first task ("Wish me Hello"):

Now, let's tell our EventLoop to execute it synchronously:

The results:

As we can see from the above screenshot, executing the first task synchronously blocked the EventLoop for about 0 ms.
Also, notice that a unique id has been assigned to the event generated for this task: hello-0

Next, let's choose the second task ("Print the contents of a file named hello.txt"):

Let's tell our EventLoop to execute it synchronously:

The results:

As we can see from the above screenshot, executing the second task synchronously blocked the EventLoop for about 9 ms or 0.009 seconds, and the unique id that's assigned to its event is read-file-1.

Next, let's choose the third task ("Retrieve the latest news from New York Times & print it"):

As with the other two tasks, we again instruct our EventLoop to execute it synchronously:

The results:

As we can see from the above screenshot, executing the event with id fetch-latest-news-2 synchronously blocked the EventLoop for about 3835 ms or 3.8 seconds.

So, it seems printing a simple message on the screen takes the smallest amount of time whereas fetching data from the Internet takes the longest!

Now, let's make one small change to the tasks that took more than 0 ms: to execute: let's switch the execution mode of these tasks to asynchronous.

Let's do this for the second task: "Print the contents of a file named hello.txt"

As we can see in the above screenshot, the EventLoop was blocked for 0 ms this time! Also, notice that this time the event id has changed to read-file-3.

But wait, where's the output of the task?

Here's the catch: since the main thread delegated the task to a worker thread, it won't have access to the output until the worker thread finishes its execution.

So, how will the main thread come to know that the worker thread has finished the execution of the task?

It will have to check the list of processedEvents and look for the results stored against the unique id of the event generated for this task: read-file-3

But in order to do this, the EventLoop will have to execute another iteration.

But how will it execute another iteration if it's waiting for the user to give it another task?

Well, it won't!

We'll have to give it a special task ("Print output of previously submitted asynchronous task") so that it is forced to execute another iteration and, in the process, picks up the result of the previous task.

This is what it looks like:

That's it, folks!

I hope you found this exercise as useful as I did.

In case anyone wants to fiddle around with the code, feel free to fork the following repo:

https://github.com/pratikgchaudhari/event-loop-demo