Commit f9db721c authored by Daniel Stenberg's avatar Daniel Stenberg
Browse files

update the section on timeouts

The section that describes how to work with timeouts was
misleading and could easily trick users to use the wrong API.
parent cf914597
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+9 −21
Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -16,28 +16,16 @@ Implementation of the curl_multi_socket API
  information about what socket to wait for what action on, and the callback
  only gets called if the status of that socket has changed.

  In the API draft from before, we have a timeout argument on a per socket
  basis and we also allowed curl_multi_socket_action() to pass in an 'easy
  handle' instead of socket to allow libcurl to shortcut a lookup and work on
  the affected easy handle right away. Both these turned out to be bad ideas.

  The timeout argument was removed from the socket callback since after much
  thinking I came to the conclusion that we really don't want to handle
  timeouts on a per socket basis. We need it on a per transfer (easy handle)
  basis and thus we can't provide it in the callbacks in a nice way. Instead,
  we have to offer a curl_multi_timeout() that returns the largest amount of
  time we should wait before we call the "timeout action" of libcurl, to
  trigger the proper internal timeout action on the affected transfer. To get
  this to work, I added a struct to each easy handle in which we store an
  "expire time" (if any). The structs are then "splay sorted" so that we can
  add and remove times from the linked list and yet somewhat swiftly figure
  out 1 - how long time there is until the next timer expires and 2 - which
  timer (handle) should we take care of now. Of course, the upside of all this
  is that we get a curl_multi_timeout() that should also work with old-style
  applications that use curl_multi_perform().

  We also added a timer callback that makes libcurl call the application when
  the timeout value changes, and you set that with curl_multi_setopt().
  the timeout value changes, and you set that with curl_multi_setopt() and the
  CURLMOPT_TIMERFUNCTION option. To get this to work, Internally, there's an
  added a struct to each easy handle in which we store an "expire time" (if
  any). The structs are then "splay sorted" so that we can add and remove
  times from the linked list and yet somewhat swiftly figure out both how long
  time there is until the next nearest timer expires and which timer (handle)
  we should take care of now. Of course, the upside of all this is that we get
  a curl_multi_timeout() that should also work with old-style applications
  that use curl_multi_perform().

  We created an internal "socket to easy handles" hash table that given
  a socket (file descriptor) return the easy handle that waits for action on