Events API
| Events 2 | |
|---|---|
| Project state | Implementation in progress |
| Tracker issue | MDL-39797 , MDL-39952, MDL-39846 |
| Discussion | https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=229139 |
| Assignee | Backend Team |
Locks
Locking is required whenever you need to prevent 2 processing accessing the same resource at the same time. The prime candidate for locking in Moodle is cron. This will allow multiple cron processes to work on different parts of cron at the same time with no risk that they will conflict (work on the same job at the same time).
When to use locking
When you want to prevent multiple requests from accessing the same resource at the same time. Accessing a resource is a vague description, but it could be e.g. running a slow running task in the background, running different parts of cron etc.
Performance
Locking is not meant to be fast. Do not use it in code that will be triggered many times in a single request (e.g. MUC). It is meant to be always correct - even for multiple nodes in a cluster. This implies that the locks are communicated among all the nodes in the cluster, and hence it will never be super quick.
Usage
The locking API is used by getting an instance of a lock_factory, and then using it to retrieve locks, and eventually releasing them. You are required to release all your locks, even on the event of failures.
{code}
// 5 seconds. $timeout = 5; // A namespace for the locks. Must be prefixed with the component name to prevent conflicts. $locktype = 'mod_assign_download_submissions'; // Resource key - needs to uniquely identify the resource that is to be locked. E.g. If you // want to prevent a user from running multiple course backups - include the userid in the key. $resource = 'user:' . $USER->id;
// Get an instance of the currently configured lock_factory. $lockfactory = \core\lock\lock_config::get_lock_factory('mod_assign_download_submissions');
// Open a lock. $lock = $lockfactory->get_lock($resource, $timeout);
// Do slow zip file generation...
$lock->release();
{code}
Implementing new lock types
If you really want to do this you can. I probably wouldn't recommend it - because the core lock types should be very reliable - and the performance is not really a concern.
Add a new local_XXX plugin with an autoloaded class that implements \core\lock\lock_factory. Set $config->lock_factory to the full namespaced path to your class e.g. {code} $config->lock_factory = '\\local_redis\\lock\\redis_lock_factory'; {code} Note: the extra backslashes are just required because it's a string and php insists on moronic syntax for namespaces.
