smax-clib

C/C++ client library for SMA-X structured data exchange

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C/C++ client library and toolkit for the SMA Exchange (SMA-X) structured real-time database

Author: Attila Kovacs

Last Updated: 18 September 2024

Table of Contents

Introduction

The SMA Exchange (SMA-X) is a free, high performance, and versatile real-time data sharing platform for distributed software systems. It is built around a central Redis (or equivalent) database, and provides efficient atomic access to structured data, including specific branches and/or leaf nodes, with associated metadata. SMA-X was developed at the Submillimeter Array (SMA) observatory, where we use it to share real-time data among hundreds of computers and nearly a thousand individual programs. The smax-clib library is free to use, in any way you like, without licensing restrictions.

SMA-X consists of a set of server-side LUA scripts that run on Redis (or one of its forks / clones such as Valkey or Dragonfly); a set of libraries to interface client applications; and a set of command-line tools built with them. Currently we provide client libraries for C/C++ (C99) and Python 3. We may provide Java and/or Rust client libraries too in the future.

There are no official releases of smax-clib yet. An initial 1.0.0 release is expected early/mid 2025. Before then the API may undergo slight changes and tweaks. Use the repository as is at your own risk for now.

Prerequisites

The SMA-X C/C++ library has a build and runtime dependency on the xchange and RedisX libraries also available at the Smithsonian Github repositories:

Additionally, to configure your Redis (or Valkey / Dragonfly) servers for SMA-X, you will need the Smithsonian/smax-server repo also.

Building the SMA-X C library

The smax-clib library can be built either as a shared (libsmax.so[.1]) and as a static (libsmax.a) library, depending on what suits your needs best.

You can configure the build, either by editing config.mk or else by defining the relevant environment variables prior to invoking make. The following build variables can be configured:

  • CC: The C compiler to use (default: gcc).

  • CPPFLAGS: C preprocessor flags, such as externally defined compiler constants.

  • CFLAGS: Flags to pass onto the C compiler (default: -Os -Wall -std=c99). Note, -Iinclude will be added automatically.

  • LDFLAGS: Extra linker flags (default: not set). Note, -lm -lredisx -lxchange -pthread will be added automatically.

  • BUILD_MODE: You can set it to debug to enable debugging features: it will initialize the global xDebug variable to TRUE and add -g to CFLAGS.

  • CHECKEXTRA: Extra options to pass to cppcheck for the make check target

  • XCHANGE: If the Smithsonian/xchange library is not installed on your system (e.g. under /usr) set XCHANGE to where the distribution can be found. The build will expect to find xchange.h under $(XCHANGE)/include and libxchange.so / libxchange.a under $(XCHANGE)/lib or else in the default LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

  • REDISX: If the Smithsonian/redisx library is not installed on your system (e.g. under /usr) set REDISX to where the distribution can be found. The build will expect to find redisx.h under $(REDISX)/include and libredisx.so / libredisx.a under $(REDISX)/lib or else in the default LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

After configuring, you can simply run make, which will build the shared (lib/libsmax.so[.1]) and static (lib/libsmax.a) libraries, local HTML documentation (provided doxygen is available), and performs static analysis via the check target. Or, you may build just the components you are interested in, by specifying the desired make target(s). (You can use make help to get a summary of the available make targets).

After building the library you can install the above components to the desired locations on your system. For a system-wide install you may simply run:

  $ sudo make install

Or, to install in some other locations, you may set a prefix and/or DESTDIR. For example, to install under /opt instead, you can:

  $ sudo make prefix="/opt" install

Or, to stage the installation (to /usr) under a ‘build root’:

  $ make DESTDIR="/tmp/stage" install

Linking your application against smax-clib

Provided you have installed the shared (libsmax.so, libredisx.so, and libxchange.so) or static (libsmax.a, libredisx.a, and libxchange.so) libraries in a location that is in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH (e.g. in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib) you can simply link your program using the -lsmax -lredisx -lxchange flags. Your Makefile may look like:

myprog: ...
	cc -o $@ $^ $(LDFLAGS) -lsmax -lredisx -lxchange

(Or, you might simply add -lsmax -lredisx -lxchange to LDFLAGS and use a more standard recipe.) And, in if you installed the smax-clib, RedisX, and/or xchange libraries elsewhere, you can simply add their location(s) to LD_LIBRARY_PATH prior to linking.

Command-line tools

The smax-clib library provides two basic command-line tools:

  • smaxValue – for exploring the contents of SMA-X, including associated metadata, and
  • smaxWrite – for putting data into SMA-X from the shell.

The tools can be compiled with make tools. Both tools can be run with the --help option for a simple help screen on usage. E.g.:

  $ smaxValue --help

These command-line tools provide a simple means to interact with SMA-X from the shell or a scripting language, such as bash, or perl (also python though we recommend to use the native Smithsonian/smax-python library instead).

Initial configuration

Bu default, the library assumes that the Redis server used for SMA-X runs on a machine called smax (e.g. you may assign smax to the IP address in /etc/hosts), and that the Redis is on the default port 6379/tcp. However, you can configure to use a specific host and/or an alternative Redis port number to use instead.

  smaxSetServer("my-smax.example.com", 7033);

Also, while SMA-X will normally run on database index 0, you can also specify a different database number to use. E.g.:

  smaxSetDB(3);

(Note, you can switch the database later also, but beware that if you have an active subscription client open, you cannot switch that client until the subscriptions are terminated.)

You can also set up the authentication credentials for using the SMA-X database on the Redis server:

  smaxSetUser("johndoe");
  smaxSetPassword(mySecretPassword);

By default smax_clib will connect both an interactive and a pipeline (high-throughput) Redis client. However, if you are planning to only use interactive mode (for setting an queries), you might not want to connect the pipeline client at all:

  smaxSetPipelined(FALSE);

And finally, you can select the option to automatically try reconnect to the SMA-X server in case of lost connection or network errors (and keep track of changes locally until then):

  smaxSetResilient(TRUE);

Connecting to / disconnecting from SMA-X

Once you have configured the connection parameters, you can connect to the server by:

  int status = smaxConnect();
  if(status < 0) {
     // Oops, we could not connect to the server
     ...
  }

And, when you are done, you should disconnect with:

  smaxDisconnect();

Connection / disconnection hooks

The user of the smax-clib library might want to know when connections to the SMA-X server are established, or when disconnections happen, and may want to perform some configuration or clean-up accordingly. For this reason, the library provides support for connection hooks – that is custom functions that are called in the even of connecting to or disconnecting from a Redis server.

Here is an example of a connection hook, which simply prints a message about the connection to the console.

  void my_connect_hook() {
     printf("Connected to SMA-X server\n");
  }

And, it can be activated prior to the smaxConnect() call.

  smaxAddConnectHook(my_connect_hook);

The same goes for disconnect hooks, using smaxAddDisconnectHook() instead.

Sharing and pulling data

The basics

For SMA-X we use the terms sharing and pulling, instead of the more generic get/set terminology. The intention is to make programmers conscious of the fact that the transactions are not some local access to memory, but that they involve networking, and as such may be subject to unpredictable latencies, network outages, or other errors.

At the lowest level, the library provides two functions accordingly: smaxShare() and smaxPull(), either to send local data to store in SMA-X, or to retrieve data from SMA-X for local use, respectively. There are higher-level functions too, which build on these, providing a simpler API for specific data types, or extra features, such as lazy or pipelined pulls. These will be discussed in the sections below. But, before that, let’s look into the basics of how data is handled between you machine local data that you use in your C/C++ application and its machine-independent representation in SMA-X.

Here is an example for a generic sharing of a double[] array from C/C++:

  double data[8] = ...   // your local data

  // Share (send) this data to SMA-X as "system:subsystem:some_data"
  int status = smaxShare("system:subsystem", "some_data", X_DOUBLE, 8);
  if(status < 0) {
    // Ooops, that did not work...
    ...
  }

Pulling data back from SMA-X works similarly, e.g.:

  double data[4][2] = ...   // buffer in which we will receive data
  XMeta meta;               // (optional) metadata we can obtain 
  
  // Retrieve 'data' from the SMA-X "system:subsystem:some_data", as 8 doubles
  int status = smaxPull("system:subsystem", "some_data", X_DOUBLE, 8, data, &meta);
  if(status < 0) {
    // Oops, something went wrong...
    return;
  }

The metadata argument is optional, and can be NULL if not required.

Standard metadata

For every variable (structure or leaf node) in SMA-X there is also a set of essential metadata that is stored in the Redis database, which describe the data themselves, such as the native type (at the origin); the size as stored in Redis; the array dimension and shape; the host (and program) which provided the data; the time it was last updated; and a serial number.

The user of the library has the option to retrieve metadata together with the actual data, and thus gain access to this information. The header file smax.h defines the Xmeta type as:

  typedef struct XMeta {
    int status;                       // Error code or X_SUCCESS.
    XType storeType;                  // Type of variable as stored.
    int storeDim;                     // Dimensionality of the data as stored.
    int storeSizes[X_MAX_DIMS];       // Sizes along each dimension of the data as stored.
    int storeBytes;                   // Total number of bytes stored.
    char origin[SMAX_ORIGIN_LENGTH];  // Host name that last modified.
    struct timespec timestamp;        // Timestamp of the last modification.
    int serial;                       // Number of times the variable was updated.
  } XMeta;

Flexible types and sizes

One nifty feature of the library is that as a consumer you need not be too concerned about what type or size of data the producer provides. The program that produces the data may sometimes change, for example from writing 32-bit floating point types to a 64-bit floating point types. Also while it produced data for say 10 units before (as an array of 10), now it might report for just 9, or perhaps it now reports for 12.

The point is that if your consumer application was written to expect ten 32-bit floating floating point values, it can get that even if the producer changed the exact type or element count since you have written your client. The library will simply apply the necessary type conversion automatically, and then truncate, or else pad (with zeroes), the data as necessary to get what you want.

The type conversion can be both widening or narrowing. Strings and numerical values can be converted to one another through the expected string representation of numbers and vice versa. Boolean true values are treated equivalently to a numerical value of 1 and all non-zero numerical values will convert to boolean true.

And, if you are concerned about the actual type or size (or shape) of the data stored, you have the option to inspect the metadata, and make decisions based on it. Otherwise, the library will just take care of giving you the available data in the format you expect.

Scalar quantities

Often enough we deal with scalar quantities (not arrays), such as a single number, boolean value, or a string (yes, we treat strings i.e., char *, as a scalar too!).

Here are some examples of sharing scalars to SMA-X. Easy-peasy:

  int status;

  // Put a boolean value into SMA-X
  status = smaxShareBoolean("system:subsystem", "is_online", TRUE);

  // Put an integer value into SMA-X
  status = smaxShareInt("system:subsystem", "some_int_value", 1012);
  
  // Put a floating-point value into SMA-X
  status = smaxShareDouble("system:subsystem", "some_value", -3.4032e-11);

  // Put a string value into SMA-X
  status = smaxShareString("system:subsystem", "name", "blah-blah");

Or pulling them from SMA-X:

  // Retrieve "system:subsystem:is_online" as a boolean, defaulting to FALSE
  boolean isTrue = smaxPullBoolean("system:subsystem", "is_online", FALSE);

  // Retrieve "system:subsystem:some_int_value" as an int, with a default value of -1
  int c = smaxPullInt("system:subsystem", "some_int_value", -1);
  
  // Retrieve "system:subsystem:some_value" as a double (or else NAN if cannot).
  double value = smaxPullDouble("system:subsystem", "some_value");
  if(!isnan(value)) {    // check for NAN if need be
    ...
  }

  // Retrieve "system:subsystem:name" as a 0-terminated C string (or NULL if cannot).
  char *str = smaxPullDouble("system:subsystem", "name");
  if(str != NULL) {      // check for NULL
    ...
  }
 
  ...
  
  // Once the pulled string is no longer needed, destroy it.
  free(str)

Arrays

The generic smaxShare() function readily handles 1D arrays, and the smaxPull() handles native (monolithic) arrays of all types (e.g. double[][], or boolean[][][]). However, you may want to share multidimensional arrays, noting their specific shapes, or else pull array data for which you may not know in advance what size (or shape) of the storage needed locally for the values stored in SMA-X for some variable. For these reasons, the library provides a set of functions to make the handling of arrays a simpler too.

Let’s begin with sharing multi-dimensional arrays. Instead of smaxShare(), you can use smaxShareArray() which allows you to define the multi-dimensional shape of the data beyond just the number of elements stored. E.g.:

  float data[4][2] = ...    // Your local 2D data array
  int shape[] = { 4, 2 };   // The array shape as stored in SMA-X
  
  int status = smaxShareArray("system:subsystem", "my_2d_array", X_FLOAT, 2, shape);
  if (status < 0) {
    // Oops, did not work...
    ...
  }

Note, that the dimensions of how the data is stored in SMA-X is determined solely by the ‘2’ dimensions specified as the 4th argument and the corresponding 2 elements in the shape array. The data could have been any pointer to an array of floats containing at least the required number of element (8 in the example above).

For 1D arrays, you have some convenience methods for sharing specific types. These can be convenient because they eliminate one potential source of bugs, where the type argument to smaxShare() does not match the pointer type of the data. Using, say, smaxShareFloats() instead to share a 1D floating-point array instead of the generic smaxShare() will allow the compiler to check and warn you if the data array is not the float * type. E.g.:

  float *data = ...  // pointer to a one or higher-dimensional C array of floats.

  // Send N elements from data to SMA-X as "system:subsystem:my_array"
  int status = smaxShareFloats("system:subsystem", "my_array", data, N);
  if (status < 0) {
    // Oops, did not work...
    ...
  }

Similar functions are available for every built-in type (primitives, plus strings and booleans). For pulling arrays without knowing a-priori the element count or shape, there are also convenience functions, such as:

  XMeta meta;    // (optional) we'll return the metadata in this
  int status;	 // we'll return the status in this

  // Get whatever data is in "system:subsystem:my_array" as doubles.
  double *data = smaxPullDoubles("system:subsystem", "my_array", &meta, &status);
  if(status < 0) {
    // Oops, we got an error
  } 
  if(data == NULL) {
    // Oops the data is NULL
  }
  
  ...
  
  // When done using the data we obtained, destroy it.
  free(data);

As illustrated, the above will return a dynamically allocated array with the required size to hold the data, and the size and shape of the data is returned in the metadata that was also supplied with the call. After using the returned data (and ensuring that it is not NULL), you should always call free() on it to avoid memory leaks in your application.

Structures / substructures…

You can share entire data structures, represented by an appropriate XStructure type (see the xchange library for a description and usage):

  XStructure s = ...   // The structured data you have prepared locally.
  
  int status = smaxShareStruct("syste:subsystem", &s);
  if(status < 0) {
    // Oops, something did not work
    ...
  }

Or, you can read a structure, including all embedded substructures in it, with smaxPullStruct():

  XMeta meta;
  int nElements;
  
  XStructure *s = smaxPullStruct("system", "subsystem", &meta, &n);
  if(n < 0) {
    // Oops there was an error...
    return;
  }
  
  double value = smaxGetDoubleField(s, "some_value", 0.0);
  
  ...
  
  // Once the pulled structure is no longer needed, destroy it...
  xDestroyStruct(s);

Note, that the structure returned by smaxPullStruct() is in the serialized format of SMA-X. That is, all leaf nodes are stored as strings, just as they appear in the Redis database. Hence, we used the smaxGet...Field() methods above to deserialize the leaf nodes as needed on demand. If you want to use the methods of xchange to access the structure, you will need to convert to binary format first, using smax2xStruct(XStructure *).

Note also, that pulling large structures can be an expensive operation on the Redis server, and may block the server for longer than usual periods, causing latencies for other programs that use SMA-X. It’s best to use this method for smallish structures only (with, say, a hundred or so or fewer leaf nodes).

Lazy pulling (high-frequency queries)

What happens if you need the data frequently? Do you pound on the database at some high-frequency? No, you probably no not want to do that, especially if the data you need is not necessarily changing fast. There is no point on wasting network bandwidth only to return the same values again and again. This is where ‘lazy’ pulling excels.

From the caller’s perspective lazy pulling works just like regular SMA-X pulls, e.g.:

  int data[10][4][2];
  int sizes[] = { 10, 4, 2 };
  XMeta meta;

  int status = smaxLazyPull("some_table", "some_data", X_INT, 3, sizes, data, &meta);

or

  int status = smaxLazyPullDouble("some_table", "some_var");

But, under the hood, it does something different. The first time a new variable is lazy pulled it is fetched from the Redis database just like a regular pull. But, it also will cache the value, and watch for update notifications from the SMA-X server. Thus, as long as no update notification is received, successive calls will simply return the locally cached value. This can save big on network usage, and also provides orders of magnitude faster access so long as the variable remains unchanged.

When the variable is updated in SMA-X, our client library will be notified, and one of two things can happen:

  1. it invalidates the cache, so that the next lazy pull will again work just like a regular pull, fetching the updated value from SMA-X on demand. And again the library will cache that value and watch for notifications for the next update. Or,

  2. it will trigger a background process to update the cached value in the background with a pipelined (high-throughput) pull. However, until the new value is actually fetched, it will return the previously cached value promptly.

The choice between the two is yours, and you can control which suits your need best. The default behavior for lazy pulls is (1), but you may call smaxLazyCache() after the first pull of a variable, to indicate that you want to enable background cache updates (2) for it. The advantage of (1) is that it will never serve you outdated data even if there are significant network latencies – but you may have to wait a little to fetch updates. On the other hand (2) will always provide a recent value with effectively no latency, but this value may be outdated if there are delays on the network updating the cache. The difference is typically at the micro-seconds level on a local LAN. However, (2) may be preferable when you need to access SMA-X data from timing critical code blocks, where it is more important to ensure that the value is returned quickly, rather than whether it is a millisecond too old or not.

In either case, when you are done using lazy variables, you should let the library know that it no longer needs to watch updates for these, by calling either smaxLazyEnd() on specific variables, or else smaxLazyFlush() to stop watching updates for all lazy variables. (A successive lazy pull will automatically start watching for updates again, in case you wish to re-enable).

  // Lazy pull a bunch of data (typically in a loop).
  for(...) {
    smaxLazyPull("some_table", "some_var", ...);
    smaxLaxyPull(...);
    ...
  }
  
  // Once we do not need "some_table:some_var" any more:
  smaxLazyEnd("some_table", "some_var");
  
  ...
  
  // And to stop lazy accessing all
  smaxLazyFlush();

Pipelined pulling (high volume queries)

The regular pulling of data from SMA-X requires a separate round-trip for each and every request. That is, successive pulls are sent only after the responses from the prior pull has been received. A lot of the time is spent on waiting for responses to come back. With round trip times in the 100 μs range, this means that this method of fetching data from SMA-X is suitable for obtaining at most a a few thousand values per second.

However, sometimes you want to get access to a large number of values faster. This is what pipelined pulling is for. In pipelined mode, a batch of pull requests are sent to the SMA-X Redis server in quick succession, without waiting for responses. The values, when received are processed by a dedicated background thread. And, the user has an option of either waiting until all data is collected, or ask for as callback when the data is ready.

Again it works similarly to the basic pulling, except that you submit your pull request to a queue with smaxQueue(). For example:

  double d;	// A value we will fill
  XMeta meta;   // (optional) metadata to fill (for the above value).

  int status = smaxQueue("some_table", "some_var", X_DOUBLE, 1, &d, &meta);

Pipelined (batched) pulls have dramatic effects on performance. Rather than being limited by round-trip times, you will be limited by the performance of the Redis server itself (or the network bandwidth on some older infrastructure). As such, instead of thousand of queries per second, you can pull 2-3 orders of magnitude more in a given time, with hundreds of thousands of pull per second this way.

Synchronization points and waiting

After you have submitted a batch of pull request to the queue, you can create a synchronization point as:

  XSyncPoint *syncPoint = smaxCreateSyncPoint();

A synchronization point is a marker in the queue that we can wait on. After the synchronization point is created, you can submit more pull request to the same queue (e.g. for another processing block), or do some other things for a bit (since it will take at least some microseconds before the data is ready). Then, when ready you can wait on the specific synchronization point to ensure that data submitted prior to its creation is delivered from SMA-X:

  // Wait for data submitted prior to syncPoint to be ready, or time out after 1000 ms.
  int status = smaxSync(syncPoint, 1000);
  
  // Destroy the synchronization point if we no longer need it.
  xDestroySyncPoint(syncPoint);
  
  // Check return status...
  if(status == X_TIMEOUT) {
    // We timed out
    ...
  }
  else if(status < 0) {
    // Some other error
    ...
  }

Callbacks

The alternative to synchronization points and waiting, is to provide a callback function, which will process your data as soon as it is available, e.g.:

  void my_pull_processor(void *arg) {
     // Say, we expect a string tag passed along to identify what we need to process...
     char *tag = (char *) arg;
     
     // Do what we need to do...
     ...
  }

Then submit this callback routine to the queue after the set of variables it requires with:

  // We'll call my_pull_processor, with the argument "some_tag", when prior data has arrived.
  smaxQueueCallback(my_pull_processor, "some_tag");

Finishing up

If you might still have some pending pipelined pulls that have not received responses yet, you may want to wait until all previously submitted requests have been collected. You can do that with:

  // Wait for up to 3000 ms for all pipelined pulls to collect responses from SMA-X.
  int status = smaxWaitQueueComplete(3000);
  
  // Check return status...
  if(status == X_TIMEOUT) {
    // We timed out
    ...
  }
  else if(status < 0) {
    // Some other error
    ...
  }

Custom update handling

Monitoring updates

The LUA scripts that define SMA-X interface on the Redis server send out PUB/SUB notifications for every variable on their own dedicate PUB/SUB channel whenever the variable is updated. By default, lazy access methods subscribe to these messages and use them to determine when to invalidate the cache and fetch new values from the database again. However, you may subscribe and use these messages outside of the lazy update routines also. The only thing you need to pay attention to is not to unsubscribe from update notifications for those variables that have multiple active monitors (including lazy updates).

One common use case is that you want to execute some code in your application when some value changes in SMA-X. You can do that easily, and have two choices on how you want to trigger the code execution: (1) you can block execution of your current thread until an update notification is received for one of the variables (or patterns) of interest to which you have subscribed, or (2) you can let smax_clib call a designated function of your application when such an update notification is captured. We’ll cover these two cases separately below.

However, in either case you will have to subscribe to the variable(s) or pattern(s) of interest with smaxSubscribe() before updates can be processed, e.g.

  int status = smaxSubscribe("some_table", "watch_point_variable");
  if (status < 0) {
    // Ooops something did not go to plan
    ...
  }

and/or pattern(s)

  int status = smaxSubscribe("watch_*", "watch_[a-z]_*");
  if (status < 0) {
    // Ooops something did not go to plan
    ...
  }

You can subscribe to any number of variables or patterns in this way. smax_clib will receive and process notifications for all of them. (So beware of creating unnecessary network traffic.)

Waiting for updates

The first option for executing code conditional on some variable update is to block execution in the current thread and wait until the variable(s) of interest change(s) (or until some timeout limit is reached). There is a group of functions smaxWaitOn...() that do exactly that. For example:

  // Wait for watch_foo:watch_h_bar to update, or wait at most 500 ms
  int status = smaxWaitOnSubscribedVar("watch_foo", "watch_h_bar", 500);
  if (status == X_TIMEDOUT) {
    // Wait timed out, maybe we want to try again, or do something else...
    ...
  }
  else if (status < 0) {
    // Oh no, some other error happened.
    ...
  }
  ...

Similar methods allow you to wait for updates on any subscribed variable in selected tables, or the update of select variables in all subscribed tables, or any of the subscribed variables to change for the wait to end normally (with return value 0).

Update callbacks

Sometimes, you don’t want to block execution, but you want to make sure some code executes when the a variable or variables of interest get updated. For such cases you can designate your own RedisSubscriberCall callback function, e.g.:

  void my_update_processor(const char *pattern, const char *channel, const char *msg, long len) {
     const char *varID;  // The variable aggregate ID. 
  
     // check that it's a SMA-X update -- channel should begin with SMAX_UPDATE
     if (strncmp(channel, SMAX_UPDATE, SMAX_UPDATE_LENGTH) != 0) {
       // Not an SMA-X variable update. It's not what we expected.
       return;
     }
     
     id = &channel[SMAX_UPDATE_LENGTH];
     // Now we can check the ID to see which of the variables updated, and act accordingly.
     ...
  }

Once you have defined your callback function, you can activate it with smaxAddSubscriber(), e.g.:

  // Call my_update_processor on updates for any subscribed variable whose table name starts with "watch_table_"
  int status = smaxAddSubscriber("watch_table_", my_update_processor);
  if (status < 0) {
    // Did not go to plan.
    ...
  }

When you no longer need to process such updates, you can simply remove the function from being called via smaxRemoveSubscriber(), and if you are absolutely sure that no other part of your code needs the subscription(s) that could trigger it, you can also unsubscribe from the trigger variables/pattern to eliminate unnecessary network traffic.

One word of caution on callbacks is that they are expected to:

  • execute quickly
  • never block for prolonged periods. (It may be OK to wait briefly on a mutex, provided nothing else can hog that mutex for prolonged periods).

If the above two conditions cannot be guaranteed, it’s best practice for your callback to place a copy of the callback information on a queue, and then spawn or notify a separate thread to process the information in the background, including discarding the copied data if it’s no longer needed. Alternatively, you can launch a dedicated processor thread early on, and inside it wait for the updates before executing some complex action. The choice is yours.

Program status / error messages via SMA-X

SMA-X also provides a standard for reporting program status, warning, and error messages via the Redis PUB/SUB infrastructure.

Broadcasting status messages from an application

Broadcasting program messages to SMA-X is very simple using a set of dedicated messaging functions by message type. These are:

smax_clib function Description
smaxSendStatus(const char *msg, ...) sends a status message
smaxSendInfo(const char *msg, ...) sends an informational message
smaxSendDetail(const char *msg, ...) sends optional status/information detail
smaxSendDebug(const char *msg, ...) sends a debugging messages
smaxSendWarning(const char *msg, ...) sends a warning message
smaxSendError(const char *msg, ...) sends an error message
smaxSendProgress(double fraction, const char *msg, ...) sends a progress update and message

All the above methods work like printf(), and can take additional parameters corresponding to the format specifiers contained in the msg argument.

By default, the messages are sent under the canonical program name (i.e. set by _progname on GNU/Linux systems) that produced the message. You can override that, and define a custom sender ID for your status messages, by calling smaxSetMessageSenderID() prior to broadcasting, e.g.:

  // Set out sender ID to "my_program_id"
  smaxSetMessageSenderID("my_program_id");
  
  ...
  
  // Broadcast a warning message for "my_program_id"
  int status = smaxSendWarning("Something did not work" %s", explanation);

Processing program messages

On the receiving end, other applications can process such program messages, for a selection of hosts, programs, and message types. You need to prepare you message processor function(s) first, e.g.:

  void my_message_processor(XMessage *m) {
    printf("Received %s message from %s: %s\n", m->type, m->prog, m->text);
  }

The processor function does not return any value, since it is called by a background thread, which does not check for return status. The XMessage type, a pointer to which is the sole argument of the processor, is defined in smax.h as:

  typedef struct {
    char *host;                   // Host where message originated from
    char *prog;                   // Originator program name
    char *type;                   // Message type, e.g. "info", "detail", "warning", "error"
    char *text;                   // Message body (with timestamp stripped).
    double timestamp;             // Message timestamp, if available (otherwise 0.0)
  } XMessage;

Once you have your message consumer function, you can set it to be called for messages from select hosts, programs, and/or select message types, using smaxAddMessageProcessor(), e.g.:

  // Will call my_message_procesor for all messages coming from "my_program_id" from all hosts.
  // The return ID number (if > 0) can be used later to uniquely identify the processor with the set of selection 
  // parameters it is used with. So make sure to keep it handy for later.
  int id = smaxAddMessageProcessor("*", "my_program_id", "*", my_message_processor);
  if (id < 0) {
    // Oops that did not work as planned.
    ...
  }

Each string argument (host, prog, and type) may take an asterisk ("*") or NULL as the argument to indicate that the processor function should be called for incoming messages for all values for the given parameter.

The processor function can also inspect what type of message it received by comparing the XMessage type value against one of the predefined constant expressions in smax.h:

XMessage type Description
SMAX_MSG_STATUS status update
SMAX_MSG_INFO informational program message
SMAX_MSG_DETAIL additional detail (e.g. for verbose messages).
SMAX_MSG_PROGRESS progress update.
SMAX_MSG_DEBUG debug messages (also e.g. traces)
SMAX_MSG_WARNING warning message
SMAX_MSG_ERROR error message

Once you no longer need to process messages by the given processor function, you can remove it from the call list by passing its ID number (<0) to smaxRemoveMessageProcessor().

Optional metadata

Descriptions

Coordinate Systems

Physical units

Error handling

The principal error handling of the library is an extension of that of xchange, with further error codes defined in smax.h and redisx.h. The functions that return an error status (either directly, or into the integer designated by a pointer argument), can be inspected by smaxErrorDescription(), e.g.:

  int status = smaxShare(...);
  if (status != X_SUCCESS) {
    // Ooops, something went wrong...
    fprintf(stderr, "WARNING! set value: %s", smaxErrorDescription(status));
    ...
  }

Debug support

You can enable verbose output of the library with smaxSetVerbose(boolean). When enabled, it will produce status messages to stderrso you can follow what’s going on. In addition (or alternatively), you can enable debug messages with xSetDebug(boolean). When enabled, all errors encountered by the library (such as invalid arguments passed) will be printed to stderr, including call traces, so you can walk back to see where the error may have originated from. (You can also enable debug messages by default by defining the DEBUG constant for the compiler, e.g. by adding -DDEBUG to CFLAGS prior to calling make).

For helping to debug your application, the xchange library provides two macros: xvprintf() and xdprintf(), for printing verbose and debug messages to stderr. Both work just like printf(), but they are conditional on verbosity being enabled via xSetVerbose(boolean) and xSetDebug(boolean), respectively. Applications using this library may use these macros to produce their own verbose and/or debugging outputs conditional on the same global settings.

Future plans

Some obvious ways the library could evolve and grow in the not too distant future:

  • Automated regression testing and coverage tracking.
  • Standardized remote program settings implementation.

If you have an idea for a must have feature, please let me (Attila) know. Pull requests, for new features or fixes to existing ones, are especially welcome!

Copyright (C) 2024 Attila Kovács