Remote Objects Solution

Leaning outcomes: Learn how to program remote objects using Python.




In this lab we use a python framework called pyro (Python Remote Objects).




1. Key concepts




The following are a list of key concepts you will encounter when using Pyro:




Proxy




A proxy is a substitute object for “the real thing” (in the lecture we called this a stub). It intercepts the method calls you would normally perform on an object as if it was the actual object. Pyro then transfers the call to the computer that contains the real object, where the actual method call is performed, and the results are returned to the caller. This means the calling code doesn’t have to know if it’s dealing with a normal or a remote object, because the code is identical.




URI




This is what Pyro uses to identify every object (similar to what a web page URL points to the different documents on the web). Its string form is like this: “PYRO:” + object name + “@” + server name + port number. This basically encode the physical locations of distributed objects in the system.




Pyro object




This is a normal Python object but it is registered with Pyro so that you can access it remotely. Pyro objects are written just as any other object but the fact that Pyro knows something about them makes them special, in the way that you can call methods on them from other programs.




Pyro daemon (server)




This is the part of Pyro that listens for remote method calls, dispatches them to the appropriate actual objects, and returns the results to the caller. All Pyro objects are registered in one or more daemons.




Pyro name server




The name server is a utility that records the URIs/physical locations of distributed objects in the system toward achieving location transparency. Usually there is just one name server running in your network.




2. Starting a name server




While the use of the Pyro name server is optional, we will use it in this lab. It also shows a few basic Pyro concepts, so let us begin by explaining a little about it. Open a console window and execute the following command to start a name server:




python -m Pyro4.naming (or simply: pyro4-ns)




The name server will start and it prints something like:




Not starting broadcast server for localhost.




NS running on localhost:9090 (127.0.0.1)




URI = PYRO:Pyro.NameServer@localhost:9090




The name server has started and is listening on localhost port 9090. It also printed an URI.




Remember that this is what Pyro uses to identify every object.

By default, Pyro uses localhost to run programs on, so you can’t by mistake expose your system to the outside world. You’ll need to tell Pyro explicitly to use something other than localhost. But it is fine for the lab, so we leave it as it is.




3. Interacting with the name server




There’s another command line tool that let you interact with the name server: “nsc” (name server control tool). You can use it, amongst other things, to see what all known registered objects in the naming server are. Let’s do that right now. Type:




python -m Pyro4.nsc list




and it will print something like this:




--------START LIST




Pyro.NameServer -- PYRO:Pyro.NameServer@localhost:9090




--------END LIST




The only object that is currently registered, is the name server itself! (Yes, the name server is a Pyro object itself. Pyro and the “nsc” tool are using Pyro to talk to it).




4. Building a Warehouse




Hint: All code of this part of the lab can be found in the examples/warehouse directory.




You’ll build a simple warehouse that stores items, and that everyone can visit. Visitors can store items and retrieve other items from the warehouse (if they’ve been stored there).




In this tutorial you’ll first write a normal Python program that more or less implements the complete warehouse system, but in vanilla Python code. After that you’ll add Pyro support to it, to make it a distributed warehouse system, where you can visit the central warehouse from many different computers.




4.1 phase 1: a simple prototype




To start with, write the vanilla Python code for the warehouse and its visitors. This prototype is fully working but everything is running in a single process. It contains no Pyro code at all, but shows what the system is going to look like later on.




The Warehouse object simply stores an array of items which we can query, and allows for a person to take an item or to store an item. Here is the code (warehouse.py):




from __future__ import print_function




class Warehouse(object):




def __init__(self):




self.contents = ["chair", "bike", "flashlight", "laptop", "couch"]




def list_contents(self):




return self.contents




def take(self, name, item):
self.contents.remove(item)




print("{0} took the {1}.".format(name, item))




def store(self, name, item):




self.contents.append(item)




print("{0} stored the {1}.".format(name, item))




Then there is a Person that can visit the warehouse. The person has a name and can perform deposit and retrieve actions on a particular warehouse. Here is the code (person.py):




from __future__ import print_function




import sys




if sys.version_info < (3, 0):




input = raw_input




class Person(object):




def __init__(self, name):




self.name = name




def visit(self, warehouse):




print("This is {0}.".format(self.name))




self.deposit(warehouse)




self.retrieve(warehouse)




print("Thank you, come again!")




def deposit(self, warehouse):




print("The warehouse contains:", warehouse.list_contents()) item = input("Type a thing you want to store (or empty): ").strip() if item:

warehouse.store(self.name, item)




def retrieve(self, warehouse):




print("The warehouse contains:", warehouse.list_contents())




item = input("Type something you want to take (or empty): ").strip()




if item:




warehouse.take(self.name, item)




Finally you need a small script that actually runs the code. It creates the warehouse and two visitors, and makes the visitors perform their actions in the warehouse. Here is the code (visit.py):




This is the code that runs this example. from warehouse import Warehouse from person import Person



warehouse = Warehouse()




janet = Person("Janet")




henry = Person("Henry")




janet.visit(warehouse)




henry.visit(warehouse)

Run this simple program. It will output something like this:




python visit.py This is Janet.
The warehouse contains: ['chair', 'bike', 'flashlight', 'laptop', 'couch']




Type a thing you want to store (or empty): television # typed in Janet stored the television.

The warehouse contains: ['chair', 'bike', 'flashlight', 'laptop', 'couch', 'television']




Type something you want to take (or empty): couch # <-- typed in




Janet took the couch.




Thank you, come again!




This is Henry.




The warehouse contains: ['chair', 'bike', 'flashlight', 'laptop', 'television']




Type a thing you want to store (or empty): bricks # <-- typed in Henry stored the bricks.

The warehouse contains: ['chair', 'bike', 'flashlight', 'laptop', 'television', 'bricks']




Type something you want to take (or empty): bike # <-- typed in




Henry took the bike.




Thank you, come again!




4.2 phase 2: first Pyro version




Now you’ll use Pyro to turn the warehouse into a standalone component that people from other computers can visit. You’ll need to add a couple of lines to the warehouse.py file so that it will start a Pyro server for the warehouse object. The easiest way to do this is to create the object that you want to make available as Pyro object, and register it with a ‘Pyro daemon’ (the server that listens for and processes incoming remote method calls):




warehouse = Warehouse()




Pyro4.Daemon.serveSimple(




{




warehouse: "example.warehouse"




},




ns = False)




For now, ignore the details of what exactly the serveSimple() method call does. Next up is adding a little main function so it will be started correctly, which should make the code now look like this (warehouse.py):




from __future__ import print_function




import Pyro4




import person




@Pyro4.expose




class Warehouse(object):




def __init__(self):




self.contents = ["chair", "bike", "flashlight", "laptop", "couch"]




def list_contents(self):




return self.contents
def take(self, name, item):




self.contents.remove(item)




print("{0} took the {1}.".format(name, item))




def store(self, name, item):




self.contents.append(item)




print("{0} stored the {1}.".format(name, item))




def main():




warehouse = Warehouse()




Pyro4.Daemon.serveSimple(




{




warehouse: "example.warehouse"




},




ns = False)




if __name__=="__main__":




main()




Start the warehouse in a new console window, it will print something like this:




$ python warehouse.py




Object <__main__.Warehouse object at 0x025F4FF0:




uri = PYRO:example.warehouse@localhost:51279




Pyro daemon running.




It will become clear what you need to do with this output in a second. You now need to slightly change the visit.py script that runs the thing. Instead of creating a warehouse directly and letting the persons visit that, it is going to use Pyro to connect to the stand alone warehouse object that you started above. It needs to know the location of the warehouse object before it can connect to it. This is the uri that is printed by the warehouse program above (PYRO:example.warehouse@localhost:51279). You’ll need to ask the user to enter that uri string into the program, and use Pyro to create a proxy to the remote object:




uri = input("Enter the uri of the warehouse: ").strip()




warehouse = Pyro4.Proxy(uri)




That is all you need to change. Pyro will transparently forward the calls you make on the warehouse object to the remote object, and return the results to your code. So the code will now look like this (visit.py):




This is the code that visits the warehouse. import sys
import Pyro4




from person import Person




if sys.version_info<(3,0):




input = raw_input




uri = input("Enter the uri of the warehouse: ").strip()
warehouse = Pyro4.Proxy(uri)




janet = Person("Janet")




henry = Person("Henry")




janet.visit(warehouse)




henry.visit(warehouse)




Notice that the code of Warehouse and Person classes didn’t change at all.




Run the program. It will output something like this:




$ python visit.py




Enter the uri of the warehouse: PYRO:example.warehouse@localhost:51279 # copied from




warehouse output




This is Janet.




The warehouse contains: ['chair', 'bike', 'flashlight', 'laptop', 'couch']




Type a thing you want to store (or empty): television # typed in




The warehouse contains: ['chair', 'bike', 'flashlight', 'laptop', 'couch', 'television']




Type something you want to take (or empty): couch # <-- typed in




Thank you, come again!




This is Henry.




The warehouse contains: ['chair', 'bike', 'flashlight', 'laptop', 'television']




Type a thing you want to store (or empty): bricks # <-- typed in




The warehouse contains: ['chair', 'bike', 'flashlight', 'laptop', 'television', 'bricks']




Type something you want to take (or empty): bike # <-- typed in Thank you, come again!




And notice that in the other console window, where the warehouse server is running, the following is printed:




Janet stored the television.




Janet took the couch.




Henry stored the bricks.




Henry took the bike.




4.3 phase 3: final Pyro version




The code from the previous phase works fine and could be considered to be the final program, but is a bit cumbersome because you need to copy-paste the warehouse URI all the time to be able to use it. You will simplify it a bit in this phase by assigning the object a logical name and registering this name with the Pyro name server.




Okay, stop the warehouse program from phase 2 if it is still running, and check if the name server that you started previously is still running in its own console window.




In warehouse.py locate the statement Pyro4.Daemon.serveSimple(... and change the ns = False argument to ns = True. This tells Pyro to use a name server to register the objects in.




In visit.py remove the input statement that asks for the warehouse uri, and change the way the warehouse proxy is created. Because you are now using a name server you can ask Pyro to locate the warehouse object automatically using the corresponding logical name:




warehouse = Pyro4.Proxy("PYRONAME:example.warehouse")

So the code should look something like this (visit.py):




This is the code that visits the warehouse. import sys
import Pyro4 import Pyro4.util

from person import Person




warehouse = Pyro4.Proxy("PYRONAME:example.warehouse")




janet = Person("Janet")




henry = Person("Henry")




janet.visit(warehouse)




henry.visit(warehouse)




Start the warehouse program again in a separate console window. It will print something like this:




$ python warehouse.py




Object <__main__.Warehouse object at 0x02496050:




uri = PYRO:obj_426e82eea7534fb5bc78df0b5c0b6a04@localhost:51294 name = example.warehouse

Pyro daemon running.




As you can see the uri is different this time, it now contains some random id code instead of a name. However it also printed an object name. This is the name that is now used in the name server for your warehouse object. Check this with the ‘nsc’ tool: python -m Pyro4.nsc list which will print something like:




--------START LIST




Pyro.NameServer -- PYRO:Pyro.NameServer@localhost:9090




example.warehouse -- PYRO:obj_426e82eea7534fb5bc78df0b5c0b6a04@localhost:51294




--------END LIST




This means you can now refer to that warehouse object using the logical name example.warehouse and Pyro will locate the correct object for you automatically. This is what you changed in the visit.py code so run that now to see that it indeed works!







Removing an item that is not in the warehouse generates an error. Edit the code to prevent this error from occurring. This may be achieved by checking if an item is in the warehouse before attempting to remove it.




The warehouse currently allows multiple items of the same type or name to be stored. Edit the code to ensure only a single item of a given type can be stored.