AMPHP – Queueing more Tasks than available Workers in Pool

I have a project in which I am converting a large amount of .tif images into PDF documents. File count goes into millions.

To speed up the process I am using Amphp. Since the process of converting the images with Imagemagick takes up some cpu power I want to limit the maximum amount of parallel running converter processes.

My first approach works, but could be improved if I queue the files instead of giving a set amount of workers an array of x files.

This is my current code, where I tried to replicate the example.

<?php
require dirname(__DIR__) . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$constants = get_defined_constants(true);
$constants = $constants['user'];
$maxFileCount = THREAD_CHUNKSIZE * THREAD_COUNT;
$i = 0;
$folder = opendir(LOOKUP_PATH);
$tasks = [];

while ($i < $maxFileCount && (false !== ($import_file = readdir($folder)))) {
    $fileParts = explode('.', $import_file);
    $ext = strtolower(end($fileParts));
    if($ext === 'xml') {
        $filePath = LOOKUP_PATH. 'xml'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$import_file;
        $tasks[] = new ConvertPdfTask([$filePath], $constants);
    }
    $i++;
}
if(!empty($tasks)) {
    AmpLoop::run(function () use ($tasks) {
        $coroutines = [];
        $pool = new AmpParallelWorkerDefaultPool(THREAD_COUNT);
        foreach ($tasks as $index => $task) {
            $coroutines[] = Ampcall(function() use ($pool, $task) {
                return yield $pool->enqueue($task);
            });
        }
        $results = yield AmpPromiseall($coroutines);

        return yield $pool->shutdown();
    });
}

My problem is, that as soon as I enqueue more than the THREAD_COUNT amount of tasks, I get the following PHP warning: Warning: Worker in pool exited unexpectedly with code -1 and no PDFs are created.

As long as I stay below the maximum pool size, everything is fine.

I am using PHP 7.4.9 on Windows 10 and amphp/parallel 1.4.0.

Answer

After some more experimenting I found a solution, that seems to work. It feels a bit “hacky”, so if anyone has a better idea, please share. I thought the pool would automatically build up a queue which is then handled by the maximum amount of workers, that seems to not be the case.

I now save the coroutines that I get from the Ampcall in two separate arrays. One which holds all coroutines and one that holds all for the current loop.

$coroutine = Ampcall(function () use ($pool, $task) {
    return yield $pool->enqueue($task);
});
$loopRoutines[] = $coroutine;
$allCoroutines[] = $coroutine;

After enqueueing an item I check if I already reached the maximum number of configured threads. If the pool has the maximum numbers of workers and no idle worker, I call the AmpPromisefirst function on my current-loop coroutines to wait for a new free idle worker.

Since the function would instantly return the next time I get there (because the finished coroutine is still im my current-loop array), I clear the array.

if ($pool->getWorkerCount() >= (THREAD_COUNT) && $pool->getIdleWorkerCount() === 0) {
    yield AmpPromisefirst($loopRoutines);
    $loopRoutines = [];
}

After the foreach I call AmpPromiseall on my all-coroutines array, so the script waits until all workers are finished.

Here is my changed code:

<?php
require dirname(__DIR__) . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$constants = get_defined_constants(true);
$constants = $constants['user'];
$maxFileCount = THREAD_CHUNKSIZE * THREAD_COUNT;
$i = 0;
$folder = opendir(LOOKUP_PATH);
$tasks = [];

while ($i < $maxFileCount && (false !== ($import_file = readdir($folder)))) {
    $fileParts = explode('.', $import_file);
    $ext = strtolower(end($fileParts));
    if($ext === 'xml') {
        $filePath = LOOKUP_PATH. 'xml'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$import_file;
        $tasks[] = new ConvertPdfTask([$filePath], $constants);
    }
    $i++;
}
if(!empty($tasks)) {
    AmpLoop::run(function () use ($tasks) {
        $allCoroutines = [];
        $loopRoutines = [];
        $pool = new AmpParallelWorkerDefaultPool(THREAD_COUNT);
        foreach ($tasks as $index => $task) {
            $coroutine = Ampcall(function () use ($pool, $task) {
                return yield $pool->enqueue($task);
            });
            $loopRoutines[] = $coroutine;
            $allCoroutines[] = $coroutine;
            if ($pool->getWorkerCount() >= THREAD_COUNT && $pool->getIdleWorkerCount() === 0) {
                yield AmpPromisefirst($loopRoutines);
                $loopRoutines = [];
            }
        }
        yield AmpPromiseall($allCoroutines);

        return yield $pool->shutdown();
    });
}