Rust Learning Note: Running Multiple Future Simultaneously

This article is a summary of Chapter 4.11.5 of Rust Course (course.rs/)

join!

.await does not allow us to run multiple Future simultaneously. We have to wait for one Future to finish processing before another. Sometimes, we want to process a few Future concurrently, which requires the use of join! macro:

use futures::join;

async fn enjoy_book_and_music() -> (Book, Music) {
    let book_fut = enjoy_book();
    let music_fut = enjoy_music();
    join!(book_fut, music_fut)
}

join! takes a tuple of two Future, and returns a tuple containing the results of the two Future after they are both completed. If we want to concurrently run multiple Future stored in an array, we can use futures::future::join_all method

use futures::future::join_all;

async fn async_task(id: u32) -> u32 {
    async_std::task::sleep(std::time::Duration::from_secs(1)).await;
    println!("Task {} completed", id);
    id
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let tasks = vec![
        async_task(1),
        async_task(2),
        async_task(3)
    ];

    let results = join_all(tasks).await;
    println!("All tasks completed");

    for result in results {
        println!("Result: {}", result);
    }
}

try_join!

join! is completed executing only when all the Future inside finish. If we want to terminal all Future if any Future throws an error, we can use try_join!

use futures::try_join;

async fn get_book() -> Result<Book, String> {Ok(Book)};
async fn get_music() -> Result<Music, String> {Ok(Music)};

async fn get_book_and_music() -> Result<(Book, Music), String> {
    let book_fut = get_book();
    let music_fut = get_music();
    try_join!(book_fut, music_fut)
}

Note that the Future in try_join! must have the same error type. If the functions return different errors, we can use map_err and err_into in futures::future::TryFutureExt for error conversion.

use futures::{
    future::TryFutureExt,
    try_join
};

async fn get_book() -> Result<Book, ()> {Ok(Book)};
async fn get_music() -> Result<Music, String> {Ok(Music)};

async fn get_book_and_music() -> Result<(Book, Music), String> {
    let book_fut = get_book().map_err(|()|, "unable to get book".to_string());
    let music_fut = get_music();
    try_join!(book_fut, music_fut)
}

select!

join! only returns when all Future complete. Sometimes, we want to wait for a few Future, and returns whenever one Future completes and does not wait for the rest of the Future. In this case, we can use select! macro.

use futures::{
    future::FutureExt,
    pin_mut,
    select
};

async fn task_one() {};
async fn task_two() {};

async fn race_tasks() {
    let t1 = task_one().fuse();
    let t2 = task_two().fuse();
    pin_mut!(t1, t2);
    select! {
        () = t1 => println!("task 1 finishes first"),
        () = t2 => println!("task 2 finishes first")
    }
}

In the code above, we use fuse() to implement FusedFuture for Future, which makes select unable to poll a Future once it's finished. pin_mut!() is used to implement Unpin trait, which allows select to obtain a mutable reference of Future. These two traits FusedFuture and Unpin are required for select to work properly.

select! also supports default and complete branch. complete branch is called when all Future and Stream are completed. It is commonly used together with loop. default branch is called when none of the Future or Stream are at Ready state.

use futures::future;
use futures::select;
pub fn main() {
    let mut a_fut = future::ready(4);
    let mut b_fut = future::ready(6);
    let mut total = 0;

    loop {
        select!{
            a = a_fut => total += a,
            b = b_fut => total += b,
            complete => break,
            default => panic!()
        };
    }
    assert_eq!(total, 10);
}

With Stream, we need to implement FusedStream with fuse(). When a Stream implements FusedStream, the Future it returns with next() will also implement FusedFuture.

use futures::{
    stream::{Stream, StreamExt, FusedStream},
    select
}

async fn add_two_streams(
    mut s1: impl Stream<Item = u8> + FusedStream + Unpin,
    mut s2: impl Stream<Item = u8> + FusedStream + Unpin
) -> u8 {
    let mut total = 0;

    loop {
        let item = select! {
            x = s1.next() => x,
            x = s2.next() => x,
            complete => break
        };
        if let Some(next_num) = item {
            total += next_num;
        }
    }
    total
}