One TCPSocket, two threads

Question

I need to implement a listening loop for TCPSoket client which will not block sending data to the same socket.

The approximate structure is so:

class SocketWrapper
  def initialize
    @messages = []
    @socket = TCPSocket.open('192.168.0.25', 2000)
    Thread.new do
       loop do
          @messages.push @socket.read
       end
    end
  end

  def send_message(msg)
    @socket.write msg
  end

  def read_messages
    @messages.dup
    @messages.clear
  def
end

Is it everything ok with this structure?

I need to implement two strategies here:

1. response = send_request(request_data)
2. listener - when incoming data is not a response for my request, but asynchronous data which I have to listen to.

Answer 1

Ruby has a class especially designed for that - Queue:

class SocketWrapper
  def self.instance
    @inst ||= self.new
  end

  def initialize
    @messages = Queue.new
    @socket = TCPSocket.open('192.168.0.25', 2000)
    Thread.new do
       loop do
          @messages << @parse_message.nil? ? @socket.read : @parse_message.call(@socket.read)
       end
    end
  end

  def parse_message(&block)
    @parse_message = block
  end

  def send_message(msg)
    @socket.write msg
  end

  def read_messages
    result = []
    begin
      while message = @messages.pop(true)
        result << message
      end
    rescue ThreadError
      #raised if queue is empty
    end
    result
  def
end

In initializers:

SocketWrapper.instance.parse_message do |raw|
  JSON.parse(raw)
  # or any other awesome thing with raw
end

In controller:

SocketWrapper.instance.send_message('blah blah blah')