Module concurrent.futures#

Module concurrent.futures provides a high-level interface for working with processes and threads. For both threads and processes the same interface is used which makes it easy to switch between them.

If you compare this module with threading or multiprocessing, it has fewer features but with concurrent.futures it’s easier to work and interface easier to understand.

Concurrent.futures module allows to solve the problem of starting multiple threads/processes and getting data from them. For this purpose, module uses two classes:

  • ThreadPoolExecutor - for threads handling

  • ProcessPoolExecutor - for process handling

Both classes use the same interface, so it is enough to deal with one and then just switch to other if necessary.

Create an Executor object using ThreadPoolExecutor:

executor = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5)

After creating an Executor object, it has three methods: shutdown, map, and submit. Method shutdown is responsible for the completion of threads/processes, map and submit methods are responsible for starting functions in different threads/processes.

Note

In fact, map and submit can run not only functions but any callable object. However, only functions will be covered further.

Method shutdown indicates that Executor object must be finished. However, if to shutdown method pass wait=True (default value), it will not return the result until all functions running in threads have been completed. If wait=False, shutdown method returns instantly but script itself will not exit until all functions have been completed.

Generally, shutdown is not explicitly used because when creating an Executor object in a context manager, shutdown is automatically called at the end of a block with wait=True.

with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5) as executor:
    ...

Since map and submit methods start a function in threads or processes, code must at least have a function that performs one action and must be run in different threads with different arguments of the function.

For example, if you need to ping multiple IP addresses in different threads you need to create a function that pings one IP address and then run this function in different threads for different IP addresses using concurrent.futures.