I'm looking for a way to prevent multiple hosts from issuing simultaneous commands to a Python XMLRPC listener. The listener is responsible for running scripts to perform tasks on that system that would fail if multiple users tried to issue these commands at the same time. Is there a way I can block all incoming requests until the single instance has completed?
Can you have another communication channel? If yes, then have a "call me back when it is my turn" protocol running between the server and the clients.
In other words, each client would register its intention to issue requests to the server and the said server would "callback" the next-up client when it is ready.
I think python SimpleXMLRPCServer module is what you want. I believe the default behavior of that model is blocking new requests when current request is processing. The default behavior gave me lots of trouble and I changed that behavior by mix in ThreadingMixIn class so that my xmlrpc server could respond multiple requests in the same time.
class RPCThreading(SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn, SimpleXMLRPCServer.SimpleXMLRPCServer):
pass
If I understand your question correctly, SimpleXMLRPCServer is the solution. Just use it directly.
There are several choices:
- Use single-process-single-thread server like
SimpleXMLRPCServer
to process requests subsequently. - Use
threading.Lock()
in threaded server. - You some external locking mechanism (like
lockfile
module orGET_LOCK()
function in mysql) in multiprocess server.