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A threading.Event you can pickle (Python recipe) by Phil Groce
ActiveState Code (http://code.activestate.com/recipes/473863/)

Objects that use the Event object from the threading core library can't be pickled because the Event's underlying implementation is an unpicklable Lock object. Conceptually, though, an Event is just a boolean, so providing reasonable serialization behavior is pretty straightforward.

Python, 32 lines
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import threading
import copy

class SerializableEvent(object):
    "A threading.Event that can be serialized."
    def __init__(self):
        self.evt = threading.Event()

    def set(self):
        return self.evt.set()

    def clear(self):
        return self.evt.clear()

    def isSet(self):
        return self.evt.isSet()

    def wait(self, timeout=0):
        return self.evt.wait(timeout)

    def __getstate__(self):
        d = copy.copy(self.__dict__)
        if self.evt.isSet():
            d['evt'] = True
        else:
            d['evt'] = False
        return d

    def __setstate__(self, d):
        self.evt = threading.Event()
        if d['evt']:
            self.evt.set()

This recipe takes advantage of the fact that Event's state is nothing more than a boolean value. By overriding __getstate__ and __setstate__, we can serialize it as such, and reset its state appropriately on deserialization.

A reasonable first attempt at this would subclass the Event object and override its __getstate__ and __setstate__. However, the implementation of threading gets in the way; Event, it turns out, is a factory function for a private class (_Event, in Python 2.4). We could inherit from this private class but (besides being bad manners) this might break if the implementation of threading changes in the future. By implementing as a proxy, we honor the public interface, and buy some insurance against future modifications to threading.

One could use __getattr__ or __getattribute__ to implement a more robust proxy. However, a naive proxy like this one is more readable, and the risk of the interface changing is low. If the proxy needs to be truly transparent, extend this recipe with "double underscore" methods as appropriate, or re-implement with __getattr__ or __getattribute__.

Tags: threads

2 comments

Jean-Paul Calderone 18 years, 2 months ago  # | flag

This is simpler with the copy_reg module. copy_reg lets you specifier pickling behavior for arbitrary types. The following will allow you to pickle any threading.Event, not just instances of a subclass.

import copy_reg, threading

def unserialize_event(isset):
    e = threading.Event()
    if isset:
        e.set()
    return e

def serialize_event(e):
    return unserialize_event, (e.isSet(),)

copy_reg.pickle(threading._Event, serialize_event)
Phil Groce (author) 18 years, 1 month ago  # | flag

A good solution to a (slightly) different problem. This is both more, and less, flexible than the solution I submitted. As you point out, it lets you serialize the Event type more generally, but at the expense of depending on the _Event class, which is (I assume, by the leading underscore) private to the implementation and could change without warning in future versions.

I doubt the _Event object _would_ go away, mind you, but I would say the right solution depends on whether you more greatly require forward compatibility or a more general solution.