If your webserver's worker type is compatible with the multiprocessing module, you can use multiprocessing.managers.BaseManager to provide a shared state for Python objects. A simple wrapper could look like this:
from multiprocessing import Lock
from multiprocessing.managers import AcquirerProxy, BaseManager, DictProxy
def get_shared_state(host, port, key):
shared_dict = {}
shared_lock = Lock()
manager = BaseManager((host, port), key)
manager.register("get_dict", lambda: shared_dict, DictProxy)
manager.register("get_lock", lambda: shared_lock, AcquirerProxy)
try:
manager.get_server()
manager.start()
except OSError: # Address already in use
manager.connect()
return manager.get_dict(), manager.get_lock()
You can assign your data to the shared_dict to make it accessible across processes:
HOST = "127.0.0.1"
PORT = 35791
KEY = b"secret"
shared_dict, shared_lock = get_shared_state(HOST, PORT, KEY)
shared_dict["number"] = 0
shared_dict["text"] = "Hello World"
shared_dict["array"] = numpy.array([1, 2, 3])
However, you should be aware of the following circumstances:
- Use
shared_lock to protect against race conditions when overwriting values in shared_dict. (See Flask example below.)
- There is no data persistence. If you restart the app, or if the main (the first)
BaseManager process dies, the shared state is gone.
- With this simple implementation of
BaseManager, you cannot directly edit nested values in shared_dict. For example, shared_dict["array"][1] = 0 has no effect. You will have to edit a copy and then reassign it to the dictionary key.
Flask example:
The following Flask app uses a global variable to store a counter number:
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
number = 0
@app.route("/")
def counter():
global number
number += 1
return str(number)
This works when using only 1 worker gunicorn -w 1 server:app. When using multiple workers gunicorn -w 4 server:app it becomes apparent that number is not a shared state but individual for each worker process.
Instead, with shared_dict, the app looks like this:
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
HOST = "127.0.0.1"
PORT = 35791
KEY = b"secret"
shared_dict, shared_lock = get_shared_state(HOST, PORT, KEY)
shared_dict["number"] = 0
@app.route("/")
def counter():
with shared_lock:
shared_dict["number"] += 1
return str(shared_dict["number"])
This works with any number of workers, like gunicorn -w 4 server:app.
