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Asyncio Part the third

Posted on Mon 13 August 2018 in Posts

I found this interesting and gave a small bit of insight/help with forming my mental model around asyncio. Let's say you have a class:

import asyncio


class Foo:
    def __init__(self, loop):
        print("in foo init")
        loop.run_until_complete(self.consumer())

    async def consumer(self):
        print("in consumer")


def main():
    loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
    f = Foo(loop)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

This is perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with calling some async code from your (synchronous) __init__ method.

What happens though if you make your __init__ async though?

... same from before ...

class Foo:
    async def __init__(self, loop):
        print("in foo init")
        await self.consumer()

... rest same as before ...

When you run this, you'll find you get an error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/ad0418340/temp/sandbox/interac/paymentdispatch/test5.py", line 20, in <module>
    main()
  File "/Users/ad0418340/temp/sandbox/interac/paymentdispatch/test5.py", line 16, in main
    f = Foo(loop)
TypeError: __init__() should return None, not 'coroutine'

As it turns out, this is the same exception that gets thrown anytime you return a value from __init__. For example:

class Foo:
    def __init__(self):
        return 42  # this will blow up with a TypeError

What can we take from this? A coroutine is a type of value. As soon as you put async on a function it means that "calling" that function now returns a value of type coroutine. Since __init__ methods can't return values in Python (it'd be nonsensical to do so, think about how you'd possibly get the value from a return), you can't make your __init__ methods async.

python asyncio asyncawait