ThreadServer

This is a more in-depth description over the threadServer block.

ThreadServers are basically just threads running a while-loop (aka event-loop). The code to run them is generated via the threadServer and prepareServers macro.

threadServer

The threadServer macro accepts any of the following blocks:

• properties
• messageTypes
• handlers

properties

The properties section is where you can define special properties that influence a threadServer's behaviour unrelated to messages and their handling.

Properties are used to generate the Server instance representing a threadServer. See Servers reference docs for what each field means.

The properties we set here are startUp and shutDown, which define events that get executed before/after the server has run.

messageTypes

The messageTypes section defines one or more types of messages that a given threadServer can receive.

Types in the messageType block must be unique. That means that a type can only be registered for one threadServer. If a type is registered multiple times, threadButler will error out at compile-time.

handlers

The handlers section defines how to handle a message of a specific message type that the threadServer may receive.

It is a bunch of procs that must cover all types defined in messageTypes. ThreadButler will tell you at compile-time if you forgot to define a handler for one of the types or added a handler whose type is not mentioned in messageTypes.

Procs in the handlers section are consumed by the threadServer macro. They are only emitted later by the prepareServers macro.

Generally these procs must have this signature:

proc <procName>(msg: <YourMsgType>, hub: ChannelHub)

Where <procName> can be whatever you want and <YourMsgType> is one of the types in messageTypes.

This is because the routeMessage proc that will be generated relies on the handlers having this signature.

However, integrations may provide their own routeMessage procs (generated by their own prepareServer variation). This can allow for handler-procs with different signatures.