Select

A select operation waits until any of a set of futures is ready, and responds to that future’s result. In JavaScript, this is similar to Promise.race. In Python, it compares to asyncio.wait(task_set, return_when=asyncio.FIRST_COMPLETED).

Similar to a match statement, the body of select! has a number of arms, each of the form pattern = future => statement. When a future is ready, its return value is destructured by the pattern. The statement is then run with the resulting variables. The statement result becomes the result of the select! macro.

use tokio::sync::mpsc::{self, Receiver};
use tokio::time::{sleep, Duration};

#[derive(Debug, PartialEq)]
enum Animal {
    Cat { name: String },
    Dog { name: String },
}

async fn first_animal_to_finish_race(
    mut cat_rcv: Receiver<String>,
    mut dog_rcv: Receiver<String>,
) -> Option<Animal> {
    tokio::select! {
        cat_name = cat_rcv.recv() => Some(Animal::Cat { name: cat_name? }),
        dog_name = dog_rcv.recv() => Some(Animal::Dog { name: dog_name? })
    }
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let (cat_sender, cat_receiver) = mpsc::channel(32);
    let (dog_sender, dog_receiver) = mpsc::channel(32);
    tokio::spawn(async move {
        sleep(Duration::from_millis(500)).await;
        cat_sender.send(String::from("Felix")).await.expect("Failed to send cat.");
    });
    tokio::spawn(async move {
        sleep(Duration::from_millis(50)).await;
        dog_sender.send(String::from("Rex")).await.expect("Failed to send dog.");
    });

    let winner = first_animal_to_finish_race(cat_receiver, dog_receiver)
        .await
        .expect("Failed to receive winner");

    println!("Winner is {winner:?}");
}
  • In this example, we have a race between a cat and a dog. first_animal_to_finish_race listens to both channels and will pick whichever arrives first. Since the dog takes 50ms, it wins against the cat that take 500ms.

  • You can use oneshot channels in this example as the channels are supposed to receive only one send.

  • Try adding a deadline to the race, demonstrating selecting different sorts of futures.

  • Note that select! drops unmatched branches, which cancels their futures. It is easiest to use when every execution of select! creates new futures.

    • An alternative is to pass &mut future instead of the future itself, but this can lead to issues, further discussed in the pinning slide.