asyncio - Python

Asyncio is a library in Python that provides concurrency with a single thread using coroutines, multiplexing I/O access patterns and support for various networking and interprocess communication protocols. It was introduced in Python 3.4.

What is asyncio?

Asyncio is derived from “asynchronous I/O”. It is a library in Python that is used for writing concurrent code by using the Async/Await syntax. With this library, we can write asynchronous code for a single thread just like we use for multiple threads using multi-threading.

By using the Python asyncio library, we can perform parallelism (doing multiple things at once) in a single thread. This eliminates the need for memory overhead and maintains the performance.

Advantages of using asyncio:

• Better performance with I/O-bound, high-concurrency web applications
• Increases throughput and reduces latency of the application
• More efficient use of resources
• Suitable for real-time applications such as chat applications, streaming applications, etc.

Example:

Here is a simple example of how asyncio works. We will create two coroutines and run them asynchronously using asyncio.

import asyncio

async def coro1():
    print("Starting coro1")
    await asyncio.sleep(2)
    print("Ending coro1")
    
async def coro2():
    print("Starting coro2")
    await asyncio.sleep(1)
    print("Ending coro2")

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.run_until_complete(asyncio.gather(coro1(), coro2()))
loop.close()

Output:

Starting coro1
Starting coro2
Ending coro2
Ending coro1

In this example, we define two coroutines coro1() and coro2() and use the asyncio.sleep() method to simulate some blocking I/O operation. We run these coroutines concurrently using asyncio.gather().

Conclusion:

Asyncio is a powerful library in Python for writing concurrent and asynchronous code. By using asyncio in our Python projects, we can improve performance, utilize resources efficiently and create highly responsive applications.