13.3. AsyncIO Awaitable

  • Since Python 3.5 PEP 492 -- Coroutines with async and await syntax

  • Object is an awaitable if it can be used in an await expression

  • Awaitable objects: Coroutines, Tasks, Futures

  • __await__ and await keyword

aw
awaitable

Object is an awaitable if it can be used in an await expression

aws

Awaitables

coroutine

Coroutine - a function which can run concurrently.

tasks

Runs thing in the "background". Can be awaited and cancelled.

future

An awaitable object generally implements an __await__() method. Coroutine objects returned from async def functions are awaitable. Note The generator iterator objects returned from generators decorated with types.coroutine() or asyncio.coroutine() are also awaitable, but they do not implement __await__().

object.__await__(self) Must return an iterator. Should be used to implement awaitable objects. For instance, asyncio.Future implements this method to be compatible with the await expression. [2]

13.3.1. Awaitables

There are three main types of awaitable objects:

  • Coroutines,

  • Tasks,

  • Futures.

Coroutines are a low level concept and doesn't know about asyncio concepts such as EventLoop and Cancellations.

Tasks wraps around a coroutine object and allows for handling exceptions, gathering results etc.

13.3.2. Objects

Features of Python:

>>> from collections.abc import Awaitable
>>> from collections.abc import Coroutine

Features of AsyncIO library:

>>> from asyncio import Future
>>> from asyncio import Task
../../_images/asyncio-awaitables.png

Figure 13.14. Source: Langa, Ł. import asyncio: Learn Python's AsyncIO [1]

13.3.3. Typing

>>> from collections.abc import Awaitable
>>> from collections.abc import Coroutine
>>> from collections.abc import AsyncIterable
>>> from collections.abc import AsyncIterator
>>> from collections.abc import AsyncGenerator

13.3.4. References