sending a http request without freezing the console

[lukas-runge]

Hey everyone,

as already stated in my welcome post I am working on porting the MA2 REAPER Live Marker Sync-Plugin from @locimation to MA3: liveConnect2Reaper

I am currently facing an issue where every http request takes at least 2 seconds in which the MA3 onPC is completely frozen (no user input is processed). Is there a way to get the http request time down to less that 1/10 of a second or alternatively process it in the background without freezing the console?

Happy to hear if anyone has a possible solution already!
Kind regards
@lukas-runge

[hossimo]

You probably need to process the HTTP request async or yield until something comes back. My USB Stomper and Fade Master have examples of this.

That way you can send the request and yield every loop until you get the response.

[lukas-runge]

I'm already using coroutine.yield(time) to allow some processing time between executes. Here is a minimal example:

-- load HTTP package
local http = require("http")

function Main()
  while true do
    -- get marker response from reaper
    local response = http.request('http://localhost:18080/_/MARKER')  
    
    -- print response
    printf(response)

    -- allow other processes for 3 seconds
    coroutine.yield(3)
  end
end

return Main

It seems like the actual duration of the http.request triggers the freezing. Can I take care of that somehow by running it in parallel? Do you know how that would work?

Thank you for your support! @hossimo
Kind regards
@lukas-runge

[hossimo]

I see, I haven't looked into the included http class but it seems request is blocking. Perhaps something like lua-http would be a better fit?

[lukas-runge]

Great idea, this library looks like its a perfect fit for me - if i'd only knew how to install such library inside the MA. 😬 Their GitHub says it should be installed via luarocks. Is there a way to use / install luarocks on the MA? I am a total newb to lua librarys and how to integrate them into the LUA environment inside the MA. 😅

[hossimo]

Probably not easily. Although looking at C:\ProgramData\MALightingTechnology\gma3_1.4.0\shared\resource\lib_plugins\requirements\http.lua it looks like they are using the library from luasocket. I'm not up on the module but it looks like socket.http.TIMEOUT is a property that is set to 60 seconds by default, Not sure if you could lower the timeout to something more manageable. There seems to be talk about a non blocking mode, but I did not see anything in the documentation, though I didn't look too hard. Might be worth an ask to them though.