#node-petri

a multi-agent system for Node

Description

For now this is mostly wrapper around Node Cluster, with some syntactic sugar

Usage

(Illustration example - code not tested)

Master (code controlling the pool, how agents are created)

{Petri, common} = require 'petri'
{every, pick, pretty} = common
log = console.log

Petri ->
  log "Initializing"


  # start 2 processes
  for _ in [0...2]

    # module can be either a module name, or a module instance
    # module = require './my/program'
    module = './my/program'

    log "spawning agent.."
    worker = @spawn module, hello: 'world'
    worker.on 'exit', -> log "agent died"

  @on 'data', (reply, agent, msg) ->
    switch msg.cmd
      when 'log'
        log pretty msg.msg
      when 'hello'
        log "agent #{agent.id} said hello: " + pretty msg.msg
      else
        log "unknow cmd: " + pretty msg

  # send a command to all agents, every 5 seconds
  every 5.sec => @broadcast cmd: "foobar", data: "foo": "bar"

Agent (code describing an agent)

module.exports = (opts) ->

  {failure, warn, success, info, debug}  = @logger

  {pretty} = require('petri').common

  # these will appear in colors in the terminal
  info    "hello, I do nothing"
  debug   "got some options: " + pretty opts
  warn    "woops something gone wrong"

  # emit a message, will be received by the master
  @emit cmd: "hello", foo: "bar"

  failure "what the heck?!"

  # kill the agent
  process.exit -1

Documentation

List of utility fonctions in petri/common:

after(timeunit(function))

This function execute a block of code after T time units.

Has to be used together with a magic Number, like this:

after 5.min ->
  console.log "game over"

every(timeunit(function))

This function execute a block of code every T time units.

Has to be used together with a magic Number, like this:

every 3.sec ->
  console.log "checkpoint!"

Magic Number

Here is the list of supported magic time units:

• .ms
• .sec, .second, .seconds
• .min, .minute, .minutes
• .hour, .hours
• .day, .days

Tell me if you need more pre-built units

MakeId()

This function generate a unique random id. Warning:: it sucks. You should probably use node-uuid instead. But this is enough for basic debug cases

copy(obj)

Copy an object, using a JSON dump then parse. This is not efficient, I will try to remplace it with node-v8-clone, which is more efficient

P(x)

Probability of something. Examole:

• P(1.0) will always return 1
• P(0.8) will return 1 most of the time
• P(0.5) will return 1 or 0, with 50/50 chance
• P(0.0) will always return 0

It does not return true or false, but 1 or 0, so you can use it to do fuzzy (probabilistic) programming, with inference rules and other things like that. Have fun.

Usage:

if P 0.5
  console.log "A"
else
  console.log "B"

isFunction(something)

Stolen from underscore.js. Check if something is a Function

isUndefined(something)

Stolen from underscore.js. Check if something is undefined

isArray(something)

Stolen from underscore.js. Check if something is a true Array (eg. a String will return false)

isString(something)

Stolen from underscore.js. Check if something is a String

isNumber(something)

Stolen from underscore.js. Check if something is a Number

isBoolean(something)

Stolen from underscore.js. Check if something is a Boolean

randInt(min, max)

Random integer between min and max. Integer means: rounded.

round2(number)

Helper function to round a number to 2 decimals

round3(number)

Helper function to round a number to 3 decimals (yeah..)

sha1(string)

Compute the sha1 synchronously. Be warned.

NB_CORES

A constant indicating the number of core you can use to spawn workers. This function has an heuristic to save CPU by not counting the base core, see below.

Implementation:

cpus = Math.round(os.cpus().length)
if (cpus < 3) then 1 else (cpus - 2)

pick(weighted_key_value_store)

Stolen from node-deck. This function picks a random item from a weighted index, see example:

store =
  key1: 50
  key2: 200
  key3: 10

key = pick store 
# most of the time, key2 will be extracted, sometimes key1, rarely key3

pretty obj

Prettify an object to make it human-readable. Equavalent to "inspect(obj, false, 20, true).toString()""

readFile(file_path)

Read the content of a file synchronously. Useful for simple command line script, than don't need to be async.

equivalent to: "fs.readFileSync(file_path, 'utf8')"