sanabil mustafa
sanabil mustafa

Reputation: 1

socket.io.emit() not running inside redis function

I'm building a Flask application where I use Redis to receive data from a server, and then send that data to the frontend using Socket.IO. However, the emit() function is not sending the data to the frontend as expected.

Here is my Redis subscriber function:

def redis_subscriber():
    pubsub = r.pubsub()
    pubsub.subscribe('feed_channel')
    print("Subscribed to feed_channel")
    for message in pubsub.listen():
        if message['type'] == 'message':
            try:
                data = message['data'].decode('utf-8')
                # print(f"Emitting Redis data: {data}")
                socketio.emit('new_data', json.dumps({"message": "Connected to Flask server"}))

            except Exception as e:
                print(f"Error processing message: {e}")

The Redis subscription is working fine, and I can confirm that messages are being received. However, the socketio.emit() call doesn't seem to send the data to the frontend.

Redis is properly set up and publishing messages to the feed_channel. The Socket.IO server is running and connected to the frontend.

What could be causing the emit() function to fail in sending the data via WebSocket?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 22

Answers (1)

avifen
avifen

Reputation: 936

pubsub.listen() is blocking, your redis_subscriber function gets stuck inside the for message in pubsub.listen(): loop. It waits indefinitely for a new message from Redis/Valkey.

You take the whole main thread for the subscriber and the socketio engine don't get the chance to actually do something with the data because the loop keep going.

If you want to have an async API, move to valkey-glide which will also give you better pub sub fault tolerance.

If you would like to keep using sync API, use socketio.start_background_task() (more recommended in most cases) or threading.Thread.

Upvotes: 0

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