4.2 Callbacks
Keywords: pyOpenSSL

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4.2 Callbacks

There are a number of problems with callbacks. First of all, OpenSSL is written as a C library, it's not meant to have Python callbacks, so a way around that is needed. Another problem is thread support. A lot of the OpenSSL I/O functions can block if the socket is in blocking mode, and then you want other Python threads to be able to do other things. The real trouble is if you've released the global CPython interpreter lock to do a potentially blocking operation, and the operation calls a callback. Then we must take the GIL back, since calling Python APIs without holding it is not allowed.

There are two solutions to the first problem, both of which are necessary. The first solution to use is if the C callback allows ''userdata'' to be passed to it (an arbitrary pointer normally). This is great! We can set our Python function object as the real userdata and emulate userdata for the Python function in another way. The other solution can be used if an object with an ''app_data'' system always is passed to the callback. For example, the SSL object in OpenSSL has app_data functions and in e.g. the verification callbacks, you can retrieve the related SSL object. What we do is to set our wrapper `Connection` object as app_data for the SSL object, and we can easily find the Python callback.

The other problem is solved using thread local variables. Whenever the GIL is released before calling into an OpenSSL API, the PyThreadState pointer returned by `PyEval_SaveState` is stored in a global thread local variable (using Python's own TLS API, `PyThread_set_key_value`). When it is necessary to re-acquire the GIL, either after the OpenSSL API returns or in a C callback invoked by that OpenSSL API, the value of the thread local variable is retrieved (`PyThread_get_key_value`) and used to re-acquire the GIL. This allows Python threads to execute while OpenSSL APIs are running and allows use of any particular pyOpenSSL object from any Python thread, since there is no per-thread state associated with any of these objects and since OpenSSL is threadsafe (as long as properly initialized, as pyOpenSSL initializes it).