All IO operations in Netty are performed asynchronously.
So when you connect to a host for example, this is done asynchronously(异步的) by default. The same is true when you write/send a message. This means the operation may not be performed directly but picked up later for execution. Because of this you cant know if an operation was successful or not after it returns, but need to be able to check later for success or have some kind of ways to register a listener which is notified. To rectify(纠正) this, Netty uses Futures and ChannelFutures. This future can be used to register a listener, which will be notified when an operation has either failed or completed successfully.
The relationship between an EventLoop and an EventLoopGroup may not be immediately(立即马上) intuitive(直观的), because we have said that an EventLoopGroup contains one or more EventLoop but this diagram shows that in fact, an EventLoop passes the is-a EventLoopGroup test, i.e. an EventLoop is an EventLoopGroup. This means wherever you can pass in an EventLoopGroup you can also just use a specific(具体的) EventLoop.
figure 3.1 shows why the design Netty uses to ensure no synchronization(同步) is required on your part to process Netty events.
EventLoop Thread relationship
The EventLoop is always bound to a single Thread that never changed during its life time.
When a channel is registered, Netty binds that channel to a single EventLoop(and so to a single thread) for the life time of that Channel. This is why your application doesnt need to synchronize on Netty IO operations because all IO for a given Channel will always be performed by the same thread.
all IO for a given Channel will always be performed by the same thread.
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