Async Python Circuit Breaker implementation

aiocircuitbreaker

This is an async Python implementation of the circuitbreaker library.

Installation

The project is available on PyPI. Simply run:

$ pip install aiocircuitbreaker

Usage

This is the simplest example. Just decorate a async function with the @circuit decorator:

from aiocircuitbreaker import circuit

@circuit
async def external_call():
    ...

This decorator sets up a circuit breaker with the default settings. The circuit breaker:

• monitors the function execution and counts failures
• resets the failure count after every successful execution (while it is closed)
• opens and prevents further executions after 5 subsequent failures
• switches to half-open and allows one test-execution after 30 seconds recovery timeout
• closes if the test-execution succeeded
• considers all raised exceptions (based on class Exception) as an expected failure
• is named "external_call" - the name of the function it decorates

What does failure mean?

A failure is a raised exception, which was not caught during the function call. By default, the circuit breaker listens for all exceptions based on the class Exception. That means, that all exceptions raised during the function call are considered as an "expected failure" and will increase the failure count.

Get specific about the expected failure

It is important, to be as specific as possible, when defining the expected exception. The main purpose of a circuit breaker is to protect your distributed system from a cascading failure. That means, you probably want to open the circuit breaker only, if the integration point on the other end is unavailable. So e.g. if there is an ConnectionError or a request Timeout.

If you are e.g. using the requests library (http://docs.python-requests.org/) for making HTTP calls, its RequestException class would be a great choice for the expected_exception parameter.

All recognized exceptions will be re-raised anyway, but the goal is, to let the circuit breaker only recognize those exceptions which are related to the communication to your integration point.

Configuration

The following configuration options can be adjusted via decorator parameters. For example:

from aiocircuitbreaker import circuit

@circuit(failure_threshold=10, expected_exception=ConnectionError)
async def external_call():
    ...

failure threshold

By default, the circuit breaker opens after 5 subsequent failures. You can adjust this value with the failure_threshold parameter.

recovery timeout

By default, the circuit breaker stays open for 30 seconds to allow the integration point to recover. You can adjust this value with the recovery_timeout parameter.

expected exception

By default, the circuit breaker listens for all exceptions which are based on the Exception class. You can adjust this with the expected_exception parameter. It can be either an exception class or a tuple of exception classes.

name

By default, the circuit breaker name is empty string. You can adjust the name with parameter name.

fallback function

By default, the circuit breaker will raise a CircuitBreaker exception when the circuit is opened. You can instead specify a function (async function) to be called when the circuit is opened. This function can be specified with the fallback_function parameter and will be called with the same parameters as the decorated function would be.

Advanced Usage

If you apply circuit breakers to a couple of functions and you always set specific options other than the default values, you can extend the CircuitBreaker class and create your own circuit breaker subclass instead:

from aiocircuitbreaker import CircuitBreaker

class MyCircuitBreaker(CircuitBreaker):
    FAILURE_THRESHOLD = 10
    RECOVERY_TIMEOUT = 60
    EXPECTED_EXCEPTION = RequestException

Now you have two options to apply your circuit breaker to a function. As an Object directly:

@MyCircuitBreaker()
async def external_call():
    ...

Please note, that the circuit breaker class has to be initialized, you have to use a class instance as decorator (@MyCircuitBreaker()), not the class itself (@MyCircuitBreaker).

Or via the decorator proxy:

@circuit(cls=MyCircuitBreaker)
async def external_call():
    ...