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Trying to sanity check converting some coroutines ...
# coroutines
c
Trying to sanity check converting some coroutines retrofit code to something that runs in parallel but stills waits for both calls to be complete. This is my sequential coroutine code
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viewModelScope.launch {

val nameResponse = retrofitService.getName()
val phoneResponse = retrofitService.getPhone()
print("${nameResponse.isSuccessful.toString()} ${phoneResponse.isSuccessful.toString()}")

}
Is making it parallel as easy as doing this?
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viewModelScope.launch {

val nameResponse = async { retrofitService.getName() }
val phoneResponse = async { retrofitService.getPhone() }
print("${nameResponse.await().isSuccessful.toString()} ${phoneResponse.await().isSuccessful.toString()}")

}
If that is all I need. Am I missing something anything from your point of view. Besides error handling (which is a whole other topic)? Any other ways to do this?
o
that looks fine, but you may need a scope to call 
async
, in which case you should wrap that whole block with 
coroutineScope {}
c
So I'm doing this on android in a VM, which seems to have it's own scope I can use. So I am launching everything in
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viewModelScope.launch {
//my code here
}
o
okay, that's fine then
c
Updated my question to include that just so that I'm clear.
@octylFractal thats awesome. Crazy how easy that is.
o
I do want to note, if 
retrofitService.getName()
isn't suspending and can block for long enough to consider it not-good for the view thread, you should 
async(<http://Dispatchers.IO|Dispatchers.IO>)
instead
but if it does suspend, then you don't need to worry about that
👍 1
oh, but if it's doing something blocking but CPU-bound, 
async(Dispatchers.Default)
is actually the correct thing. obviously the IO dispatcher is just for IO (disk/network/etc.)
👍 1
c
makes sense. It does suspend. I originally stumbled upon this answer from Roman and I thought that maybe this is how I have to do parallel calls. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54854187/kotlin-coroutines-waiting-for-multiple-threads-to-finish
o
isn't that basically what you're doing?
c
No? Unless I'm missing something here, but it looks completely different! 😄
o
`launch`/`async` are very similar, the only difference being that 
async
allows access to the value at a later point. 
withContext
is just another way to (1) switch dispatchers, and (2) open up a new CoroutineScope like I suggested with 
coroutineScope {}
c
Aha. Thanks for the details
So I could do something like this?
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suspend fun getNameAndPhone() = withContext(<http://Dispatchers.IO|Dispatchers.IO>) { 
    // withContext waits for all children coroutines 
    launch { retrofitService.getName() }
    launch { retrofitService.getPhone() }
}
o
well, you could, but you wouldn't get any values back
so it wouldn't be very useful for retrieving data
c
So basically there's no other real way to write this code differently?
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viewModelScope.launch {

//Call in parralel
val nameRes = async { retrofitService.getName() }
val phoneRes = async { retrofitService.getPhone() }

//Wait for both to be done
print("${nameRes.await().isSuccessful.toString()} ${phoneRes.await().isSuccessful.toString()}")

}
o
there are ways to refactor it slightly differently, but they will all do the same thing e.g., you could do
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suspend fun getNameAndPhone() = coroutineScope {
  val nameRes = async { retrofitService.getName() }
  val phoneRes = async { retrofitService.getPhone() }
  return@corountineScope nameRes.await() to phoneRes.await()
}
which would get you a 
Pair<Name, Phone>
(or whatever the type is)
👍 1
c
Cool. I mostly want to learn how to spot parallel code. So it looks like await will likely be the dead giveaway
o
anything that uses the CoroutineScope basically
this includes 
CoroutineScope.launch
, 
CoroutineScope.produce
, 
Flow.launchIn
, 
CoroutineScope.actor
, etc.
c
Thank you @octylFractal
e
@Colton Idle maybe this setting would be helpful.
This is what I use. It subtly hints to suspending functions.
o
Doesn't intellij also indicate them in the gutter on the left of the line numbers? I suppose it can get confusing in one-liners, but it's generally sufficient
e
It does, you are right. It even indicates that if you use a 
for
on a channel for example. But for lambdas and such, this is a quick way to see what exactly is suspending.
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