<https://play.kotlinlang.org/hands-on/Introduction%20to%20Coroutines%20and%20Channels/05_Concurrency...

# coroutines

[JP]

https://play.kotlinlang.org/hands-on/Introduction%20to%20Coroutines%20and%20Channels/05_Concurrency

Run the code and check the log; we can see that all the coroutines still run on the main UI thread. We haven’t yet employed multithreading in any way, but already we have the benefits of running coroutines concurrently!

It’s very easy for us to change this code to run “contributors” coroutines on different threads from the common thread pool. Specify Dispatchers.Default as the context argument for the async function:

async(Dispatchers.Default) { ... }```

I’m sort of confused. If I don’t specify a dispatcher in the argument for async function, isn’t the default dispatcher Dispatchers.Default? Yet, I did see the logs change
from

147 [AWT-EventQueue-0] INFO  Contributors - Clearing result
2251 [AWT-EventQueue-0 @coroutine#1] INFO  Contributors - kotlin: loaded 54 repos
2678 [AWT-EventQueue-0 @coroutine#7] INFO  Contributors - kotlin-benchmarks: loaded 7 contributors
...

to

164 [AWT-EventQueue-0] INFO  Contributors - Clearing result
2172 [AWT-EventQueue-0 @coroutine#1] INFO  Contributors - kotlin: loaded 54 repos
2527 [DefaultDispatcher-worker-5 @coroutine#10] INFO  Contributors - anko-example: loaded 2 contributors
2621 [DefaultDispatcher-worker-5 @coroutine#9] INFO  Contributors - kotlinx.html: loaded 15 contributors
...

But when I read the comments in the source code of Builders.common.kt, it was stated like this:

* Coroutine context is inherited from a [CoroutineScope], additional context elements can be specified with [context] argument.
 * If the context does not have any dispatcher nor any other [ContinuationInterceptor], then [Dispatchers.Default] is used.
 * The parent job is inherited from a [CoroutineScope] as well, but it can also be overridden
 * with corresponding [context] element.

and in Dispatchers.kt , it was stated:

/**
     * The default [CoroutineDispatcher] that is used by all standard builders like
     * [launch][CoroutineScope.launch], [async][CoroutineScope.async], etc
     * if no dispatcher nor any other [ContinuationInterceptor] is specified in their context.
     *
     * It is backed by a shared pool of threads on JVM. By default, the maximal level of parallelism used
     * by this dispatcher is equal to the number of CPU cores, but is at least two.
     * Level of parallelism X guarantees that no more than X tasks can be executed in this dispatcher in parallel.
     */
    @JvmStatic
    public actual val Default: CoroutineDispatcher = createDefaultDispatcher()

Could someone explain what I’m missing?

[Joffrey]

A dispatcher may already be there in the parent context, so you would inherit it in this case. The default is used only if no dispatcher at all is present I suppose.

[Joffrey]

You can read a bit about this inheritance of context here: https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/coroutines-first-things-first-e6187bf3bb21

[Dico]

The docs you linked look pretty clear to me about the behaviour. Are you familiar with CoroutineScope?

[JP]

@Dico No, I just began to learn about coroutines, so I’m not so familiar with it. I just read that suspending functions should be called within CoroutineScope or within another suspending function.

[Joffrey]

"The default dispatcher for the runBlocking coroutine, in particular, is confined to the invoker thread, so inheriting it has the effect of confining execution to this thread with predictable FIFO scheduling."

https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/coroutines/coroutine-context-and-dispatchers.html#unconfined-vs-confined-dispatcher

[Joffrey]

Calling runBlocking does provide a Dispatcher that is not the Default , that’s why you have to specify Default if you want it in child coroutines

[JP]

@Joffrey Oh, I see. So in case of runBlocking the default dispatcher is not the Default. This I noticed for the first time. I just checked the code once again, and tried to find the parent context. It was not runBlocking, but:
main.kt calls ContributorsUI class instance, which implements Contributors interface, which again implements CoroutineScope interface. The Contributors interface has method loadContributors which calls the suspending function loadContributorsConcurrent , in which the async call happens.

And I found out inside Contributors interface the code:

val job: Job

    override val coroutineContext: CoroutineContext
        get() = job + Dispatchers.Main

I guess this code set the parent context’s dispatcher to Dispatchers.Main, right?
P.S. How should I interpret the expression job + Dispatchers.Main? Could someone give a link to read about this? I found in Jobs.kt

public operator fun plus(other: Job) = other

but I think I found the wrong code to read about.

[Joffrey]

I guess this code set the parent context’s dispatcher to Dispatchers.Main, right?

It sets this context’s dispatcher to Main, and therefore any child coroutine will inherit it by default, unless you specify another one.

[JP]

Yes, that’s what I understood also, thanks to your explanation.

[Joffrey]

How should I interpret the expression job + Dispatchers.Main? Could someone give a link to read about this?

CoroutineContext is a set of elements and using + allows to add/combine such elements (like Job or Dispatcher or CoroutineName) to a context. This is explained in the article I linked in my first reply.

[JP]

Thanks a lot again, that helped a lot. 🙂

[Joffrey]

You also have this specific part of the documentation: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/coroutines/coroutine-context-and-dispatchers.html#combining-context-elements

[Joffrey]

It’s basically an example of usage of the + operator overloading: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/operator-overloading.html#operator-overloading

[JP]

Yes, that’s why I tried to find the method plus in Jobs.kt , but I guess it’s the plus defined in CoroutineContext which is called.

[Joffrey]

Yes, I believe it must be on the CoroutineContext type, rather than Job, in order to enable combining other kinds of CoroutineContext elements