Concurrent Map Writing and Reading in Go, or how to deal with the data races.
This time, I will show you how to work with the maps in go effectively and prevent the occurrence of the data race errors. Data races happen when several goroutines access the same resource concurrently and at least one of the accesses is a write.
Let’s write a simple program, which generates a map of numbers and print them to the console:
package main
import "log"
var numbers = make(map[int]int, 100)
func main() {
generateNumbersMap()
}
func generateNumbersMap() {
// Write.
for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
numbers[i] = i
}
// Read.
for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
log.Print(numbers[i])
}
}
Now, if we run it with the data race detector option go run -race main.go, we can see the printed list of numbers in the console without any data race problems.
Everything seems to be good. Is it? Let’s add some concurrency to our super complex program 😄 and see what happens:
package main
import (
"log"
"sync"
)
var numbers = make(map[int]int, 100)
func main() {
generateNumbersMap()
}
func generateNumbersMap() {
wg := sync.WaitGroup{}
// Write.
for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
wg.Add(1)
go func(i int) {
defer wg.Done()
numbers[i] = i
}(i)
}
// Read.
for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
wg.Add(1)
go func(i int) {
defer wg.Done()
log.Print(numbers[i])
}(i)
}
wg.Wait()
}
If we run it now, in the console we can notice the data race errors:
==================
WARNING: DATA RACE
Write at 0x00c0001241b0 by goroutine 8:
runtime.mapassign_fast64()
/usr/local/opt/go/libexec/src/runtime/map_fast64.go:92 +0x0
main.generateNumbersMap.func1()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:68 +0xa4
Previous write at 0x00c0001241b0 by goroutine 7:
runtime.mapassign_fast64()
/usr/local/opt/go/libexec/src/runtime/map_fast64.go:92 +0x0
main.generateNumbersMap.func1()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:68 +0xa4
Goroutine 8 (running) created at:
main.generateNumbersMap()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:66 +0xb5
main.main()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:33 +0x2f
Goroutine 7 (finished) created at:
main.generateNumbersMap()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:66 +0xb5
main.main()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:33 +0x2f
==================
==================
WARNING: DATA RACE
Read at 0x00c000146438 by goroutine 41:
main.generateNumbersMap.func2()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:75 +0xc7
Previous write at 0x00c000146438 by goroutine 7:
main.generateNumbersMap.func1()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:68 +0xb9
Goroutine 41 (running) created at:
main.generateNumbersMap()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:73 +0x110
main.main()
/dev/webdevstation/blog-examples/concurent-map/main.go:33 +0x2f
==================
Found 2 data race(s)
exit status 66
There are several strategies that could be used to solve it. I will show one of them. We are going to introduce a new struct that provides it’s own mutex:
type SafeNumbers struct {
sync.RWMutex
numbers map[int]int
}
To be able to read and write items concurrently to this structure, we need to create the responsible methods:
func (sn *SafeNumbers) Add(num int) {
sn.Lock()
defer sn.Unlock()
sn.numbers[num] = num
}
Here we are basically telling to lock the numbers map, during adding of the new number to it. Other goroutines will wait until it became unlocked again.
And another method for reading:
func (sn *SafeNumbers) Get(num int) (int, error) {
sn.RLock()
defer sn.RUnlock()
if number, ok := sn.numbers[num]; ok {
return number, nil
}
return 0, errors.New("Number does not exists")
}
Next, let’s refactor our generateNumbersMap() function:
func generateNumbersMap() {
wg := sync.WaitGroup{}
// Init our "safe" numbers map struct.
safeNumbers := &SafeNumbers{
numbers: map[int]int{},
}
// Write.
for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
wg.Add(1)
go func(i int) {
defer wg.Done()
safeNumbers.Add(i)
}(i)
}
// Read.
for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
wg.Add(1)
go func(i int) {
defer wg.Done()
number, err := safeNumbers.Get(i)
if err != nil {
log.Print(err)
} else {
log.Print(number)
}
}(i)
}
wg.Wait()
}
If we run go run -race main.go now, there will be no more data race issues!
As I mentioned before, there also other ways to solve it. One of them is using of a special go type sync.Map.
Nevertheless, I hope this was helpful and you know now how to work safely with the maps in go. Especially, you should be careful with them when you create the web services, because every http request initiating a new goroutine.
As usual, the source code you can find here.
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