Speed Up Your Asyncio Code with Thread Pools

Asyncio is great for writing non-blocking network code in Python. But sometimes you have CPU-bound tasks that could benefit from parallel execution. That's where thread pools come in handy!

A thread pool allows you to execute CPU-bound functions in separate threads, while keeping your main code asynchronous. Here's how it works...

First you need to create a ThreadPoolExecutor:

import asyncio
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

pool = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=4)

This will give you a pool with 4 worker threads.

Then you can submit jobs to your pool using loop.run_in_executor():

async def my_cpu_bound_func(data):
    # Do something CPU intensive 

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()

async def main():
    data = await get_data() 
    
    await loop.run_in_executor(pool, my_cpu_bound_func, data)

The key thing is that run_in_executor() returns a coroutine, so you use await to get the result. Behind the scenes it runs your function in a separate thread!

This keeps your main code non-blocking while allowing CPU parallelization. Pretty neat!

Some tips:

Thread pools do add complexity, so only use them if you have a clear performance bottleneck. But they're a great tool for optimizing CPU work in asyncio.

Let me know if any part needs more explanation! Asyncio concurrency takes some practice to master.