HH\Lib\IO\Handle

An interface for an IO stream

For example, an IO handle might be attached to a file, a network socket, or just an in-memory buffer.

HSL IO handles can be thought of as having a combination of behaviors - some of which are mutually exclusive - which are reflected in more-specific interfaces; for example:

• Disposable, Closeable, or neither
• Seekable
• Readable
• Writable

IO\DisposableHandles are automatically closed at the end of the using scope, but do not expose an explicit close method; IO\CloseableHandles are never disposable, but do provide an explicit close method. Some special handles are neither closeable or disposable, such as the handle returned by IO\server_error().

These can be combined to arbitrary interfaces; for example, if you are writing a function that writes some data, you may want to take a <<__AcceptDisposable>> IO\WriteHandle - or, if you read, write, and seek, <<__AcceptDisposable>> IO\SeekableReadWriteHandle. If you need to store a handle, remove the <<__AcceptDisposable>>; only specify Closeable if your code requires that the close method is defined.

Some types of handle imply these behaviors; for example, all File\Handles are IO\SeekableHandles.

You probably want to start with one of:

• File\open_read_only(), File\open_write_only(), or File\open_read_write()
• IO\pipe()
• IO\request_input(), IO\request_input(), or IO\request_error(); these used for all kinds of requests, including both HTTP and CLI requests.
• IO\server_output(), IO\server_error()
• TCP\connect_async() or TCP\Server
• Unix\connect_async(), or Unix\Server
• the _nd() or _nd_async() variants of the above functions if a non-disposable is required.

All concrete instances of IO\Handles should either have a managed lifecycle, or be instances of IO\CloseableHandle, and explicitly closed by code using it.

Handles with a managed lifecycle can not be closed manually, and take several forms; for example:

• Disposable handles will be closed at the end of their scope. Socket peers may close a connection before this point.
• IO\request_* handles are open until the end of the request; an attached process may close them earlier - e.g. a user may close IO\request_input() on a CLI process by typing Ctrl+D into their shell.
• IO\server_output() is open for the lifetime of the HHVM process, unless closed by an attached process, if any.

Interface Synopsis

namespace HH\Lib\IO;

interface Handle {...}

Public Methods

• ->isEndOfFile(): bool