pause() and pauseAll() do not work

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This is a great library, but I am having some problems.

I am using Bulk Loader to create a Sequential Loader: that is, it loads a
series of swfs one at a time. I want to be able to interrupt this
sequential loading and load a swf immediately if it is needed, then go back
to the sequential loading. Here's my basic setup:

create an instance of bulk loader. Add an item and start(). the onComplete
handler for this item will remove all of the listeners and check to see if
there is another item to load. If there is, it adds it to the bulk loader
and starts again. It continues this process until all of the swfs are
loaded, one after the other.

If a user hits a button, I would like it to pause the bulk loader. Then,
create a simple flash Loader object and load the requested swf. When the
onComplete Event is fired for this Loader, it should resume the bulk loader.

The sequential loading works fine, but when I call the
bulkLoader.pauseAll(), it doesn't pause. It doesn't even slow down. It
simply keeps chugging along. I tried removing the progress and complete
listeners, but it didn't make any difference. I loaded swfs with timeline
sounds so I could hear when they finished loading. That's how I know they
didn't stop. 

I am using the latest bulk loader SVN on Windows Vista, Flash 9/CS3.
ZIP file attached (externally loaded swfs not included). This may be a
mistake in how I'm using the bulk loader library. 

Thanks again for this library,
Andy

Original issue reported on code.google.com by andy.wat...@gtempaccount.com on 24 Feb 2009 at 8:22

Attachments:

• [bulk loader test.zip](https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-attachments/bulk-loader/issue-77/comment-0/bulk loader test.zip)

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Andy.

First of all, if a core functionality is that broken, it should really be fixed.

That said, there are unit tests for this on the test suite. I've also just did 
a quick test class (attached here), that 
seems to work fine, for a variety of loading types including swfs. This is a 
small flex class. Just fire it up, click 
the start, watch the connection being opened on the browser. Click stop, the 
connection is closed.

Locally, I see all of the expected behavior, which is for the connections to be 
closed. On a Safari and Firefox, I 
can see the browser closing the connection.

A few pointers to help on debugging.

1. To understand better what you are describing as a bug:
a) It helps to have a bare case minimum test. No buttons or pages, just a 
bulkloader starting and then being 
paused (I've attached this to this issue report).

b) How are you concluding it does not work? Are you spoofing the requests on 
the browser? By which means?
Events might still fire, depending on how you've set it up.

Now you need to decouple this from your application logic, since it might not 
be related to bulkloader at all.

Also, note that while what you are doing is possible, and in theory should 
work, BulkLoader has functionality 
design to help you in these cases. You could:

1. create the BulkLoader instance
2. Add all the swfs you might need
3. Load them with numConnections =1
4. If something on your application happens and you desire to change prioritys 
on the fly, you can say:
bulkLoader.loadNow("some-key-or-url");

I'll keep this ticket open, in case more infor surfaces and it is clear that it 
really is a bug.

Cheers
Arthur Debert 

Original comment by debert on 24 Feb 2009 at 8:57

Attachments:

• bulk-loader-pause-test.zip

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Arthur,

Thanks for the speedy reply! It was my mistake - You were right, but I did 
notice
something else:

I ran a simple test with a basic start and stop button and a single download. 
the
start button calls "resumeAll" and adds the progress and complete listeners on 
the
individual item. The stop button calls "pauseAll" and removes the listeners. 
When I
hit the start, it began the download. When I hit the stop, it paused. 

Then, when I hit start again, the download started from 0% again. I am using 
Windows
Task Manager to track my Flash memory usage and I noticed that even though the
download started at the beginning again (according to the ProgressEvent 
listener),
the memory usage did not decrease. In other words, the partial download is still
sitting in memory. Is this correct? the API docs for "resumeAll" say that 
"resumed
items will be able to use partialy downloaded content." In what scenarios is 
this true? 

Thanks again for this class,
Andy

Original comment by andy.wat...@gtempaccount.com on 27 Feb 2009 at 2:56

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Andy.

Good to know you got the pause resume working.

There are a few things to keep in mind with pause/resume. Honestly, it's almost 
a poetic license.
There is really no such thing as pause and resume itself. The player kills the 
request. What is suppouse to 
happend is that the bowser should be able to resume the request, but it depends 
on the browser itself. I 
cann't really remember the fine details, but support for actual resuming was 
inconsistent amongst browsers 
and all.

All that to say that bulkloader does as much as the runtime allows, but your 
milage may vary ;)

Regarding memory consumption... 
I am always a bit paranoid about memory leaks in BL. I've tried to make sure 
none occur, but honestly, pause 
resume might be a corner case. That said, can you be positive it is leaking 
memory? Running it on the profiles 
**and** forcing garbage collection to run is the one way to check. If the 
memory is being used but the gc 
hasn't reclaimed it yet, it will linger on.

If you can confirm that or give more pointers I'll take a better look.

Cheers
Arthur Debert

Original comment by debert on 27 Feb 2009 at 3:11

• Changed state: Invalid