Best way to implement a timed queue?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Thomas Ploch schrieb:
> I am having troubles with implementing a timed queue. I am using the
> 'Queue' module to manage several queues. But I want a timed access, i.e.
> only 2 fetches per second max. I am horribly stuck on even how I
> actually could write it. Has somebody done that before? And when yes,
> how is the best way to implement it?

You could put a wrapper around the queue which synchronizes the get
operations, and then delays access until 1s after the last-but-one
access.

The following code is untested:

import threading, time

class ThrottledQueue(threading.Queue):
  def __init__(self):
    threading.Queue.__init__(self)
    self.old = self.older = 0
    self.get_lock = threading.Lock()

  def get(self):
    with self.get_lock:  # synchronize get
      # check whether the next get should be in the future
      now = time.time()
      next = self.older + 1
      if now < next: time.sleep(next-now)
      # really fetch one item; this may block
      result = threading.Queue.get(self)
      self.older = self.old
      # set the last get time to the time when the get completed,
      # not when it started
      self.old = time.time()
    return result

HTH,
Martin