Tutorial Part 3: Rewrite Chat Server as Asynchronous
====================================================

This tutorial begins where :doc:`Tutorial 2 </tutorial/part_2>` left off.
We'll rewrite the consumer code to be asynchronous rather than synchronous
to improve its performance.

Rewrite the consumer to be asynchronous
---------------------------------------

The ``ChatConsumer`` that we have written is currently synchronous. Synchronous
consumers are convenient because they can call regular synchronous I/O functions
such as those that access Django models without writing special code. However
asynchronous consumers can provide a higher level of performance since they
don't need to create additional threads when handling requests.

``ChatConsumer`` only uses async-native libraries (Channels and the channel layer)
and in particular it does not access synchronous Django models. Therefore it can
be rewritten to be asynchronous without complications.

.. note::
    Even if ``ChatConsumer`` *did* access Django models or other synchronous code it
    would still be possible to rewrite it as asynchronous. Utilities like
    :ref:`asgiref.sync.sync_to_async <sync_to_async>` and
    :doc:`channels.db.database_sync_to_async </topics/databases>` can be
    used to call synchronous code from an asynchronous consumer. The performance
    gains however would be less than if it only used async-native libraries.

Let's rewrite ``ChatConsumer`` to be asynchronous.
Put the following code in ``chat/consumers.py``::

    # chat/consumers.py
    from channels.generic.websocket import AsyncWebsocketConsumer
    import json
    
    class ChatConsumer(AsyncWebsocketConsumer):
        async def connect(self):
            self.room_name = self.scope['url_route']['kwargs']['room_name']
            self.room_group_name = 'chat_%s' % self.room_name
            
            # Join room group
            await self.channel_layer.group_add(
                self.room_group_name,
                self.channel_name
            )
            
            await self.accept()
        
        async def disconnect(self, close_code):
            # Leave room group
            await self.channel_layer.group_discard(
                self.room_group_name,
                self.channel_name
            )
        
        # Receive message from WebSocket
        async def receive(self, text_data):
            text_data_json = json.loads(text_data)
            message = text_data_json['message']
            
            # Send message to room group
            await self.channel_layer.group_send(
                self.room_group_name,
                {
                    'type': 'chat_message',
                    'message': message
                }
            )
        
        # Receive message from room group
        async def chat_message(self, event):
            message = event['message']
            
            # Send message to WebSocket
            await self.send(text_data=json.dumps({
                'message': message
            }))

This new code is for ChatConsumer is very similar to the original code, with the following differences:

* ``ChatConsumer`` now inherits from ``AsyncWebsocketConsumer`` rather than
  ``WebsocketConsumer``.
* All methods are ``async def`` rather than just ``def``.
* ``await`` is used to call asynchronous functions that perform I/O.
* ``async_to_sync`` is no longer needed when calling methods on the channel layer.

Let's verify that the consumer for the ``/ws/chat/ROOM_NAME/`` path still works.
To start the Channels development server, run the following command::

    $ python3 manage.py runserver

Open a browser tab to the room page at http://127.0.0.1:8000/chat/lobby/.
Open a second browser tab to the same room page.

In the second browser tab, type the message "hello" and press enter. You should
now see "hello" echoed in the chat log in both the second browser tab and in the
first browser tab.

Now your chat server is fully asynchronous!

This tutorial continues in :doc:`Tutorial 4 </tutorial/part_4>`.



