Using Signals

Often it is necessary for operations to be performed at particular points in the lifecycle of an application.

To allow the developer to register code to be called at these points in the lifecycle, Nucleon provides a system of signal registration and dispatch.

Signal Registration

Predefined Signals

Several signals are predefined that will be called by the nucleon framework at appropriate times during the application lifecycle. They will also be called when at appropriate times when running tests, though the testing lifecycle may be subtly different [1].

nucleon.signals.on_initialise

Fired before the application has started. Callbacks receive no arguments.

nucleon.signals.on_start

Fired when the web application has started and is accepting requests. Callbacks receive no arguments.

Example Usage

To register a signal handler that logs that the application is accepting requests:

import logging
from nucleon.signals import on_start

@on_start
def log_ready():
    logging.info("Application started")

Footnotes

[1]	In particular, nucleon.signals.on_start will always be called before any tests are executed, whereas in production requests may be processed before the on_start event is finished dispatching.