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metta.remote ​

Source: extensions/python/metta/remote.py.

Spaces across processes, the multi-context reading: each engine is a context, serve() exposes its spaces over HTTP speaking the same tagged wire the local boundary speaks, connect() answers a transport, and RemoteSpace over it is the backing metta.attach() registers registers a remote engine's space here as a foreign space, so (match &remote (users $id $n) ...) crosses the network exactly as it crosses into DuckDB. The shape is SingularityNET's DAS gateway (a single transport method carrying {space, pattern} and answering atoms) and metta-wam's metta_server, translated onto metta's own SpaceProvider protocol; the engine keeps unification for itself, so a remote answer is speed and reach, never trust. Owns:

  • Server owns the HTTP loop and its attached-engine worker until close() joins both
  • a Gateway owns every cursor ask/next/stop holds open, one engine each, released by close(), by the stream ending, or by the idle deadline

The entries below reproduce the source signatures and docstrings.

Request ​

python
class Request:

What an authorize hook decides about: who is asking, what they ask for, and which space they name. A hook given the headers alone could not tell a read from a write, so read-only was inexpressible.

RemoteCursor ​

python
class RemoteCursor:

A remote answer stream: /ask opened it, /next pulls the next chunk, /stop releases it.

Space.stream()'s Cursor with a wire under it, and the same discipline: iterate it, close() it, or leave its with-block. Exhaustion releases the server's cursor and stays ordinary iterator exhaustion; an explicit close is the separate state that refuses further pulls.

with space.stream(pattern) as answers:
    for atom in answers:
        if wanted(atom):
            break          # the server computes nothing further

batch is how many answers one crossing carries. One is the fully lazy reading and the protocol's default; raising it trades an answer that may go unwanted for a saved round trip, the same choice a database driver's fetch size makes.

RemoteCursor.close ​

python
def close(self) -> None:

Release the server's cursor; idempotent, and distinct from exhaustion, which released it already.

The token survives a failed /stop and the cursor stays open, because a close that discarded it first could never release the server's cursor afterwards: every later close returned at the flag while the server held the engine to its idle deadline.

RemoteSpace ​

python
class RemoteSpace(SpaceProvider):

A space served by another engine, reached through a transport.

match sends the pattern's wire form and decodes the instantiated atoms the remote engine's own match answered; add and remove write through; atoms enumerates. The local engine unifies every candidate against the local pattern, so a lying or stale remote can only cost time, not soundness.

batch chooses how match() retrieves answers, and the choice is the one match() and stream() make in-process. Left None, match() is the eager /match: one crossing carrying the whole answer set, which is what a space whose answers fit in an HTTP body wants. Set to a count, match() rides the ask/next/stop lifecycle in chunks of that size, so a caller that stops early stops the server's work with it and an answer set larger than one body still crosses.

It does NOT subscribe, and that is the one capability a provider has to promise rather than implement. See delivers.

RemoteSpace.delivers ​

python
def delivers(self) -> tuple[str, str] | None:

Nothing: the wire carries no event.

The wire has four operations, match, enumerate, add and remove, and none of them carries an event, while a remote space's contents change on the server, which is the whole reason it is remote. So a watcher here would hear only the writes this process made and silently miss every other one. Declaring nothing is what refuses the subscription; the sentence below is what a caller reads.

RemoteSpace.refusal ​

python
def refusal(self, capability: str, /, **_request: Any) -> str | None:

No docstring is defined.

RemoteSpace.match ​

python
def match(self, pattern: Atom, *, limit: int | None = None) -> Iterator[Atom]:

Candidates for a pattern; limit crosses as the wire's optional bound field. Sending it is sound whatever the server does: a server that honors it exactly saves the work, one that ignores it over-answers, and the local engine re-unifies and truncates either way. Whether it is honored is advertised in server_capabilities().

One crossing carries the whole answer set unless this space was built with a batch, in which case the ask/next/stop lifecycle carries it a chunk at a time and an engine that stops pulling stops the server.

RemoteSpace.stream ​

python
def stream(
    self,
    pattern: Atom,
    *,
    batch: int = _DEFAULT_BATCH,
    limit: int | None = None,
) -> RemoteCursor:

The lazy method: answers pulled a chunk at a time, so taking two of a large enumeration costs the server two answers' work instead of the whole join's.

match() remains eager, matching the in-process split between match() and stream(). Reach for this to take answers until you have seen enough, or when the answer set is larger than one HTTP body.

limit is the wire's bound and carries the same advice it carries on match(): a server that can honor it exactly stops at the count, one that cannot ignores it and over-answers. It is not truncated again here, because a server may answer candidates rather than answers, and cutting an over-approximated stream at the count is the under-approximation the protocol forbids. The first ask crosses when the cursor is built, as the in-process cursor opens its engine when it is built.

RemoteSpace.server_capabilities ​

python
def server_capabilities(self) -> dict[str, Any]:

The server's own advertisement from GET /health: capabilities names the protocol operations it admits, so a client can ask before writing, and bound says whether /match honors the bound field exactly. A transport built by connect() knows its URL; a hand-built transport must carry its own health callable, or this refuses rather than guessing.

RemoteSpace.atoms ​

python
def atoms(self) -> Iterator[Atom]:

No docstring is defined.

RemoteSpace.add ​

python
def add(self, atom: Atom) -> None:

Store one atom on the serving side.

A transport TIMEOUT means UNKNOWN, not failed: the server may still be processing the request when the client stops waiting, so a mutation behind a timeout can have committed. Exactly-once delivery needs idempotency keys and server-side deduplication, which the remote protocol does not carry yet; until it does, re-checking with a read is the caller's disambiguation.

RemoteSpace.add_many ​

python
def add_many(self, atoms: list[Atom]) -> None:

One request carries the batch, the engine's own bulk-write law on the wire: a batch is a transport optimisation and never a semantic one, and the engine already routes only plain stores through it.

RemoteSpace.remove ​

python
def remove(self, atom: Atom) -> bool:

No docstring is defined.

connect ​

python
def connect(
    url: str,
    timeout: float = 30.0,
    *,
    token: str | None = None,
    headers: dict[str, str] | None = None,
    ssl_context: Any = None,
) -> Transport:

The HTTP transport for a serve()d engine: one POST per operation, JSON both ways, errors surfaced with the remote's own message.

token sends Bearer authentication, headers adds anything else a deployment needs (an API key, a tenant id), and ssl_context is Python's own ssl.SSLContext for https urls, certificate pinning included, so the transport composes with whatever security the serving side asks for. Only absolute http and https URLs are accepted. Credentials require https.

Gateway ​

python
class Gateway:

This engine's spaces as the protocol's server side, transport-free.

Call it with (operation, payload) and it answers the reply dict, which is the shape Transport has on the client side, so both halves of the wire carry one signature. serve() wraps a Gateway in the bundled HTTP server; mount one on the framework a deployment already runs, or call it directly, which is how a test watches the engine's own counters while the protocol runs, an HTTP server answering on a thread of its own.

A Gateway OWNS the cursors ask/next/stop hold open, so close() it when the process is done with it. Server.close() does that for the one serve() made.

It serializes NOTHING of its own: serve() runs every call on one attached-engine worker, and a Gateway called directly runs on the calling thread, so a caller that shares one across threads owns that arrangement.

Gateway.health ​

python
def health(self) -> dict:

The transport-side spelling of GET /health, so a Gateway is a drop-in Transport and RemoteSpace.server_capabilities() can ask one the same question it asks a connected server.

Gateway.cursor_space ​

python
def cursor_space(self, token: object) -> str | None:

Which space an open cursor's answers come from, so a transport can hand its authorization hook the space /next and /stop are really about; None once the cursor is gone.

Gateway.close ​

python
def close(self) -> None:

Release every cursor still open, and the engine behind each.

Server ​

python
class Server:

This engine's spaces, served. close() stops accepting.

A context manager, because it owns a socket, an accept thread and an engine worker, which is more than any other handle in this library and exactly the shape Python spells with. metta.space() and metta.aio.connect() are already with-able; a server that had to be closed by hand was the one resource whose leak on an exception path was silent.

Server.close ​

python
def close(self, timeout: float = _SERVER_TIMEOUT) -> None:

Stop accepting, detach the engine worker, join both threads, and release every answer cursor a client left open.

The cursors go LAST, once nothing can pull from them: each holds an engine, and a client that walked away from a stream would otherwise leave one behind until the idle deadline that no longer has a server to fire on.

serve ​

python
def serve(
    m,
    host: str = '127.0.0.1',
    port: int = 0,
    spaces: list[str] | None = None,
    *,
    token: str | None = None,
    authorize: Callable[[Request], bool] | None = None,
    ssl_context: Any = None,
    cursor_idle: float = _CURSOR_IDLE,
    cursor_limit: int = _CURSOR_LIMIT,
) -> Server:

Expose this engine's spaces over HTTP; port 0 picks a free one.

Every operation answers for the space the request names, restricted to spaces when given. Security is the caller's to define, library fashion: token requires Bearer authentication, authorize is the general hook (a Request in, carrying the operation, the space and the headers, and a verdict out, so read-only, per-space and per-tenant policies all fit), and ssl_context, Python's own ssl.SSLContext with a certificate loaded, serves TLS directly; anything heavier still composes behind a fronting proxy. match runs the engine's own match with the pattern as its template, so the instantiated atoms cross, and the caller's engine re-unifies them.

cursor_idle and cursor_limit bound the ask/next/stop lifecycle's server-side state: how long a cursor nobody pulls from survives, and how many live at once before a further ask is refused. The defaults are pengines' own, 300 seconds and a ceiling.

A context is a PROCESS: serving and attaching within one process cannot join through the local engine, because one runtime lock guards both sides of that call and the serving thread would wait on the very evaluation that is waiting on it. Two engines, two processes, is the deployment this exists for; in-process, spaces already share the engine and need no wire. Gateway is the same protocol with no transport under it, for a test or a framework that wants the operations without a socket.

Released under the MIT License.

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