There is no such "event" as "buffer of channel is full", so you can't detect that [*]. This means you can't idiomatically solve your problem with language primitives using only 1 channel.
[*] Not entirely true: you could detect if the buffer of a channel is full by using select with default case when sending on the channel, but that requires logic from the senders, and repetitive attempts to send.
I would use another channel from which I would receive as values are sent on it, and "redirect", store the values in another channel which has a buffer of 100 as you mentioned. At each redirection you may check if the internal channel's buffer is full, and if so, do an immediate write. If not, continue to monitor the "incoming" channel and a timer channel with a select statement, and if the timer fires, do a "regular" write.
You may use len(chInternal) to check how many elements are in the chInternal channel, and cap(chInternal) to check its capacity. Note that this is "safe" as we are the only goroutine handling the chInternal channel. If there would be multiple goroutines, value returned by len(chInternal) could be outdated by the time we use it to something (e.g. comparing it).
In this solution chInternal (as its name says) is for internal use only. Others should only send values on ch. Note that ch may or may not be a buffered channel, solution works in both cases. However, you may improve efficiency if you also give some buffer to ch (so chances that senders get blocked will be lower).
var (
chInternal = make(chan int, 100)
ch = make(chan int) // You may (should) make this a buffered channel too
)
func main() {
delay := time.Second * 5
timer := time.NewTimer(delay)
for {
select {
case v := <-ch:
chInternal <- v
if len(chInternal) == cap(chInternal) {
doWrite() // Buffer is full, we need to write immediately
timer.Reset(delay)
}
case <-timer.C:
doWrite() // "Regular" write: 5 seconds have passed since last write
timer.Reset(delay)
}
}
}
If an immediate write happens (due to a "buffer full" situation), this solution will time the next "regular" write 5 seconds after this. If you don't want this and you want the 5-second regular writes be independent from the immediate writes, simply do not reset the timer following the immediate write.
An implementation of doWrite() may be as follows:
var f *os.File // Make sure to open file for writing
func doWrite() {
for {
select {
case v := <-chInternal:
fmt.Fprintf(f, "%d ", v) // Write v to the file
default: // Stop when no more values in chInternal
return
}
}
}
We can't use for ... range as that only returns when the channel is closed, but our chInternal channel is not closed. So we use a select with a default case so when no more values are in the buffer of chInternal, we return.
Improvements
Using a slice instead of 2nd channel
Since the chInternal channel is only used by us, and only on a single goroutine, we may also choose to use a single []int slice instead of a channel (reading/writing a slice is much faster than a channel).
Showing only the different / changed parts, it could look something like this:
var (
buf = make([]int, 0, 100)
)
func main() {
// ...
for {
select {
case v := <-ch:
buf = append(buf, v)
if len(buf) == cap(buf) {
// ...
}
}
func doWrite() {
for _, v := range buf {
fmt.Fprintf(f, "%d ", v) // Write v to the file
}
buf = buf[:0] // "Clear" the buffer
}
With multiple goroutines
If we stick to leave chInternal a channel, the doWrite() function may be called on another goroutine to not block the other one, e.g. go doWrite(). Since data to write is read from a channel (chInternal), this requires no further synchronization.
