\name{TConnector-class}
\Rdversion{1.1}
\docType{class}
\alias{TConnector}
\alias{TConnector-class}

\title{Class "TConnector"}

\description{

  A \code{\linkS4class{Consumer}}-class that is used to connect the output of
  one stream to several \code{Consumer} \code{stream}'s that perform different
  operations on the records. The \code{TConnector} manages the records
  supplied to it to ensure that all the streams connected to it get acess to all
  the  records passed to the TConnector irrespective of the number of records 
  processed at a time by each stream connected down-stream.

  A \code{TConnector} can be connected to other \code{Producer} and
  \code{Consumer} objects using the \code{\link{connect}} function.
}

\usage{TConnector(..., yieldSize=1e6, verbose=FALSE)}

\arguments{
   \item{...}{ Additional arguments}
   \item{verbose}{\code{logical(1)} indicating whether class methods
    should report to the user.}
  \item{yieldSize}{The number of records the input parser is to yield.}
}

\section{Constructors}{
  Use \code{TConnector} to construct instances of this class.
}

\section{Fields}{
  \describe{
    \item{\code{.records}:}{ A temporary buffer used to save records retrieved 
        from the \code{Producer} or \code{Consumer} class connector up-stream to
        the \code{TConnector}. This field is used internally by class methods
        and is not intende to be manipulated directly by the user.}
    \item{\code{.tOuts}:}{A \code{list} of objects of class \code{TOut} of
        length equal to the number of streams connected down-stream to
        it. This field is used internally by the \code{TConnector}-class method
        and not intended to be manipulated directly by the user.}
   }
}

\section{Methods}{
  \describe{
    \item{\code{initialize(...)}:}{A method to initialize the fields of the
        \code{TConnector} class.}
    \item{\code{.fill()}:}{An internal method used to retrieve records from the
        \code{Producer} or \code{Consumer} class connected up-stream to the
        \code{TConnector}.}
    \item{\code{.add()}:}{An internal method to add records to the internal
        buffer(\code{.records}).}
    \item{\code{.dump()}:}{An internal method to remove records that have been
        passed down to all the down-stream classes (and are no longer needed) 
        from the internal buffer(\code{.records}).}
  }
  }

\author{Nishant Gopalakrishnan \url{ngopalak@fhcrc.org}}

\seealso{\code{\link{stream}},\code{\link{YConnector}}, \code{\link{connect}} }

\examples{

### Two Streams b, c1 and b, c2 connected with a Tconnector t
fl <- system.file("extdata", "s_1_sequence.txt", package="Streamer")
b <- RawInput(fl, 100L, reader=rawReaderFactory(1e4))
### c1 and c2 return different number of records
c1 <- RawToChar(10L)
c2 <- RawToChar(20L)
t <- TConnector()

### Connect the blocks together using the connect function
blocks <- structure(list(b, c1, c2, t), names = c("b", "c1", "c2", "t"))
df <- data.frame(from =c("b", "t", "t"), 
                 to = c("t", "c1", "c2"))
res <- connect(blocks, df)

### yield on c2 returns 20 records 
yield(res$c2)
### yield on c1 returns the same records as with yield on c2 
### 10 records at a time
yield(res$c1)
yield(res$c1)

}

\keyword{classes}