13.3. Socket ProgrammingNow that we've seen how sockets figure into the Internet picture, let's move on to explore the tools that Python provides for programming sockets with Python scripts. This section shows you how to use the Python socket interface to perform low-level network communications. In later chapters, we will instead use one of the higher-level protocol modules that hide underlying sockets. Python's socket interfaces can be used directly, though, to implement custom network dialogs and to access standard protocols directly. The basic socket interface in Python is the standard library's socket module. Like the os POSIX module, Python's socket module is just a thin wrapper (interface layer) over the underlying C library's socket calls. Like Python files, it's also object-basedmethods of a socket object implemented by this module call out to the corresponding C library's operations after data conversions. For instance, the C library's send and recv function calls become methods of socket objects in Python. Python's socket module supports socket programming on any machine that supports BSD-style socketsWindows, Macs, Linux, Unix, and so onand so provides a portable socket interface. In addition, this module supports all commonly used socket typesTCP/IP, UDP, datagram, and Unix domainand can be used as both a network interface API and a general IPC mechanism between processes running on the same machine. Beyond basic data communication tasks, this module also includes a variety of more advanced tools. For instance, it has calls for:
and more. Provided your Python was compiled with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support, this module now also supports encrypted transfers with its socket.ssl. This call is used in turn by other standard library modules to support the HTTPS secure web site protocol (httplib, urllib, and urllib2), secure email transfers (poplib and smtplib), and more. We'll meet some of these other modules later in this part of the book, but we won't study all of the socket module's advanced features in this text; see the Python library manual for usage details omitted here. 13.3.1. Socket BasicsAlthough we won't get into advanced socket use in this chapter, basic socket transfers are remarkably easy to code in Python. To create a connection between machines, Python programs import the socket module, create a socket object, and call the object's methods to establish connections and send and receive data. Sockets are inherently bidirectional in nature, and socket object methods map directly to socket calls in the C library. For example, the script in Example 13-1 implements a program that simply listens for a connection on a socket, and echoes back over a socket whatever it receives through that socket, adding 'Echo=>' string prefixes. Example 13-1. PP3E\Internet\Sockets\echo-server.py
As mentioned earlier, we usually call programs like this that listen for incoming connections servers because they provide a service that can be accessed at a given machine and port on the Internet. Programs that connect to such a server to access its service are generally called clients. Example 13-2 shows a simple client implemented in Python. Example 13-2. PP3E\Internet\Sockets\echo-client.py
13.3.1.1. Server socket callsBefore we see these programs in action, let's take a minute to explain how this client and server do their stuff. Both are fairly simple examples of socket scripts, but they illustrate the common call patterns of most socket-based programs. In fact, this is boilerplate code: most socket programs generally make the same socket calls that our two scripts do, so let's step through the important points of these scripts line by line. Programs such as Example 13-1 that provide services for other programs with sockets generally start out by following this sequence of calls:
At this point, the server is ready to accept connection requests from client programs running on remote machines (or the same machine), and falls into an infinite loopwhile True:, or the equivalent while 1: on older Pythonswaiting for them to arrive:
Once we have a client connection, we fall into another loop to receive data from the client in blocks of 1,024 bytes at a time, and echo each block back to the client:
After talking with a given client, the server goes back to its infinite loop and waits for the next client connection request. 13.3.1.2. Client socket callsOn the other hand, client programs like the one shown in Example 13-2 follow simpler call sequences. The main thing to keep in mind is that the client and server must specify the same port number when opening their sockets, and the client must identify the machine on which the server is running (in our scripts, server and client agree to use port number 50007 for their conversation, outside the standard protocol range):
Once the client establishes a connection to the server, it falls into a loop, sending a message one line at a time and printing whatever the server sends back after each line is sent:
And that's it. The server exchanges one or more lines of text with each client that connects. The operating system takes care of locating remote machines, routing bytes sent between programs across the Internet, and (with TCP) making sure that our messages arrive intact. That involves a lot of processing tooour strings may ultimately travel around the world, crossing phone wires, satellite links, and more along the way. But we can be happily ignorant of what goes on beneath the socket call layer when programming in Python.
13.3.1.3. Running socket programs locallyOkay, let's put this client and server to work. There are two ways to run these scriptson either the same machine or two different machines. To run the client and the server on the same machine, bring up two command-line consoles on your computer, start the server program in one, and run the client repeatedly in the other. The server keeps running and responds to requests made each time you run the client script in the other window. For instance, here is the text that shows up in the MS-DOS console window where I've started the server script: C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-server.py Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1025) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1026) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1027) The output here gives the address (machine IP name and port number) of each connecting client. Like most servers, this one runs perpetually, listening for client connection requests. This server receives three, but I have to show you the client window's text for you to understand what this means: C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-client.py Client received: 'Echo=>Hello network world' C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-client.py localhost spam Spam SPAM Client received: 'Echo=>spam' Client received: 'Echo=>Spam' Client received: 'Echo=>SPAM' C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-client.py localhost Shrubbery Client received: 'Echo=>Shrubbery' Here, I ran the client script three times, while the server script kept running in the other window. Each client connected to the server, sent it a message of one or more lines of text, and read back the server's replyan echo of each line of text sent from the client. And each time a client is run, a new connection message shows up in the server's window (that's why we got three). It's important to notice that client and server are running on the same machine here (a Windows PC). The server and client agree on the port number, but they use the machine names "" and localhost, respectively, to refer to the computer on which they are running. In fact, there is no Internet connection to speak of. Sockets also work well as cross-program communications tools on a single machine. 13.3.1.4. Running socket programs remotelyTo make these scripts talk over the Internet rather than on a single machine, we have to do some extra work to run the server on a different computer. First, upload the server's source file to a remote machine where you have an account and a Python. Here's how I do it with FTP; your server name and upload interface details may vary, and there are other ways to copy files to a computer (e.g., email, web page post forms, etc.):[*]
C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>ftp starship.python.net Connected to starship.python.net. User (starship.python.net:(none)): lutz 331 Password required for lutz. Password: 230 User lutz logged in. ftp> put echo-server.py 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for echo-server.py. 226 Transfer complete. ftp: 1322 bytes sent in 0.06Seconds 22.03Kbytes/sec. ftp> quit Once you have the server program loaded on the other computer, you need to run it there. Connect to that computer and start the server program. I usually Telnet into my server machine and start the server program as a perpetually running process from the command line.[*] The & syntax in Unix/Linux shells can be used to run the server script in the background; we could also make the server directly executable with a #! line and a chmod command (see Chapter 3 for details). Here is the text that shows up in a Window on my PC that is running a Telnet session connected to the Linux server where I have an account (minus a few deleted informational lines):
C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>telnet starship.python.net Red Hat Linux release 6.2 (Zoot) Kernel 2.2.14-5.0smp on a 2-processor i686 login: lutz Password: [lutz@starship lutz]$ python echo-server.py & [1] 4098 Now that the server is listening for connections on the Net, run the client on your local computer multiple times again. This time, the client runs on a different machine than the server, so we pass in the server's domain or IP name as a client command-line argument. The server still uses a machine name of "" because it always listens on whatever machine it runs on. Here is what shows up in the server's Telnet window: [lutz@starship lutz]$ Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1037) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1040) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1043) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1050) And here is what appears in the MS-DOS console box where I run the client. A "connected by" message appears in the server Telnet window each time the client script is run in the client window: C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-client.py starship.python.net Client received: 'Echo=>Hello network world' C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-client.py starship.python.net ni Ni NI Client received: 'Echo=>ni' Client received: 'Echo=>Ni' Client received: 'Echo=>NI' C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-client.py starship.python.net Shrubbery Client received: 'Echo=>Shrubbery' C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>ping starship.python.net Pinging starship.python.net [208.185.174.112] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 208.185.174.112: bytes=32 time=311ms TTL=246 ctrl-C C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-client.py 208.185.174.112 Does she? Client received: 'Echo=>Does' Client received: 'Echo=>she?' The ping command can be used to get an IP address for a machine's domain name; either machine name form can be used to connect in the client. This output is perhaps a bit understateda lot is happening under the hood. The client, running on my Windows laptop, connects with and talks to the server program running on a Linux machine perhaps thousands of miles away. It all happens about as fast as when client and server both run on the laptop, and it uses the same library calls; only the server name passed to clients differs. 13.3.1.5. Socket pragmaticsBefore we move on, there are three practical usage details you should know. First, you can run the client and server like this on any two Internet-aware machines where Python is installed. Of course, to run the client and server on different computers, you need both a live Internet connection and access to another machine on which to run the server. You don't need a big, expensive Internet link, thougha simple modem and dial-up Internet account will do for clients. When sockets are opened, Python is happy to use whatever connectivity you have, be it a dedicated T1 line or a dial-up modem account. On a laptop PC with just dial-up access, for instance, Windows automatically dials out to your ISP when clients are started or when Telnet server sessions are opened. If a broadband connection is available, that is utilized instead. In this book's examples, server-side programs that run remotely are executed on a machine called starship.python.net. If you don't have an account of your own on such a server, simply run client and server examples on the same machine, as shown earlier; all you need then is a computer that allows sockets, and most do. Second, the socket module generally raises exceptions if you ask for something invalid. For instance, trying to connect to a nonexistent server (or unreachable servers, if you have no Internet link) fails: C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-client.py www.nonesuch.com hello Traceback (innermost last): File "echo-client.py", line 24, in ? sockobj.connect((serverHost, serverPort)) # connect to server machine... File "<string>", line 1, in connect socket.error: (10061, 'winsock error') Finally, also be sure to kill the server process before restarting it again, or else the port number will still be in use, and you'll get another exception: [lutz@starship uploads]$ ps -x PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND 5570 pts/0 S 0:00 -bash 5570 pts/0 S 0:00 -bash 5633 pts/0 S 0:00 python echo-server.py 5634 pts/0 R 0:00 ps -x [lutz@starship uploads]$ python echo-server.py Traceback (most recent call last): File "echo-server.py", line 14, in ? sockobj.bind((myHost, myPort)) # bind it to server port number socket.error: (98, 'Address already in use') A series of Ctrl-Cs will kill the server on Linux (be sure to type fg to bring it to the foreground first if started with an &): [lutz@starship uploads]$ python echo-server.py ctrl-c Traceback (most recent call last): File "echo-server.py", line 18, in ? connection, address = sockobj.accept( ) # wait for next client connect KeyboardInterrupt A Ctrl-C kill key combination won't kill the server on my Windows machine, however. To kill the perpetually running server process running locally on Windows, you may need to type a Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination, and then end the Python task by selecting it in the process listbox that appears. Closing the window in which the server is running will also suffice on Windows, but you'll lose that window's command history. You can also usually kill a server on Linux with a kill -9 pid shell command if it is running in another window or in the background, but Ctrl-C requires less typing. 13.3.1.6. Spawning clients in parallelTo see how the server handles the load, let's fire up eight copies of the client script in parallel using the script in Example 13-3 (see the end of Chapter 5 for details on the launchmodes module used here to spawn clients). Example 13-3. PP3E\Internet\Sockets\testecho.py
To run this script, pass no arguments to talk to a server listening on port 50007 on the local machine; pass a real machine name to talk to a server running remotely. On Windows, the clients' output is discarded when spawned from this script: C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python testecho.py C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python testecho.py starship.python.net If the spawned clients connect to a server run locally, connection messages show up in the server's window on the local machine: C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python echo-server.py Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1283) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1284) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1285) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1286) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1287) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1288) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1289) Server connected by ('127.0.0.1', 1290) If the server is running remotely, the client connection messages instead appear in the window displaying the Telnet connection to the remote computer: [lutz@starship lutz]$ python echo-server.py Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1301) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1302) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1308) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1309) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1313) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1314) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1307) Server connected by ('166.93.68.61', 1312) Keep in mind, however, that this works for our simple scripts only because the server doesn't take a long time to respond to each client's requestsit can get back to the top of the server script's outer while loop in time to process the next incoming client. If it could not, we would probably need to change the server to handle each client in parallel, or some might be denied a connection. Technically, client connections would fail after five clients are already waiting for the server's attention, as specified in the server's listen call. We'll see how servers can handle multiple clients robustly in the next section. 13.3.1.7. Talking to reserved portsIt's also important to know that this client and server engage in a proprietary sort of discussion, and so use the port number 50007 outside the range reserved for standard protocols (0 to 1023). There's nothing preventing a client from opening a socket on one of these special ports, however. For instance, the following client-side code connects to programs listening on the standard email, FTP, and HTTP web server ports on three different server machines: C:\...\PP3E\Internet\Sockets>python >>> from socket import * >>> sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM) >>> sock.connect(('mail.rmi.net', 110)) # talk to RMI POP mail server >>> print sock.recv(40) +OK Cubic Circle's v1.31 1998/05/13 POP3 >>> sock.close( ) >>> sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM) >>> sock.connect(('www.python.org', 21)) # talk to Python FTP server >>> print sock.recv(40) 220 python.org FTP server (Version wu-2. >>> sock.close( ) >>> sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM) >>> sock.connect(('starship.python.net', 80)) # starship HTTP web server >>> sock.send('GET /\r\n') # fetch root web page 7 >>> sock.recv(60) '<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">\012<HTM' >>> sock.recv(60) 'L>\012 <HEAD>\012 <TITLE>Starship Slowly Recovering</TITLE>\012 </HE' If we know how to interpret the output returned by these ports' servers, we could use raw sockets like this to fetch email, transfer files, and grab web pages and invoke server-side scripts. Fortunately, though, we don't have to worry about all the underlying detailsPython's poplib, ftplib, httplib, and urllib modules provide higher-level interfaces for talking to servers on these ports. Other Python protocol modules do the same for other standard ports (e.g., NNTP, Telnet, and so on). We'll meet some of these client-side protocol modules in the next chapter.[*]
By the way, it's all right to open client-side connections on reserved ports like this, but you can't install your own server-side scripts for these ports unless you have special permission: [lutz@starship uploads]$ python >>> from socket import * >>> sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM) >>> sock.bind(('', 80)) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? socket.error: (13, 'Permission denied') Even if run by a user with the required permission, you'll get the different exception we saw earlier if the port is already being used by a real web server. On computers being used as general servers, these ports really are reserved. |