This module provides access to the BSD socket interface. It is available on all modern Unix systems, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, OS/2, and probably additional platforms.
Note
Some behavior may be platform dependent, since calls are made to the operating system socket APIs.
For an introduction to socket programming (in C), see the following papers: An Introductory 4.3BSD Interprocess Communication Tutorial, by Stuart Sechrest and An Advanced 4.3BSD Interprocess Communication Tutorial, by Samuel J. Leffler et al, both in the UNIX Programmer’s Manual, Supplementary Documents 1 (sections PS1:7 and PS1:8). The platform-specific reference material for the various socket-related system calls are also a valuable source of information on the details of socket semantics. For Unix, refer to the manual pages; for Windows, see the WinSock (or Winsock 2) specification. For IPv6-ready APIs, readers may want to refer to RFC 3493 titled Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6.
The Python interface is a straightforward transliteration of the Unix system call and library interface for sockets to Python’s object-oriented style: the socket() function returns a socket object whose methods implement the various socket system calls. Parameter types are somewhat higher-level than in the C interface: as with read() and write() operations on Python files, buffer allocation on receive operations is automatic, and buffer length is implicit on send operations.
Socket addresses are represented as follows: A single string is used for the AF_UNIX address family. A pair (host, port) is used for the AF_INET address family, where host is a string representing either a hostname in Internet domain notation like 'daring.cwi.nl' or an IPv4 address like '100.50.200.5', and port is an integral port number. For AF_INET6 address family, a four-tuple (host, port, flowinfo, scopeid) is used, where flowinfo and scopeid represents sin6_flowinfo and sin6_scope_id member in struct sockaddr_in6 in C. For socket module methods, flowinfo and scopeid can be omitted just for backward compatibility. Note, however, omission of scopeid can cause problems in manipulating scoped IPv6 addresses. Other address families are currently not supported. The address format required by a particular socket object is automatically selected based on the address family specified when the socket object was created.
For IPv4 addresses, two special forms are accepted instead of a host address: the empty string represents INADDR_ANY, and the string '<broadcast>' represents INADDR_BROADCAST. The behavior is not available for IPv6 for backward compatibility, therefore, you may want to avoid these if you intend to support IPv6 with your Python programs.
If you use a hostname in the host portion of IPv4/v6 socket address, the program may show a nondeterministic behavior, as Python uses the first address returned from the DNS resolution. The socket address will be resolved differently into an actual IPv4/v6 address, depending on the results from DNS resolution and/or the host configuration. For deterministic behavior use a numeric address in host portion.
New in version 2.5: AF_NETLINK sockets are represented as pairs pid, groups.
New in version 2.6: Linux-only support for TIPC is also available using the AF_TIPC address family. TIPC is an open, non-IP based networked protocol designed for use in clustered computer environments. Addresses are represented by a tuple, and the fields depend on the address type. The general tuple form is (addr_type, v1, v2, v3 [, scope]), where:
addr_type is one of TIPC_ADDR_NAMESEQ, TIPC_ADDR_NAME, or TIPC_ADDR_ID.
scope is one of TIPC_ZONE_SCOPE, TIPC_CLUSTER_SCOPE, and TIPC_NODE_SCOPE.
If addr_type is TIPC_ADDR_NAME, then v1 is the server type, v2 is the port identifier, and v3 should be 0.
If addr_type is TIPC_ADDR_NAMESEQ, then v1 is the server type, v2 is the lower port number, and v3 is the upper port number.
If addr_type is TIPC_ADDR_ID, then v1 is the node, v2 is the reference, and v3 should be set to 0.
All errors raise exceptions. The normal exceptions for invalid argument types and out-of-memory conditions can be raised; errors related to socket or address semantics raise the error socket.error.
Non-blocking mode is supported through setblocking(). A generalization of this based on timeouts is supported through settimeout().
The module socket exports the following constants and functions:
This exception is raised for socket-related errors. The accompanying value is either a string telling what went wrong or a pair (errno, string) representing an error returned by a system call, similar to the value accompanying os.error. See the module errno, which contains names for the error codes defined by the underlying operating system.
Changed in version 2.6: socket.error is now a child class of IOError.
This exception is raised for address-related errors, i.e. for functions that use h_errno in the C API, including gethostbyname_ex() and gethostbyaddr().
The accompanying value is a pair (h_errno, string) representing an error returned by a library call. string represents the description of h_errno, as returned by the hstrerror() C function.
This exception is raised when a timeout occurs on a socket which has had timeouts enabled via a prior call to settimeout(). The accompanying value is a string whose value is currently always “timed out”.
New in version 2.3.
Constants for Windows’ WSAIoctl(). The constants are used as arguments to the ioctl() method of socket objects.
New in version 2.6.
TIPC related constants, matching the ones exported by the C socket API. See the TIPC documentation for more information.
New in version 2.6.
This constant contains a boolean value which indicates if IPv6 is supported on this platform.
New in version 2.3.
Convenience function. Connect to address (a 2-tuple (host, port)), and return the socket object. Passing the optional timeout parameter will set the timeout on the socket instance before attempting to connect. If no timeout is supplied, the global default timeout setting returned by getdefaulttimeout() is used.
New in version 2.6.
Resolves the host/port argument, into a sequence of 5-tuples that contain all the necessary arguments for creating the corresponding socket. host is a domain name, a string representation of an IPv4/v6 address or None. port is a string service name such as 'http', a numeric port number or None. The rest of the arguments are optional and must be numeric if specified. By passing None as the value of host and port, , you can pass NULL to the C API.
The getaddrinfo() function returns a list of 5-tuples with the following structure:
(family, socktype, proto, canonname, sockaddr)
family, socktype, proto are all integers and are meant to be passed to the socket() function. canonname is a string representing the canonical name of the host. It can be a numeric IPv4/v6 address when AI_CANONNAME is specified for a numeric host. sockaddr is a tuple describing a socket address, as described above. See the source for socket and other library modules for a typical usage of the function.
New in version 2.2.
Return a fully qualified domain name for name. If name is omitted or empty, it is interpreted as the local host. To find the fully qualified name, the hostname returned by gethostbyaddr() is checked, followed by aliases for the host, if available. The first name which includes a period is selected. In case no fully qualified domain name is available, the hostname as returned by gethostname() is returned.
New in version 2.0.
Return a string containing the hostname of the machine where the Python interpreter is currently executing.
If you want to know the current machine’s IP address, you may want to use gethostbyname(gethostname()). This operation assumes that there is a valid address-to-host mapping for the host, and the assumption does not always hold.
Note: gethostname() doesn’t always return the fully qualified domain name; use getfqdn() (see above).
Translate a socket address sockaddr into a 2-tuple (host, port). Depending on the settings of flags, the result can contain a fully-qualified domain name or numeric address representation in host. Similarly, port can contain a string port name or a numeric port number.
New in version 2.2.
Build a pair of connected socket objects using the given address family, socket type, and protocol number. Address family, socket type, and protocol number are as for the socket() function above. The default family is AF_UNIX if defined on the platform; otherwise, the default is AF_INET. Availability: Unix.
New in version 2.4.
Convert an IPv4 address from dotted-quad string format (for example, ‘123.45.67.89’) to 32-bit packed binary format, as a string four characters in length. This is useful when conversing with a program that uses the standard C library and needs objects of type struct in_addr, which is the C type for the 32-bit packed binary this function returns.
inet_aton() also accepts strings with less than three dots; see the Unix manual page inet(3) for details.
If the IPv4 address string passed to this function is invalid, socket.error will be raised. Note that exactly what is valid depends on the underlying C implementation of inet_aton().
inet_aton() does not support IPv6, and inet_pton() should be used instead for IPv4/v6 dual stack support.
Convert a 32-bit packed IPv4 address (a string four characters in length) to its standard dotted-quad string representation (for example, ‘123.45.67.89’). This is useful when conversing with a program that uses the standard C library and needs objects of type struct in_addr, which is the C type for the 32-bit packed binary data this function takes as an argument.
If the string passed to this function is not exactly 4 bytes in length, socket.error will be raised. inet_ntoa() does not support IPv6, and inet_ntop() should be used instead for IPv4/v6 dual stack support.
Convert an IP address from its family-specific string format to a packed, binary format. inet_pton() is useful when a library or network protocol calls for an object of type struct in_addr (similar to inet_aton()) or struct in6_addr.
Supported values for address_family are currently AF_INET and AF_INET6. If the IP address string ip_string is invalid, socket.error will be raised. Note that exactly what is valid depends on both the value of address_family and the underlying implementation of inet_pton().
Availability: Unix (maybe not all platforms).
See also
New in version 2.3.
Convert a packed IP address (a string of some number of characters) to its standard, family-specific string representation (for example, '7.10.0.5' or '5aef:2b::8') inet_ntop() is useful when a library or network protocol returns an object of type struct in_addr (similar to inet_ntoa()) or struct in6_addr.
Supported values for address_family are currently AF_INET and AF_INET6. If the string packed_ip is not the correct length for the specified address family, ValueError will be raised. A socket.error is raised for errors from the call to inet_ntop().
Availability: Unix (maybe not all platforms).
New in version 2.3.
Return the default timeout in floating seconds for new socket objects. A value of None indicates that new socket objects have no timeout. When the socket module is first imported, the default is None.
New in version 2.3.
Set the default timeout in floating seconds for new socket objects. A value of None indicates that new socket objects have no timeout. When the socket module is first imported, the default is None.
New in version 2.3.
See also
Socket objects have the following methods. Except for makefile() these correspond to Unix system calls applicable to sockets.
Bind the socket to address. The socket must not already be bound. (The format of address depends on the address family — see above.)
Note
This method has historically accepted a pair of parameters for AF_INET addresses instead of only a tuple. This was never intentional and is no longer available in Python 2.0 and later.
Connect to a remote socket at address. (The format of address depends on the address family — see above.)
Note
This method has historically accepted a pair of parameters for AF_INET addresses instead of only a tuple. This was never intentional and is no longer available in Python 2.0 and later.
Like connect(address), but return an error indicator instead of raising an exception for errors returned by the C-level connect() call (other problems, such as “host not found,” can still raise exceptions). The error indicator is 0 if the operation succeeded, otherwise the value of the errno variable. This is useful to support, for example, asynchronous connects.
Note
This method has historically accepted a pair of parameters for AF_INET addresses instead of only a tuple. This was never intentional and is no longer available in Python 2.0 and later.
Return the socket’s file descriptor (a small integer). This is useful with select.select().
Under Windows the small integer returned by this method cannot be used where a file descriptor can be used (such as os.fdopen()). Unix does not have this limitation.
| Platform: | Windows |
|---|
The ioctl() method is a limited interface to the WSAIoctl system interface. Please refer to the MSDN documentation for more information.
On other platforms, the generic fcntl.fcntl() and fcntl.ioctl() functions may be used; they accept a socket object as their first argument.
New in version 2.6.
Return a file object associated with the socket. (File objects are described in File Objects.) The file object references a dup()ped version of the socket file descriptor, so the file object and socket object may be closed or garbage-collected independently. The socket must be in blocking mode (it can not have a timeout). The optional mode and bufsize arguments are interpreted the same way as by the built-in file() function.
Receive data from the socket. The return value is a string representing the data received. The maximum amount of data to be received at once is specified by bufsize. See the Unix manual page recv(2) for the meaning of the optional argument flags; it defaults to zero.
Note
For best match with hardware and network realities, the value of bufsize should be a relatively small power of 2, for example, 4096.
Receive data from the socket, writing it into buffer instead of creating a new string. The return value is a pair (nbytes, address) where nbytes is the number of bytes received and address is the address of the socket sending the data. See the Unix manual page recv(2) for the meaning of the optional argument flags; it defaults to zero. (The format of address depends on the address family — see above.)
New in version 2.5.
Receive up to nbytes bytes from the socket, storing the data into a buffer rather than creating a new string. If nbytes is not specified (or 0), receive up to the size available in the given buffer. See the Unix manual page recv(2) for the meaning of the optional argument flags; it defaults to zero.
New in version 2.5.
Set a timeout on blocking socket operations. The value argument can be a nonnegative float expressing seconds, or None. If a float is given, subsequent socket operations will raise an timeout exception if the timeout period value has elapsed before the operation has completed. Setting a timeout of None disables timeouts on socket operations. s.settimeout(0.0) is equivalent to s.setblocking(0); s.settimeout(None) is equivalent to s.setblocking(1).
New in version 2.3.
Return the timeout in floating seconds associated with socket operations, or None if no timeout is set. This reflects the last call to setblocking() or settimeout().
New in version 2.3.
Some notes on socket blocking and timeouts: A socket object can be in one of three modes: blocking, non-blocking, or timeout. Sockets are always created in blocking mode. In blocking mode, operations block until complete or the system returns an error (such as connection timed out). In non-blocking mode, operations fail (with an error that is unfortunately system-dependent) if they cannot be completed immediately. In timeout mode, operations fail if they cannot be completed within the timeout specified for the socket or if the system returns an error. The setblocking() method is simply a shorthand for certain settimeout() calls.
Timeout mode internally sets the socket in non-blocking mode. The blocking and timeout modes are shared between file descriptors and socket objects that refer to the same network endpoint. A consequence of this is that file objects returned by the makefile() method must only be used when the socket is in blocking mode; in timeout or non-blocking mode file operations that cannot be completed immediately will fail.
Note that the connect() operation is subject to the timeout setting, and in general it is recommended to call settimeout() before calling connect() or pass a timeout parameter to create_connection(). The system network stack may return a connection timeout error of its own regardless of any python socket timeout setting.
Set the value of the given socket option (see the Unix manual page setsockopt(2)). The needed symbolic constants are defined in the socket module (SO_* etc.). The value can be an integer or a string representing a buffer. In the latter case it is up to the caller to ensure that the string contains the proper bits (see the optional built-in module struct for a way to encode C structures as strings).
Note that there are no methods read() or write(); use recv() and send() without flags argument instead.
Socket objects also have these (read-only) attributes that correspond to the values given to the socket constructor.
The socket family.
New in version 2.5.
The socket type.
New in version 2.5.
The socket protocol.
New in version 2.5.
Here are four minimal example programs using the TCP/IP protocol: a server that echoes all data that it receives back (servicing only one client), and a client using it. Note that a server must perform the sequence socket(), bind(), listen(), accept() (possibly repeating the accept() to service more than one client), while a client only needs the sequence socket(), connect(). Also note that the server does not send()/recv() on the socket it is listening on but on the new socket returned by accept().
The first two examples support IPv4 only.
# Echo server program
import socket
HOST = '' # Symbolic name meaning all available interfaces
PORT = 50007 # Arbitrary non-privileged port
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind((HOST, PORT))
s.listen(1)
conn, addr = s.accept()
print 'Connected by', addr
while 1:
data = conn.recv(1024)
if not data: break
conn.send(data)
conn.close()
# Echo client program
import socket
HOST = 'daring.cwi.nl' # The remote host
PORT = 50007 # The same port as used by the server
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((HOST, PORT))
s.send('Hello, world')
data = s.recv(1024)
s.close()
print 'Received', repr(data)
The next two examples are identical to the above two, but support both IPv4 and IPv6. The server side will listen to the first address family available (it should listen to both instead). On most of IPv6-ready systems, IPv6 will take precedence and the server may not accept IPv4 traffic. The client side will try to connect to the all addresses returned as a result of the name resolution, and sends traffic to the first one connected successfully.
# Echo server program
import socket
import sys
HOST = None # Symbolic name meaning all available interfaces
PORT = 50007 # Arbitrary non-privileged port
s = None
for res in socket.getaddrinfo(HOST, PORT, socket.AF_UNSPEC,
socket.SOCK_STREAM, 0, socket.AI_PASSIVE):
af, socktype, proto, canonname, sa = res
try:
s = socket.socket(af, socktype, proto)
except socket.error, msg:
s = None
continue
try:
s.bind(sa)
s.listen(1)
except socket.error, msg:
s.close()
s = None
continue
break
if s is None:
print 'could not open socket'
sys.exit(1)
conn, addr = s.accept()
print 'Connected by', addr
while 1:
data = conn.recv(1024)
if not data: break
conn.send(data)
conn.close()
# Echo client program
import socket
import sys
HOST = 'daring.cwi.nl' # The remote host
PORT = 50007 # The same port as used by the server
s = None
for res in socket.getaddrinfo(HOST, PORT, socket.AF_UNSPEC, socket.SOCK_STREAM):
af, socktype, proto, canonname, sa = res
try:
s = socket.socket(af, socktype, proto)
except socket.error, msg:
s = None
continue
try:
s.connect(sa)
except socket.error, msg:
s.close()
s = None
continue
break
if s is None:
print 'could not open socket'
sys.exit(1)
s.send('Hello, world')
data = s.recv(1024)
s.close()
print 'Received', repr(data)
The last example shows how to write a very simple network sniffer with raw sockets on Windows. The example requires administrator privileges to modify the interface:
import socket
# the public network interface
HOST = socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
# create a raw socket and bind it to the public interface
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_RAW, socket.IPPROTO_IP)
s.bind((HOST, 0))
# Include IP headers
s.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_HDRINCL, 1)
# receive all packages
s.ioctl(socket.SIO_RCVALL, socket.RCVALL_ON)
# receive a package
print s.recvfrom(65565)
# disabled promiscuous mode
s.ioctl(socket.SIO_RCVALL, socket.RCVALL_OFF)