Revision 24 as of 2006-01-25 13:43:17

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UDP Communication

TableOfContents()

See also SoapOverUdp, TcpCommunication

Sending

Here's simple code to post a note by UDP in Python:

   1 import socket
   2 
   3 UDP_IP="127.0.0.1"
   4 UDP_PORT=5005
   5 MESSAGE="Hello, World!"
   6 
   7 print "UDP target IP:", UDP_IP
   8 print "UDP target port:", UDP_PORT
   9 print "message:", MESSAGE
  10 
  11 sock = socket.socket( socket.AF_INET, # Internet
  12                       socket.SOCK_DGRAM ) # UDP
  13 sock.sendto( MESSAGE, (UDP_IP, UDP_PORT) )

Receiving

Here's simple code to receive UDP messages in Python:

   1 import socket
   2 
   3 UDP_IP="127.0.0.1"
   4 UDP_PORT=5005
   5 
   6 sock = socket.socket( socket.AF_INET, # Internet
   7                       socket.SOCK_DGRAM ) # UDP
   8 sock.bind( (UDP_IP,UDP_PORT) )
   9 
  10 while True:
  11     data, addr = sock.recvfrom( 1024 ) # buffer size is 1024 bytes
  12     print "received message:", data

Discussion

* It would seem easy to extend this to a simple means to open a file on the sender side, send datagrams to the receiver side, and write those packets to a file there - I just wonder about synchronisation issues regarding the buffer...Anyone smart care to put something down, say as a simple practical extension of what is already here? (And if you do it pls delete this message) *

Multicasting?

I've been googling for some time now, and still have yet to find a working example of Python multicast listening.

(The example below has been updated to work -- Steven Spencer DateTime(2005-04-14T13:19:00Z))

(I've replaced it with one that works. -- Asgeir S. Nilsen DateTime(2005-05-09T19:25:00Z))

(I've corrected the mreq according to the comment below -- Sebastian Setzer DateTime(2006-01-25T14:28:00Z))

   1 import socket
   2 import struct
   3 
   4 sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM, socket.IPPROTO_UDP)
   5 sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
   6 sock.bind(('', 4242))
   7 # wrong: mreq = struct.pack("sl", socket.inet_aton("224.51.105.104"), socket.INADDR_ANY)
   8 mreq = struct.pack("4sl", socket.inet_aton("224.51.105.104"), socket.INADDR_ANY)
   9 
  10 sock.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, mreq)
  11 
  12 while True:
  13   print sock.recv(10240)

The mreq packing is based on [http://www.senux.com/linux/network/multicast/ some code that I found,] that does not work. On my computer, at least.

Sending to multicast groups is just fine; Here's some functional text:

   1 import socket
   2 
   3 sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM, socket.IPPROTO_UDP)
   4 sock.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_TTL, 2)
   5 sock.sendto("robot", ("239.192.0.100", 1000))

(You might want to reconsider the IP_MULTICAST_TTL setting here -- the recommended value for local-network multicasts is < 32, whilst a value > 32 indicates multicasts which should traverse onto the Internet -- Asgeir S. Nilsen)

The above multicasting examples do not work on my computer, but I was able to fix them using code from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyzeroconf. Try these examples:

   1 # UDP multicast examples, Hugo Vincent, 2005-05-14.
   2 import socket
   3 
   4 def send(data, port=50000, addr='239.192.1.100'):
   5         """send(data[, port[, addr]]) - multicasts a UDP datagram."""
   6         # Create the socket
   7         s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
   8         # Make the socket multicast-aware, and set TTL.
   9         s.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_TTL, 20) # Change TTL (=20) to suit
  10         # Send the data
  11         s.sendto(data, (addr, port))
  12 
  13 def recv(port=50000, addr="239.192.1.100", buf_size=1024):
  14         """recv([port[, addr[,buf_size]]]) - waits for a datagram and returns the data."""
  15         
  16         # Create the socket
  17         s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
  18 
  19         # Set some options to make it multicast-friendly
  20         s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
  21         try:
  22                 s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEPORT, 1)
  23         except AttributeError:
  24                 pass # Some systems don't support SO_REUSEPORT
  25         s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_TTL, 20)
  26         s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_LOOP, 1)
  27         
  28         # Bind to the port
  29         s.bind(('', port))
  30         
  31         # Set some more multicast options
  32         intf = socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
  33         s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_IF, socket.inet_aton(intf))
  34         s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_IP, socket.IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, socket.inet_aton(addr) + socket.inet_aton(intf))
  35         
  36         # Receive the data, then unregister multicast receive membership, then close the port
  37         data, sender_addr = s.recvfrom(buf_size)
  38         s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_IP, socket.IP_DROP_MEMBERSHIP, socket.inet_aton(addr) + socket.inet_aton('0.0.0.0'))
  39         s.close()
  40         return data

At this point, I'm beginning to think: "Python multicast simply does not work."

It's too bad we don't have anything as simple as this:

   1 import UDP
   2 
   3 sock = UDP.MulticastListener("239.192.0.100", 1000)  # Listen on port 1000
   4 print sock.recv(100)

   1 import UDP
   2 
   3 UDP.send("Hello, world!", "239.192.0.100", 1000)

...or something like that.

-- LionKimbro DateTime(2005-01-19T19:54:19Z)

You could do something like this:

   1 class McastSocket(socket.socket):
   2   def __init__(self, local_port, reuse=False):
   3     socket.socket.__init__(self, socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM, socket.IPPROTO_UDP)
   4     if(reuse):
   5       self.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
   6       if hasattr(socket, "SO_REUSEPORT"):
   7         self.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEPORT, 1)
   8     self.bind(('', local_port))
   9   def mcast_add(self, addr, iface):
  10     sock.setsockopt(
  11         socket.IPPROTO_IP,
  12         socket.IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP,
  13         socket.inet_aton(mcast_addr) + socket.inet_aton(mcast_iface))

Then to listen to multicast events locally:

   1 sock = McastSocket(local_port=12345, reuse=1)
   2 sock.mcast_add('239.192.9.9', '127.0.0.1')

The perl IO::Socket::Multicast class doesn't look much different from this.

-- PaulBrannan

I was able to get the above example to work fine on a linux platform, with one small change. I had to put a "4sl" in the pack statement for creating mreq. It seems as if when I didn't have a 4, the pack statement was just using the first octet (somehow dropping the other octets), so I could only create the multi-cast "listener" on a 234.0.0.0 ip. After some debugging, I put the 4 in front of the "s", which forced it to get all 4 octets from the inet_aton, and everything worked fine. Hope this helps.

-- JIRWIN

...Which is exactly what the pack statement is expected to do, according to the manual:

=UPDATE:= Definitive UDP multicasting example code can be found in PyZeroConf at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyzeroconf

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