bufsock.py is a python module that makes it a little bit easier to work with sockets, and may also make your I/O faster if you're reading and/or writing lots of tiny packets.

Also, you may find that it makes your network applications more reliable, as the network is allowed to split apart your packets into multiple smaller packets, or aggregate two or more packets into one larger packet, if it decides it needs to do so for reliability or performance. So you might do a s.recv expecting to get one line of input, but the network decided to batch together two remote s.send's into one s.recv, for example. But the network usually, but not always, will batch up your packets the way you'd expect - so this can be a difficult (and surprising) problem to track down.

You check it out here.

It supports the following methods:

• read(length) brings in a specific number of bytes.
• readto(char) reads up thru the next occurrence of char
• readtomax(char, length) reads up thru the next occurrence of char, or length bytes, whichever is less
• set_chunk_len(length) says "do reads and writes in increments of length". The chunk length defaults to 4096. You should make this larger on networks that employ jumbo frames to squeeze out more performance!
• send(buf) writes the bytes in buf.
• flush() is just like stdio's (the C library's) flush function. Call it when you want an output buffer flushed (written immediately).
• shutdown(v) is just like for a regular socket, except it flushes first.

Usage:

• Code snippet:

  sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
  sock.connect((hostname, port))
  bs = bufsock.bufsock(sock)
  version = bs.readto('\n')
  print(version)
  

• Or alternatively, you might examine the entire application from which this code was clipped: fallback-reboot. The "fallback-reboot-client" portion of fallback-reboot utilizes bufsock to make its job easier.
• Here's a 3rd example, on stackoverflow.
• Another example: on discuss.python.org.

Related work

• 3 ways of making socket.recv into socket.recvall
• A Dr. Dobbs article about the problem and a way of fixing it in C.
• readline0 which can read null-terminated lines too, and is faster but less flexible than bufsock.

You can e-mail the author with questions or comments: