Correct way to code a Python Server

Question

Which way is better?

Creating a while loop and then using the select module OR using ThreadedTCPServer with a custom class.

Im having problems with the Threaded TCP Server, although it could just be my coding.

• Matt Ball: Better by what criteria?
• Anonymous: Well, what is the general method.
• Anonymous: I thought while loops are bad, but then again it seems to be working better than the "python approved" method.
• Ben Hoyt: What kind of server? HTTP/web, or lower-level TCP? You're almost certainly best off not writing your own, because you'll be debugging problems others have already found solutions for. What kinds of problems are you having with ThreadedTCPServer?
• Anonymous: Very slow, sluggish, when i do a keyboardinterrupt it will hang for anywhere up to 5 minutes (there are known problems, that i found on google with this apparently) Also forgot to say, low level TCP

Answer 1

My personal recommendation is to use Twisted. It's a Python-based framework intended primarily for writing event-driven network software. The documentation has a lot of great examples of how to create various types of servers and clients, as well.

• wberry: While Twisted is not necessarily the end-all be-all solution for everything, it's pretty tough to find something within its problem domain (concurrency, work distribution) that it can't do fairly well.

Answer 2

I am sure there is no such a thing like the "correct" way.

If you want not, must not or cannot use any of the existing server implementations the general idea is (in pseudo code):

ss = serversocket()
ss.bind ()
while (True):
 cs = ss.accept ()
 spawnCommThread (cs)

In the CommThread for each client you take care of reading from the socket returned by accept, communicate with your client and die, when the client closes the connection or another criterion is given.