aiolibdatachannel 2026.4.21.2

asyncio-friendly Python wrapper for libdatachannel (WebRTC Data Channels)

aiolibdatachannel

An asyncio-friendly Python wrapper around libdatachannel — a lightweight C/C++ WebRTC stack. aiolibdatachannel exposes WebRTC Peer Connections and Data Channels through idiomatic async/await Python.

Scope: PeerConnection + DataChannel only. WebSocket and Media/RTP transport are deliberately disabled in this build to keep the wheel small and the API focused.

Install

pip install aiolibdatachannel

Wheels are published for Linux (manylinux_2_28 x86_64 / aarch64) and macOS (arm64, 14.0+). Intel Macs and Windows aren't currently covered — Intel Mac because Apple Silicon is the modern target, Windows because libdatachannel dynamically links OpenSSL and the wheel packaging for that on Windows is still open. libdatachannel is bundled as a shared library inside the wheel and loaded via cffi — no native Python extension, no per-Python-version build, one py3-none-<platform> wheel covers every supported interpreter.

Quickstart

import asyncio
from aiolibdatachannel import PeerConnection, RTCConfiguration

async def main() -> None:
    config = RTCConfiguration(ice_servers=["stun:stun.l.google.com:19302"])

    async with PeerConnection(config) as pc:
        dc = await pc.create_data_channel("chat")

        offer = await pc.create_offer()
        # ... ship `offer` to the peer via your signalling channel ...
        answer_sdp = await receive_answer_from_peer()
        await pc.set_remote_description(answer_sdp, "answer")

        await dc.wait_open()
        await dc.send(b"hello")

        async for message in dc:
            print("got", message)

asyncio.run(main())

See examples/offerer.py and examples/answerer.py for a runnable pair of scripts that negotiate over stdin/stdout.

Logging

Route libdatachannel's internal logs through Python's standard logging module:

import logging
from aiolibdatachannel import install_python_logger

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
install_python_logger()  # logger name defaults to "aiolibdatachannel"

Severities are translated (FATAL→CRITICAL, ERROR→ERROR, WARNING→WARNING, INFO→INFO, DEBUG/VERBOSE→DEBUG) and the filter threshold on the native side is derived from the Python logger's effective level, so you don't pay to format lines that would be filtered out anyway. Pass install_python_logger(my_logger) or install_python_logger(level=LogLevel.DEBUG) to customise.

Development

git clone --recursive https://github.com/social-home-io/aiolibdatachannel.git
cd aiolibdatachannel
pip install -e .[dev]
pytest

See docs/BUILDING.md for detailed build instructions, including how to switch TLS backends and how to bump the bundled libdatachannel version.

License

This project is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, matching the license of libdatachannel which it bundles and statically links. See LICENSE and vendor/libdatachannel/LICENSE.