aiolibdatachannel 2026.4.21

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 (v0.1): PeerConnection + DataChannel only. WebSocket and Media/RTP transport are deliberately disabled in this build to keep the wheel small. See the "Roadmap" section below.

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.

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.

Roadmap

• WebSocket client + server support (NO_WEBSOCKET=OFF)
• Media / RTP tracks (NO_MEDIA=OFF)
• First-class logging integration with rtcInitLogger
• Trio / AnyIO variant

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.