gevent-ws

A fast, MIT-licensed alternative to the abandoned non-free (as in freedom) gevent-websocket.

Why?

It's MIT-licensed, so it can be included to almost all software (both open-source and closed-source) without any licensing issues, as opposed to gevent-websocket. And it's several times faster!

Installation

gevent-ws can be installed from PyPI and GitHub.

PyPI

$ pip3 install gevent-ws

GitHub

$ git clone https://github.com/imachug/gevent-ws.git
$ cd gevent-ws
$ python3 setup.py install

Example

A simple echo server

from gevent.pywsgi import WSGIServer
from gevent_ws import WebSocketHandler


def app(env, start_response):
    ws = env["wsgi.websocket"]
    while True:
        msg = ws.receive()
        if msg is None:
            break
        ws.send(msg)
    return [b"Bye"]


server = WSGIServer(("", 8080), app, handler_class=WebSocketHandler)
server.serve_forever()

Both HTTP and websocket on a single port

from gevent.pywsgi import WSGIServer
from gevent_ws import WebSocketHandler


def app(env, start_response):
    if "wsgi.websocket" in env:
        ws = env["wsgi.websocket"]
        while True:
            msg = ws.receive()
            if msg is None:
                break
            ws.send(msg)
        return [b"Bye"]
    else:
        start_response("200 OK", [
            ("Content-Type", "text/html, charset=utf-8")
        ])

        return [
            b"""
                <script>
                    const ws = new WebSocket("ws://127.0.0.1:8080/");
                    ws.onopen = () => {
                        ws.send("Hello, world!");
                    };
                    ws.onmessage = e => {
                        ws.send(e.data);
                    };
                </script>
            """
        ]


server = WSGIServer(("", 8080), app, handler_class=WebSocketHandler)
server.serve_forever()

Docs

gevent_ws.WebSocketHandler

The main class. Pass it to gevent.pywsgi.WSGIServer as handler_class.

gevent_ws.WebSocket

You get this object by accessing wsgi.websocket property of the environment object. If it exists, it's a websocket connection; if it doesn't, it's an HTTP request. You can use "wsgi.websocket" in env to check this and route the request correctly.

gevent_ws.WebSocket.receive()

Waits for a message and returns it, either as str or bytes. Blocks. May return None if the connection is closed or an OSError if the socket can't be read from.

gevent_ws.WebSocket.receive_nowait()

Returns the message if it's available (the format is the same as in receive()) or None if no message is in the queue. May return None or raise OSError (see receive()).

gevent_ws.WebSocket.send(message)

Sends a message to the other party. message can be either str or bytes. May raise EOFError if the connection is closed or OSError if the message can't be sent for some other reason.

gevent_ws.WebSocket.close(status=1000)

Closes the websocket. Status 1000 (the default one) means that the connection is closed cleanly. Check RFC for more status codes.

gevent_ws.WebSocket.set_max_message_length(length)

Set maximum incoming message size (in bytes). 10 MiB is the default value.

gevent_ws.WebSocket.closed

A boolean showing whether the connection is closed (by any of the two parties) or is being closed.

gevent_ws.WebSocket.status

The close status code sent by the other party. None if the socket was closed by the client, the server didn't return the error code or the connection was aborted abnormally.