wse-client

Python client for WSE (WebSocket Engine) - real-time event streaming with auto-reconnect, compression, encryption, and connection resilience.

Feature parity with the TS client. Pure Python, no Rust dependency.

Installation

pip install wse-client

Optional extras:

pip install wse-client[crypto]   # E2E encryption (ECDH + AES-GCM)
pip install wse-client[msgpack]  # MessagePack binary encoding
pip install wse-client[orjson]   # Faster JSON (de)serialization
pip install wse-client[all]      # Everything

Quick Start

Async (recommended)

from wse_client import connect

async with connect("ws://localhost:5007/wse", token="<jwt>") as client:
    await client.subscribe(["notifications", "trades"])

    async for event in client:
        print(event.type, event.payload)

Sync

from wse_client import SyncWSEClient

client = SyncWSEClient("ws://localhost:5007/wse", token="<jwt>")
client.connect()
client.subscribe(["notifications"])

event = client.recv(timeout=5.0)
print(event.type, event.payload)

client.close()

Callbacks

from wse_client import SyncWSEClient

client = SyncWSEClient("ws://localhost:5007/wse", token="<jwt>")

@client.on("notifications")
def handle(event):
    print(event.payload)

@client.on_any
def catch_all(event):
    print(f"[{event.type}] {event.payload}")

client.connect()
client.run_forever()

Constructor Parameters

AsyncWSEClient(url, **kwargs):

The connect(url, **kwargs) factory returns an AsyncWSEClient configured as an async context manager.

API Reference

AsyncWSEClient

Properties:

Context manager and async iterator:

async with AsyncWSEClient(url) as client:  # auto connect/disconnect
    async for event in client:              # yields WSEEvent objects
        ...

SyncWSEClient

Same API as AsyncWSEClient but blocking. Runs the async client in a background daemon thread.

WSEEvent

@dataclass(frozen=True, slots=True)
class WSEEvent:
    type: str                        # Event type ("t" field)
    payload: dict[str, Any]          # Event data ("p" field)
    id: str | None = None            # Message ID
    sequence: int | None = None      # Sequence number
    timestamp: str | None = None     # ISO 8601 timestamp
    version: int = 1                 # Protocol version
    category: str | None = None      # Message category (system/snapshot/update)
    priority: int | None = None      # Message priority (see MessagePriority)
    correlation_id: str | None = None  # Request correlation ID
    signature: str | None = None     # Message signature (if signed)
    topic: str | None = None         # Recovery stamp: topic ("tp" field)
    epoch: str | None = None         # Recovery stamp: buffer epoch, 8-hex ("e")
    offset: int | None = None        # Recovery stamp: per-topic offset ("o")

Features

Auto-Reconnection

Four reconnection strategies with configurable parameters:

from wse_client import AsyncWSEClient, ReconnectConfig, ReconnectMode

client = AsyncWSEClient(
    "ws://localhost:5007/wse",
    reconnect=ReconnectConfig(
        mode=ReconnectMode.EXPONENTIAL,  # EXPONENTIAL, LINEAR, FIBONACCI, ADAPTIVE
        base_delay=1.0,                  # Initial delay in seconds
        max_delay=30.0,                  # Maximum delay cap
        factor=1.5,                      # Backoff multiplier
        jitter=True,                     # Add randomness to prevent thundering herd
    ),
)

On reconnect, the client automatically re-subscribes to all previously subscribed topics.

Message Priority

Five priority levels for message ordering:

from wse_client import MessagePriority

await client.send("alert", {"msg": "critical"}, priority=MessagePriority.CRITICAL)     # 10
await client.send("update", {"data": "..."}, priority=MessagePriority.HIGH)             # 8
await client.send("status", {"ok": True}, priority=MessagePriority.NORMAL)              # 5
await client.send("metric", {"cpu": 42}, priority=MessagePriority.LOW)                  # 3
await client.send("log", {"msg": "debug"}, priority=MessagePriority.BACKGROUND)         # 1

Compression

Built-in zlib compression for messages over 1 KB. Applied automatically on send - no configuration needed. The server decompresses transparently.

E2E Encryption

ECDH P-256 key exchange with AES-GCM-256 encryption. Requires the cryptography package:

pip install wse-client[crypto]

Enable it with AsyncWSEClient(url, encryption=True) (it is off by default). Key exchange then happens automatically during the WebSocket handshake. All messages are encrypted with per-connection session keys derived via HKDF-SHA256. Wire format is the E: prefix + 12-byte IV + ciphertext + 16-byte auth tag, compatible with the TS client and Rust server.

Circuit Breaker

Prevents connection storms during outages. Opens after 5 consecutive failures, rejects further attempts for 60s, then enters half-open state for recovery probing.

States: CLOSED (normal) -> OPEN (blocking) -> HALF_OPEN (probing) -> CLOSED (recovered)

Rate Limiting

Client-side token bucket rate limiter (1000 tokens, 100/sec refill). Prevents message flooding and coordinates with the server's rate limit feedback (rate_limit_warning at 20% capacity).

Idempotent delivery & recovery

Stamped topic messages carry a per-message (topic, epoch, offset) (tp/e/o). Dedup and ordering are driven by the per-topic (epoch, offset), which is authoritative and survives reconnects: a duplicate (offset already seen on the same epoch) is dropped, an in-order message is delivered, and an offset gap triggers automatic recovery from the last in-order position. An epoch change (server restart) re-baselines the topic. Unstamped messages fall back to a sliding-window id dedup (10,000-entry cache). The server's global seq is a diagnostic only — it is not used for ordering.

Network Quality Monitoring

Real-time network quality assessment based on PING/PONG round-trip measurements:

stats = client.get_stats()
print(stats["network"]["quality"])       # EXCELLENT / GOOD / FAIR / POOR (UNKNOWN until enough samples)
print(stats["network"]["latency_ms"])    # Average round-trip time
print(stats["network"]["jitter_ms"])     # Latency variance
print(stats["network"]["packet_loss"])   # Estimated packet loss (%)

Connection Pool

Multi-endpoint support with health scoring and automatic failover:

from wse_client import ConnectionPool, LoadBalancingStrategy

pool = ConnectionPool(
    ["ws://server1:5007/wse", "ws://server2:5007/wse", "ws://server3:5007/wse"],
    strategy=LoadBalancingStrategy.WEIGHTED_RANDOM,  # ROUND_ROBIN, WEIGHTED_RANDOM, LEAST_CONNECTIONS
)
url = pool.select_endpoint()

Endpoints are scored based on connection success rate, latency, and recent failures. Unhealthy endpoints are deprioritized automatically.

Error Handling

from wse_client.errors import (
    WSEError,                # Base exception
    WSEConnectionError,      # Connection failures
    WSETimeoutError,         # Operation timeouts
    WSEAuthError,            # Authentication failures
    WSERateLimitError,       # Rate limit exceeded
    WSEProtocolError,        # Wire protocol violations
    WSECircuitBreakerError,  # Circuit breaker open
    WSEEncryptionError,      # Encryption/decryption failures
)

Wire Protocol

The client speaks WSE wire protocol v1:

• Text frames: JSON with c field for category (WSE, S, U)
• Binary frames: Codec prefix (C: zlib, M: msgpack, E: AES-GCM) + payload
• Heartbeat: JSON PING/PONG with latency tracking

Full protocol specification: PROTOCOL.md

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• websockets >= 13.0

Optional:

• cryptography >= 43.0 (E2E encryption)
• msgpack >= 1.0 (MessagePack binary encoding)
• orjson >= 3.10 (faster JSON serialization)

License

MIT