Multithreading in such a way that I am able to accept multiple clients in Python

Question

I am expected to write a server that can handle multiple clients in Python, and so far I am able to deal with one connection(from a client)but I really don't know how to extend my program to handle multiple clients. I tried looking at Twisted, but couldn't really grasp it.

Any recommendations, or sample code that can help me understand how to handle multiple clients? Ideally, I should be able to have multiple clients connected to the server, and based on the input they pass once they are connected, I should be able to do all sort of fascinating things by parsing their input, etc.

I really look forward to your responses, and thank you in advance for your time. I'm a long time lurker.

P.S I already looked at most other multithreading examples of Python, they didn't quite honestly help.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Use SocketServer with the ThreadingMixIn so each client connection is handled on a separate thread.

Here's a starting point for you.

import SocketServer

PORT = 5000

class Server(SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn, SocketServer.TCPServer):
    daemon_threads = True

class Handler(SocketServer.BaseRequestHandler):
    def handle(self):
        # TODO: handle this client
        # this sample acts as an echo server
        while True:
            data = self.request.recv(1024)
            if not data:
                break
            self.request.sendall(data)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    server = Server(('', PORT), Handler)
    server.serve_forever()