Search code examples
pythonnetwork-programmingsocketstwistedhttplib2

Is Twisted an httplib2/socket replacement?

Many python libraries, even recently written ones, use httplib2 or the socket interface to perform networking tasks.

Those are obviously easier to code on than Twisted due to their blocking nature, but I think this is a drawback when integrating them with other code, especially GUI one. If you want scalability, concurrency or GUI integration while avoiding multithreading, Twisted is then a natural choice.

So I would be interested in opinions in those matters:

  1. Should new networking code (with the exception of small command line tools) be written with Twisted?
  2. Would you mix Twisted, http2lib or socket code in the same project?
  3. Is Twisted pythonic for most libraries (it is more complex than alternatives, introduce a dependency to a non-standard package...)?

Edit: please let me phrase this in another way. Do you feel writing new library code with Twisted may add a barrier to its adoption? Twisted has obvious benefits (especially portability and scalability as stated by gimel), but the fact that it is not a core python library may be considered by some as a drawback.

Solution
    1. Should new networking code (with the exception of small command line tools) be written with Twisted?
      • Maybe. It really depends. Sometimes its just easy enough to wrap the blocking calls in their own thread. Twisted is good for large scale network code.
    2. Would you mix Twisted, http2lib or socket code in the same project?
      • Sure. But just remember that Twisted is single threaded, and that any blocking call in Twisted will block the entire engine.
    3. Is Twisted pythonic for most libraries (it is more complex than alternatives, introduce a dependency to a non-standard package...)?
      • There are many Twisted zealots that will say it belongs in the Python standard library. But many people can implement decent networking code with asyncore/asynchat.