What is Socket.IO?

Socket.IO is a transport protocol that enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication between clients (typically, though not always, web browsers) and a server. The official implementations of the client and server components are written in JavaScript. This package provides Python implementations of both, each with standard and asyncio variants.

Version compatibility

The Socket.IO protocol has been through a number of revisions, and some of these introduced backward incompatible changes, which means that the client and the server must use compatible versions for everything to work.

If you are using the Python client and server, the easiest way to ensure compatibility is to use the same version of this package for the client and the server. If you are using this package with a different client or server, then you must ensure the versions are compatible.

The version compatibility chart below maps versions of this package to versions of the JavaScript reference implementation and the versions of the Socket.IO and Engine.IO protocols.

Client Examples

The example that follows shows a simple Python client:

import socketio
sio = socketio.Client()
@sio.event
def connect():
    print('connection established')
@sio.event
def my_message(data):
    print('message received with ', data)
    sio.emit('my response', {'response': 'my response'})
@sio.event
def disconnect():
    print('disconnected from server')
sio.connect('http://localhost:5000')
sio.wait()

Below is a similar client, coded for asyncio (Python 3.5+ only):

import asyncio
import socketio
sio = socketio.AsyncClient()
@sio.event
async def connect():
    print('connection established')
@sio.event
async def my_message(data):
    print('message received with ', data)
    await sio.emit('my response', {'response': 'my response'})
@sio.event
async def disconnect():
    print('disconnected from server')
async def main():
    await sio.connect('http://localhost:5000')
    await sio.wait()
if __name__ == '__main__':
    asyncio.run(main())

Client Features

Server Examples

The following application is a basic server example that uses the Eventlet asynchronous server:

import eventlet
import socketio
sio = socketio.Server()
app = socketio.WSGIApp(sio, static_files={
    '/': {'content_type': 'text/html', 'filename': 'index.html'}
})
@sio.event
def connect(sid, environ):
    print('connect ', sid)
@sio.event
def my_message(sid, data):
    print('message ', data)
@sio.event
def disconnect(sid):
    print('disconnect ', sid)
if __name__ == '__main__':
    eventlet.wsgi.server(eventlet.listen(('', 5000)), app)

Below is a similar application, coded for asyncio (Python 3.5+ only) and the Uvicorn web server:

from aiohttp import web
import socketio
sio = socketio.AsyncServer()
app = web.Application()
sio.attach(app)
async def index(request):
    """Serve the client-side application."""
    with open('index.html') as f:
        return web.Response(text=f.read(), content_type='text/html')
@sio.event
def connect(sid, environ):
    print("connect ", sid)
@sio.event
async def chat_message(sid, data):
    print("message ", data)
@sio.event
def disconnect(sid):
    print('disconnect ', sid)
app.router.add_static('/static', 'static')
app.router.add_get('/', index)
if __name__ == '__main__':
    web.run_app(app)

Server Features

Installation

To install the standard Python client along with its dependencies, use the following command:

pip install "python-socketio[client]"

If instead you plan on using the asyncio client, then use this:

pip install "python-socketio[asyncio_client]"

Creating a Client Instance

To instantiate an Socket.IO client, simply create an instance of the appropriate client class:

import socketio
# standard Python
sio = socketio.Client()
# asyncio
sio = socketio.AsyncClient()

Defining Event Handlers

The Socket.IO protocol is event based. When a server wants to communicate with a client it emits an event. Each event has a name, and a list of arguments. The client registers event handler functions with the socketio.Client.event() or socketio.Client.on() decorators:

@sio.event
def message(data):
    print('I received a message!')
@sio.on('my message')
def on_message(data):
    print('I received a message!')

In the first example the event name is obtained from the name of the handler function. The second example is slightly more verbose, but it allows the event name to be different than the function name or to include characters that are illegal in function names, such as spaces.

For the asyncio client, event handlers can be regular functions as above, or can also be coroutines:

@sio.event
async def message(data):
    print('I received a message!')

If the server includes arguments with an event, those are passed to the handler function as arguments.

Catch-All Event Handlers

A "catch-all" event handler is invoked for any events that do not have an event handler. You can define a catch-all handler using '*' as event name:

@sio.on('*')
def catch_all(event, data):
    pass

Asyncio clients can also use a coroutine:

@sio.on('*')
async def catch_all(event, data):
   pass

A catch-all event handler receives the event name as a first argument. The remaining arguments are the same as for a regular event handler.

Connect, Connect Error and Disconnect Event Handlers

The connect, connect_error and disconnect events are special; they are invoked automatically when a client connects or disconnects from the server:

@sio.event
def connect():
    print("I'm connected!")
@sio.event
def connect_error(data):
    print("The connection failed!")
@sio.event
def disconnect():
    print("I'm disconnected!")

The connect_error handler is invoked when a connection attempt fails. If the server provides arguments, these are passed on to the handler. The server can use an argument to provide information to the client regarding the connection failure.

The disconnect handler is invoked for application initiated disconnects, server initiated disconnects, or accidental disconnects, for example due to networking failures. In the case of an accidental disconnection, the client is going to attempt to reconnect immediately after invoking the disconnect handler. As soon as the connection is re-established the connect handler will be invoked once again.

The connect, connect_error and disconnect events have to be defined explicitly and are not invoked on a catch-all event handler.

Connecting to a Server

The connection to a server is established by calling the connect() method:

sio.connect('http://localhost:5000')

In the case of the asyncio client, the method is a coroutine:

await sio.connect('http://localhost:5000')

Upon connection, the server assigns the client a unique session identifier. The application can find this identifier in the sid attribute:

print('my sid is', sio.sid)

TLS/SSL Support

The client supports TLS/SSL connections. To enable it, use a https:// connection URL:

sio.connect('https://example.com')

Or when using asyncio:

await sio.connect('https://example.com')

The client will verify the server certificate by default. To disable certificate verification, or to use other less common options such as client certificates, the client must be initialized with a custom HTTP session object that is configured with the desired TLS/SSL options.

The following example disables server certificate verification, which can be useful when connecting to a server that uses a self-signed certificate:

http_session = request.Session()
http_session.verify = False
sio = socketio.Client(http_session=http_session)
sio.connect('https://example.com')

And when using asyncio:

connector = aiohttp.TCPConnector(ssl=False)
http_session = aiohttp.ClientSession(connector=connector)
sio = socketio.AsyncClient(http_session=http_session)
await sio.connect('https://example.com')

Instead of disabling certificate verification, you can provide a custom certificate authority bundle to verify the certificate against:

http_session = request.Session()
http_session.verify = '/path/to/ca.pem'
sio = socketio.Client(http_session=http_session)
sio.connect('https://example.com')

And for asyncio:

ssl_context = ssl.create_default_context()
ssl_context.load_verify_locations('/path/to/ca.pem')
connector = aiohttp.TCPConnector(ssl=ssl_context)
http_session = aiohttp.ClientSession(connector=connector)
sio = socketio.AsyncClient(http_session=http_session)
await sio.connect('https://example.com')

Below you can see how to use a client certificate to authenticate against the server:

http_session = request.Session()
http_session.cert = ('/path/to/client/cert.pem', '/path/to/client/key.pem')
sio = socketio.Client(http_session=http_session)
sio.connect('https://example.com')

And for asyncio:

ssl_context = ssl.create_default_context(ssl.Purpose.CLIENT_AUTH)
ssl_context.load_cert_chain('/path/to/client/cert.pem',
                            '/path/to/client/key.pem')
connector = aiohttp.TCPConnector(ssl=ssl_context)
http_session = aiohttp.ClientSession(connector=connector)
sio = socketio.AsyncClient(http_session=http_session)
await sio.connect('https://example.com')

Emitting Events

The client can emit an event to the server using the emit() method:

sio.emit('my message', {'foo': 'bar'})

Or in the case of asyncio, as a coroutine:

await sio.emit('my message', {'foo': 'bar'})

The single argument provided to the method is the data that is passed on to the server. The data can be of type str, bytes, dict, list or tuple. When sending a tuple, the elements in it need to be of any of the other four allowed types. The elements of the tuple will be passed as multiple arguments to the server-side event handler function.

The emit() method can be invoked inside an event handler as a response to a server event, or in any other part of the application, including in background tasks.

Event Callbacks

When a server emits an event to a client, it can optionally provide a callback function, to be invoked as a way of acknowledgment that the server has processed the event. While this is entirely managed by the server, the client can provide a list of return values that are to be passed on to the callback function set up by the server. This is achieved simply by returning the desired values from the handler function:

@sio.event
def my_event(sid, data):
    # handle the message
    return "OK", 123

Likewise, the client can request a callback function to be invoked after the server has processed an event. The socketio.Server.emit() method has an optional callback argument that can be set to a callable. If this argument is given, the callable will be invoked after the server has processed the event, and any values returned by the server handler will be passed as arguments to this function.

Namespaces

The Socket.IO protocol supports multiple logical connections, all multiplexed on the same physical connection. Clients can open multiple connections by specifying a different namespace on each. Namespaces use a path syntax starting with a forward slash. A list of namespaces can be given by the client in the connect() call. For example, this example creates two logical connections, the default one plus a second connection under the /chat namespace:

sio.connect('http://localhost:5000', namespaces=['/chat'])

To define event handlers on a namespace, the namespace argument must be added to the corresponding decorator:

@sio.event(namespace='/chat')
def my_custom_event(sid, data):
    pass
@sio.on('connect', namespace='/chat')
def on_connect():
    print("I'm connected to the /chat namespace!")

Likewise, the client can emit an event to the server on a namespace by providing its in the emit() call:

sio.emit('my message', {'foo': 'bar'}, namespace='/chat')

If the namespaces argument of the connect() call isn't given, any namespaces used in event handlers are automatically connected.

Class-Based Namespaces

As an alternative to the decorator-based event handlers, the event handlers that belong to a namespace can be created as methods of a subclass of socketio.ClientNamespace:

class MyCustomNamespace(socketio.ClientNamespace):
    def on_connect(self):
        pass
    def on_disconnect(self):
        pass
    def on_my_event(self, data):
        self.emit('my_response', data)
sio.register_namespace(MyCustomNamespace('/chat'))

For asyncio based servers, namespaces must inherit from socketio.AsyncClientNamespace, and can define event handlers as coroutines if desired:

class MyCustomNamespace(socketio.AsyncClientNamespace):
    def on_connect(self):
        pass
    def on_disconnect(self):
        pass
    async def on_my_event(self, data):
        await self.emit('my_response', data)
sio.register_namespace(MyCustomNamespace('/chat'))

When class-based namespaces are used, any events received by the client are dispatched to a method named as the event name with the on_ prefix. For example, event my_event will be handled by a method named on_my_event. If an event is received for which there is no corresponding method defined in the namespace class, then the event is ignored. All event names used in class-based namespaces must use characters that are legal in method names.

As a convenience to methods defined in a class-based namespace, the namespace instance includes versions of several of the methods in the socketio.Client and socketio.AsyncClient classes that default to the proper namespace when the namespace argument is not given.

In the case that an event has a handler in a class-based namespace, and also a decorator-based function handler, only the standalone function handler is invoked.

Disconnecting from the Server

At any time the client can request to be disconnected from the server by invoking the disconnect() method:

sio.disconnect()

For the asyncio client this is a coroutine:

await sio.disconnect()

Managing Background Tasks

When a client connection to the server is established, a few background tasks will be spawned to keep the connection alive and handle incoming events. The application running on the main thread is free to do any work, as this is not going to prevent the functioning of the Socket.IO client.

If the application does not have anything to do in the main thread and just wants to wait until the connection with the server ends, it can call the wait() method:

sio.wait()

Or in the asyncio version:

await sio.wait()

For the convenience of the application, a helper function is provided to start a custom background task:

def my_background_task(my_argument):
    # do some background work here!
    pass
task = sio.start_background_task(my_background_task, 123)

The arguments passed to this method are the background function and any positional or keyword arguments to invoke the function with.

Here is the asyncio version:

async def my_background_task(my_argument):
    # do some background work here!
    pass
task = sio.start_background_task(my_background_task, 123)

Note that this function is not a coroutine, since it does not wait for the background function to end. The background function must be a coroutine.

The sleep() method is a second convenience function that is provided for the benefit of applications working with background tasks of their own:

sio.sleep(2)

Or for asyncio:

await sio.sleep(2)

The single argument passed to the method is the number of seconds to sleep for.

Debugging and Troubleshooting

To help you debug issues, the client can be configured to output logs to the terminal:

import socketio
# standard Python
sio = socketio.Client(logger=True, engineio_logger=True)
# asyncio
sio = socketio.AsyncClient(logger=True, engineio_logger=True)

The logger argument controls logging related to the Socket.IO protocol, while engineio_logger controls logs that originate in the low-level Engine.IO transport. These arguments can be set to True to output logs to stderr, or to an object compatible with Python's logging package where the logs should be emitted to. A value of False disables logging.

Logging can help identify the cause of connection problems, unexpected disconnections and other issues.

Installation

To install the Socket.IO server along with its dependencies, use the following command:

pip install python-socketio

In addition to the server, you will need to select an asynchronous framework or server to use along with it. The list of supported packages is covered in the Deployment Strategies section.

Creating a Server Instance

A Socket.IO server is an instance of class socketio.Server. This instance can be transformed into a standard WSGI application by wrapping it with the socketio.WSGIApp class:

import socketio
# create a Socket.IO server
sio = socketio.Server()
# wrap with a WSGI application
app = socketio.WSGIApp(sio)

For asyncio based servers, the socketio.AsyncServer class provides the same functionality, but in a coroutine friendly format. If desired, The socketio.ASGIApp class can transform the server into a standard ASGI application:

# create a Socket.IO server
sio = socketio.AsyncServer()
# wrap with ASGI application
app = socketio.ASGIApp(sio)

These two wrappers can also act as middlewares, forwarding any traffic that is not intended to the Socket.IO server to another application. This allows Socket.IO servers to integrate easily into existing WSGI or ASGI applications:

from wsgi import app  # a Flask, Django, etc. application
app = socketio.WSGIApp(sio, app)

Serving Static Files

The Socket.IO server can be configured to serve static files to clients. This is particularly useful to deliver HTML, CSS and JavaScript files to clients when this package is used without a companion web framework.

Static files are configured with a Python dictionary in which each key/value pair is a static file mapping rule. In its simplest form, this dictionary has one or more static file URLs as keys, and the corresponding files in the server as values:

static_files = {
    '/': 'latency.html',
    '/static/socket.io.js': 'static/socket.io.js',
    '/static/style.css': 'static/style.css',
}

With this example configuration, when the server receives a request for / (the root URL) it will return the contents of the file latency.html in the current directory, and will assign a content type based on the file extension, in this case text/html.

Files with the .html, .css, .js, .json, .jpg, .png, .gif and .txt file extensions are automatically recognized and assigned the correct content type. For files with other file extensions or with no file extension, the application/octet-stream content type is used as a default.

If desired, an explicit content type for a static file can be given as follows:

static_files = {
    '/': {'filename': 'latency.html', 'content_type': 'text/plain'},
}

It is also possible to configure an entire directory in a single rule, so that all the files in it are served as static files:

static_files = {
    '/static': './public',
}

In this example any files with URLs starting with /static will be served directly from the public folder in the current directory, so for example, the URL /static/index.html will return local file ./public/index.html and the URL /static/css/styles.css will return local file ./public/css/styles.css.

If a URL that ends in a / is requested, then a default filename of index.html is appended to it. In the previous example, a request for the /static/ URL would return local file ./public/index.html. The default filename to serve for slash-ending URLs can be set in the static files dictionary with an empty key:

static_files = {
    '/static': './public',
    '': 'image.gif',
}

With this configuration, a request for /static/ would return local file ./public/image.gif. A non-standard content type can also be specified if needed:

static_files = {
    '/static': './public',
    '': {'filename': 'image.gif', 'content_type': 'text/plain'},
}

The static file configuration dictionary is given as the static_files argument to the socketio.WSGIApp or socketio.ASGIApp classes:

# for standard WSGI applications
sio = socketio.Server()
app = socketio.WSGIApp(sio, static_files=static_files)
# for asyncio-based ASGI applications
sio = socketio.AsyncServer()
app = socketio.ASGIApp(sio, static_files=static_files)

The routing precedence in these two classes is as follows:

Note: static file serving is intended for development use only, and as such it lacks important features such as caching. Do not use in a production environment.

Defining Event Handlers

The Socket.IO protocol is event based. When a client wants to communicate with the server it emits an event. Each event has a name, and a list of arguments. The server registers event handler functions with the socketio.Server.event() or socketio.Server.on() decorators:

@sio.event
def my_event(sid, data):
    pass
@sio.on('my custom event')
def another_event(sid, data):
    pass

In the first example the event name is obtained from the name of the handler function. The second example is slightly more verbose, but it allows the event name to be different than the function name or to include characters that are illegal in function names, such as spaces.

For asyncio servers, event handlers can optionally be given as coroutines:

@sio.event
async def my_event(sid, data):
    pass

The sid argument is the Socket.IO session id, a unique identifier of each client connection. All the events sent by a given client will have the same sid value.

Catch-All Event Handlers

A "catch-all" event handler is invoked for any events that do not have an event handler. You can define a catch-all handler using '*' as event name:

@sio.on('*')
def catch_all(event, sid, data):
    pass

Asyncio servers can also use a coroutine:

@sio.on('*')
async def catch_all(event, sid, data):
   pass

A catch-all event handler receives the event name as a first argument. The remaining arguments are the same as for a regular event handler.

The connect and disconnect events have to be defined explicitly and are not invoked on a catch-all event handler.

Connect and Disconnect Event Handlers

The connect and disconnect events are special; they are invoked automatically when a client connects or disconnects from the server:

@sio.event
def connect(sid, environ, auth):
    print('connect ', sid)
@sio.event
def disconnect(sid):
    print('disconnect ', sid)

The connect event is an ideal place to perform user authentication, and any necessary mapping between user entities in the application and the sid that was assigned to the client. The environ argument is a dictionary in standard WSGI format containing the request information, including HTTP headers. The auth argument contains any authentication details passed by the client, or None if the client did not pass anything. After inspecting the request, the connect event handler can return False to reject the connection with the client.

Sometimes it is useful to pass data back to the client being rejected. In that case instead of returning False socketio.exceptions.ConnectionRefusedError can be raised, and all of its arguments will be sent to the client with the rejection message:

@sio.event
def connect(sid, environ):
    raise ConnectionRefusedError('authentication failed')

Emitting Events

Socket.IO is a bidirectional protocol, so at any time the server can send an event to its connected clients. The socketio.Server.emit() method is used for this task:

sio.emit('my event', {'data': 'foobar'})

Sometimes the server may want to send an event just to a particular client. This can be achieved by adding a room argument to the emit call:

sio.emit('my event', {'data': 'foobar'}, room=user_sid)

The socketio.Server.emit() method takes an event name, a message payload of type str, bytes, list, dict or tuple, and the recipient room. When sending a tuple, the elements in it need to be of any of the other four allowed types. The elements of the tuple will be passed as multiple arguments to the client-side event handler function. The room argument is used to identify the client that should receive the event, and is set to the sid value assigned to that client's connection with the server. When omitted, the event is broadcasted to all connected clients.

Event Callbacks

When a client sends an event to the server, it can optionally provide a callback function, to be invoked as a way of acknowledgment that the server has processed the event. While this is entirely managed by the client, the server can provide a list of values that are to be passed on to the callback function, simply by returning them from the handler function:

@sio.event
def my_event(sid, data):
    # handle the message
    return "OK", 123

Likewise, the server can request a callback function to be invoked after a client has processed an event. The socketio.Server.emit() method has an optional callback argument that can be set to a callable. If this argument is given, the callable will be invoked after the client has processed the event, and any values returned by the client will be passed as arguments to this function. Using callback functions when broadcasting to multiple clients is currently not supported.

Namespaces

The Socket.IO protocol supports multiple logical connections, all multiplexed on the same physical connection. Clients can open multiple connections by specifying a different namespace on each. A namespace is given by the client as a pathname following the hostname and port. For example, connecting to http://example.com:8000/chat would open a connection to the namespace /chat.

Each namespace is handled independently from the others, with separate session IDs (sids), event handlers and rooms. It is important that applications that use multiple namespaces specify the correct namespace when setting up their event handlers and rooms, using the optional namespace argument available in all the methods in the socketio.Server class:

@sio.event(namespace='/chat')
def my_custom_event(sid, data):
    pass
@sio.on('my custom event', namespace='/chat')
def my_custom_event(sid, data):
    pass

When emitting an event, the namespace optional argument is used to specify which namespace to send it on. When the namespace argument is omitted, the default Socket.IO namespace, which is named /, is used.

Class-Based Namespaces

As an alternative to the decorator-based event handlers, the event handlers that belong to a namespace can be created as methods of a subclass of socketio.Namespace:

class MyCustomNamespace(socketio.Namespace):
    def on_connect(self, sid, environ):
        pass
    def on_disconnect(self, sid):
        pass
    def on_my_event(self, sid, data):
        self.emit('my_response', data)
sio.register_namespace(MyCustomNamespace('/test'))

For asyncio based servers, namespaces must inherit from socketio.AsyncNamespace, and can define event handlers as coroutines if desired:

class MyCustomNamespace(socketio.AsyncNamespace):
    def on_connect(self, sid, environ):
        pass
    def on_disconnect(self, sid):
        pass
    async def on_my_event(self, sid, data):
        await self.emit('my_response', data)
sio.register_namespace(MyCustomNamespace('/test'))

When class-based namespaces are used, any events received by the server are dispatched to a method named as the event name with the on_ prefix. For example, event my_event will be handled by a method named on_my_event. If an event is received for which there is no corresponding method defined in the namespace class, then the event is ignored. All event names used in class-based namespaces must use characters that are legal in method names.

As a convenience to methods defined in a class-based namespace, the namespace instance includes versions of several of the methods in the socketio.Server and socketio.AsyncServer classes that default to the proper namespace when the namespace argument is not given.

In the case that an event has a handler in a class-based namespace, and also a decorator-based function handler, only the standalone function handler is invoked.

It is important to note that class-based namespaces are singletons. This means that a single instance of a namespace class is used for all clients, and consequently, a namespace instance cannot be used to store client specific information.

Rooms

To make it easy for the server to emit events to groups of related clients, the application can put its clients into "rooms", and then address messages to these rooms.

In the previous section the room argument of the socketio.SocketIO.emit() method was used to designate a specific client as the recipient of the event. This is because upon connection, a personal room for each client is created and named with the sid assigned to the connection. The application is then free to create additional rooms and manage which clients are in them using the socketio.Server.enter_room() and socketio.Server.leave_room() methods. Clients can be in as many rooms as needed and can be moved between rooms as often as necessary.

@sio.event
def begin_chat(sid):
    sio.enter_room(sid, 'chat_users')
@sio.event
def exit_chat(sid):
    sio.leave_room(sid, 'chat_users')

In chat applications it is often desired that an event is broadcasted to all the members of the room except one, which is the originator of the event such as a chat message. The socketio.Server.emit() method provides an optional skip_sid argument to indicate a client that should be skipped during the broadcast.

@sio.event
def my_message(sid, data):
    sio.emit('my reply', data, room='chat_users', skip_sid=sid)

User Sessions

The server can maintain application-specific information in a user session dedicated to each connected client. Applications can use the user session to write any details about the user that need to be preserved throughout the life of the connection, such as usernames or user ids.

The save_session() and get_session() methods are used to store and retrieve information in the user session:

@sio.event
def connect(sid, environ):
    username = authenticate_user(environ)
    sio.save_session(sid, {'username': username})
@sio.event
def message(sid, data):
    session = sio.get_session(sid)
    print('message from ', session['username'])

For the asyncio server, these methods are coroutines:

@sio.event
async def connect(sid, environ):
    username = authenticate_user(environ)
    await sio.save_session(sid, {'username': username})
@sio.event
async def message(sid, data):
    session = await sio.get_session(sid)
    print('message from ', session['username'])

The session can also be manipulated with the session() context manager:

@sio.event
def connect(sid, environ):
    username = authenticate_user(environ)
    with sio.session(sid) as session:
        session['username'] = username
@sio.event
def message(sid, data):
    with sio.session(sid) as session:
        print('message from ', session['username'])

For the asyncio server, an asynchronous context manager is used:

@sio.event
def connect(sid, environ):
    username = authenticate_user(environ)
    async with sio.session(sid) as session:
        session['username'] = username
@sio.event
def message(sid, data):
    async with sio.session(sid) as session:
        print('message from ', session['username'])

The get_session(), save_session() and session() methods take an optional namespace argument. If this argument isn't provided, the session is attached to the default namespace.

Note: the contents of the user session are destroyed when the client disconnects. In particular, user session contents are not preserved when a client reconnects after an unexpected disconnection from the server.

Using a Message Queue

When working with distributed applications, it is often necessary to access the functionality of the Socket.IO from multiple processes. There are two specific use cases:

As a solution to the above problems, the Socket.IO server can be configured to connect to a message queue such as Redis or RabbitMQ, to communicate with other related Socket.IO servers or auxiliary workers.

Redis

To use a Redis message queue, a Python Redis client must be installed:

# socketio.Server class
pip install redis
# socketio.AsyncServer class
pip install aioredis

The Redis queue is configured through the socketio.RedisManager and socketio.AsyncRedisManager classes. These classes connect directly to the Redis store and use the queue's pub/sub functionality:

# socketio.Server class
mgr = socketio.RedisManager('redis://')
sio = socketio.Server(client_manager=mgr)
# socketio.AsyncServer class
mgr = socketio.AsyncRedisManager('redis://')
sio = socketio.AsyncServer(client_manager=mgr)

The client_manager argument instructs the server to connect to the given message queue, and to coordinate with other processes connected to the queue.

Kombu

Kombu is a Python package that provides access to RabbitMQ and many other message queues. It can be installed with pip:

pip install kombu

To use RabbitMQ or other AMQP protocol compatible queues, that is the only required dependency. But for other message queues, Kombu may require additional packages. For example, to use a Redis queue via Kombu, the Python package for Redis needs to be installed as well:

pip install redis

The queue is configured through the socketio.KombuManager:

mgr = socketio.KombuManager('amqp://')
sio = socketio.Server(client_manager=mgr)

The connection URL passed to the KombuManager constructor is passed directly to Kombu's Connection object, so the Kombu documentation should be consulted for information on how to build the correct URL for a given message queue.

Note that Kombu currently does not support asyncio, so it cannot be used with the socketio.AsyncServer class.

Kafka

Apache Kafka is supported through the kafka-python package:

pip install kafka-python

Access to Kafka is configured through the socketio.KafkaManager class:

mgr = socketio.KafkaManager('kafka://')
sio = socketio.Server(client_manager=mgr)

Note that Kafka currently does not support asyncio, so it cannot be used with the socketio.AsyncServer class.

AioPika

A RabbitMQ message queue is supported in asyncio applications through the AioPika package:: You need to install aio_pika with pip:

pip install aio_pika

The RabbitMQ queue is configured through the socketio.AsyncAioPikaManager class:

mgr = socketio.AsyncAioPikaManager('amqp://')
sio = socketio.AsyncServer(client_manager=mgr)

Emitting from external processes

To have a process other than a server connect to the queue to emit a message, the same client manager classes can be used as standalone objects. In this case, the write_only argument should be set to True to disable the creation of a listening thread, which only makes sense in a server. For example:

# connect to the redis queue as an external process
external_sio = socketio.RedisManager('redis://', write_only=True)
# emit an event
external_sio.emit('my event', data={'foo': 'bar'}, room='my room')

A limitation of the write-only client manager object is that it cannot receive callbacks when emitting. When the external process needs to receive callbacks, using a client to connect to the server with read and write support is a better option than a write-only client manager.

Debugging and Troubleshooting

To help you debug issues, the server can be configured to output logs to the terminal:

import socketio
# standard Python
sio = socketio.Server(logger=True, engineio_logger=True)
# asyncio
sio = socketio.AsyncServer(logger=True, engineio_logger=True)

The logger argument controls logging related to the Socket.IO protocol, while engineio_logger controls logs that originate in the low-level Engine.IO transport. These arguments can be set to True to output logs to stderr, or to an object compatible with Python's logging package where the logs should be emitted to. A value of False disables logging.

Logging can help identify the cause of connection problems, 400 responses, bad performance and other issues.

Deployment Strategies

The following sections describe a variety of deployment strategies for Socket.IO servers.

Uvicorn, Daphne, and other ASGI servers

The socketio.ASGIApp class is an ASGI compatible application that can forward Socket.IO traffic to an socketio.AsyncServer instance:

sio = socketio.AsyncServer(async_mode='asgi')
app = socketio.ASGIApp(sio)

If desired, the socketio.ASGIApp class can forward any traffic that is not Socket.IO to another ASGI application, making it possible to deploy a standard ASGI web application and the Socket.IO server as a bundle:

sio = socketio.AsyncServer(async_mode='asgi')
app = socketio.ASGIApp(sio, other_app)

The ASGIApp instance is a fully complaint ASGI instance that can be deployed with an ASGI compatible web server.

Aiohttp

Aiohttp is a framework with support for HTTP and WebSocket, based on asyncio. Support for this framework is limited to Python 3.5 and newer.

Instances of class socketio.AsyncServer will automatically use aiohttp for asynchronous operations if the library is installed. To request its use explicitly, the async_mode option can be given in the constructor:

sio = socketio.AsyncServer(async_mode='aiohttp')

A server configured for aiohttp must be attached to an existing application:

app = web.Application()
sio.attach(app)

The aiohttp application can define regular routes that will coexist with the Socket.IO server. A typical pattern is to add routes that serve a client application and any associated static files.

The aiohttp application is then executed in the usual manner:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    web.run_app(app)

Tornado

Tornado is a web framework with support for HTTP and WebSocket. Support for this framework requires Python 3.5 and newer. Only Tornado version 5 and newer are supported, thanks to its tight integration with asyncio.

Instances of class socketio.AsyncServer will automatically use tornado for asynchronous operations if the library is installed. To request its use explicitly, the async_mode option can be given in the constructor:

sio = socketio.AsyncServer(async_mode='tornado')

A server configured for tornado must include a request handler for Socket.IO:

app = tornado.web.Application(
    [
        (r"/socket.io/", socketio.get_tornado_handler(sio)),
    ],
    # ... other application options
)

The tornado application can define other routes that will coexist with the Socket.IO server. A typical pattern is to add routes that serve a client application and any associated static files.

The tornado application is then executed in the usual manner:

app.listen(port)
tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.current().start()

Sanic

Note: Due to some backward incompatible changes introduced in recent versions of Sanic, it is currently recommended that a Sanic application is deployed with the ASGI integration instead.

Sanic is a very efficient asynchronous web server for Python 3.5 and newer.

Instances of class socketio.AsyncServer will automatically use Sanic for asynchronous operations if the framework is installed. To request its use explicitly, the async_mode option can be given in the constructor:

sio = socketio.AsyncServer(async_mode='sanic')

A server configured for aiohttp must be attached to an existing application:

app = Sanic()
sio.attach(app)

The Sanic application can define regular routes that will coexist with the Socket.IO server. A typical pattern is to add routes that serve a client application and any associated static files.

The Sanic application is then executed in the usual manner:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

It has been reported that the CORS support provided by the Sanic extension sanic-cors is incompatible with this package's own support for this protocol. To disable CORS support in this package and let Sanic take full control, initialize the server as follows:

sio = socketio.AsyncServer(async_mode='sanic', cors_allowed_origins=[])

On the Sanic side you will need to enable the CORS_SUPPORTS_CREDENTIALS setting in addition to any other configuration that you use:

app.config['CORS_SUPPORTS_CREDENTIALS'] = True

Eventlet

Eventlet is a high performance concurrent networking library for Python 2 and 3 that uses coroutines, enabling code to be written in the same style used with the blocking standard library functions. An Socket.IO server deployed with eventlet has access to the long-polling and WebSocket transports.

Instances of class socketio.Server will automatically use eventlet for asynchronous operations if the library is installed. To request its use explicitly, the async_mode option can be given in the constructor:

sio = socketio.Server(async_mode='eventlet')

A server configured for eventlet is deployed as a regular WSGI application using the provided socketio.WSGIApp:

app = socketio.WSGIApp(sio)
import eventlet
eventlet.wsgi.server(eventlet.listen(('', 8000)), app)

Eventlet with Gunicorn

An alternative to running the eventlet WSGI server as above is to use gunicorn, a fully featured pure Python web server. The command to launch the application under gunicorn is shown below:

$ gunicorn -k eventlet -w 1 module:app

Due to limitations in its load balancing algorithm, gunicorn can only be used with one worker process, so the -w option cannot be set to a value higher than 1. A single eventlet worker can handle a large number of concurrent clients, each handled by a greenlet.

Eventlet provides a monkey_patch() function that replaces all the blocking functions in the standard library with equivalent asynchronous versions. While python-socketio does not require monkey patching, other libraries such as database drivers are likely to require it.

Gevent

Gevent is another asynchronous framework based on coroutines, very similar to eventlet. An Socket.IO server deployed with gevent has access to the long-polling transport. If project gevent-websocket is installed, the WebSocket transport is also available.

Instances of class socketio.Server will automatically use gevent for asynchronous operations if the library is installed and eventlet is not installed. To request gevent to be selected explicitly, the async_mode option can be given in the constructor:

sio = socketio.Server(async_mode='gevent')

A server configured for gevent is deployed as a regular WSGI application using the provided socketio.WSGIApp:

app = socketio.WSGIApp(sio)
from gevent import pywsgi
pywsgi.WSGIServer(('', 8000), app).serve_forever()

If the WebSocket transport is installed, then the server must be started as follows:

from gevent import pywsgi
from geventwebsocket.handler import WebSocketHandler
app = socketio.WSGIApp(sio)
pywsgi.WSGIServer(('', 8000), app,
                  handler_class=WebSocketHandler).serve_forever()

Gevent with Gunicorn

An alternative to running the gevent WSGI server as above is to use gunicorn, a fully featured pure Python web server. The command to launch the application under gunicorn is shown below:

$ gunicorn -k gevent -w 1 module:app

Or to include WebSocket:

$ gunicorn -k geventwebsocket.gunicorn.workers.GeventWebSocketWorker -w 1 module: app

Same as with eventlet, due to limitations in its load balancing algorithm, gunicorn can only be used with one worker process, so the -w option cannot be higher than 1. A single gevent worker can handle a large number of concurrent clients through the use of greenlets.

Gevent provides a monkey_patch() function that replaces all the blocking functions in the standard library with equivalent asynchronous versions. While python-socketio does not require monkey patching, other libraries such as database drivers are likely to require it.

uWSGI

When using the uWSGI server in combination with gevent, the Socket.IO server can take advantage of uWSGI's native WebSocket support.

Instances of class socketio.Server will automatically use this option for asynchronous operations if both gevent and uWSGI are installed and eventlet is not installed. To request this asynchronous mode explicitly, the async_mode option can be given in the constructor:

# gevent with uWSGI
sio = socketio.Server(async_mode='gevent_uwsgi')

A complete explanation of the configuration and usage of the uWSGI server is beyond the scope of this documentation. The uWSGI server is a fairly complex package that provides a large and comprehensive set of options. It must be compiled with WebSocket and SSL support for the WebSocket transport to be available. As way of an introduction, the following command starts a uWSGI server for the latency.py example on port 5000:

$ uwsgi --http :5000 --gevent 1000 --http-websockets --master --wsgi-file latency.py --callable app

Standard Threads

While not comparable to eventlet and gevent in terms of performance, the Socket.IO server can also be configured to work with multi-threaded web servers that use standard Python threads. This is an ideal setup to use with development servers such as Werkzeug.

Instances of class socketio.Server will automatically use the threading mode if neither eventlet nor gevent are installed. To request the threading mode explicitly, the async_mode option can be given in the constructor:

sio = socketio.Server(async_mode='threading')

A server configured for threading is deployed as a regular web application, using any WSGI complaint multi-threaded server. The example below deploys an Socket.IO application combined with a Flask web application, using Flask's development web server based on Werkzeug:

sio = socketio.Server(async_mode='threading')
app = Flask(__name__)
app.wsgi_app = socketio.WSGIApp(sio, app.wsgi_app)
# ... Socket.IO and Flask handler functions ...
if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

The example that follows shows how to start an Socket.IO application using Gunicorn's threaded worker class:

$ gunicorn -w 1 --threads 100 module:app

With the above configuration the server will be able to handle up to 100 concurrent clients.

When using standard threads, WebSocket is supported through the simple-websocket package, which must be installed separately. This package provides a multi-threaded WebSocket server that is compatible with Werkzeug and Gunicorn's threaded worker. Other multi-threaded web servers are not supported and will not enable the WebSocket transport.

Scalability Notes

Socket.IO is a stateful protocol, which makes horizontal scaling more difficult. To deploy a cluster of Socket.IO processes hosted on one or multiple servers, the following conditions must be met:

Cross-Origin Controls

For security reasons, this server enforces a same-origin policy by default. In practical terms, this means the following:

If necessary, the cors_allowed_origins option can be used to allow other origins. This argument can be set to a string to set a single allowed origin, or to a list to allow multiple origins. A special value of '*' can be used to instruct the server to allow all origins, but this should be done with care, as this could make the server vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks.

Client class

AsyncClient class

Server class

AsyncServer class

ConnectionRefusedError class

WSGIApp class

ASGIApp class

Middleware class (deprecated)

ClientNamespace class

Namespace class

AsyncClientNamespace class

AsyncNamespace class

BaseManager class

PubSubManager class

KombuManager class

RedisManager class

KafkaManager class

AsyncManager class

AsyncRedisManager class

AsyncAioPikaManager class