Flask-Sockets

Elegant WebSockets for your Flask apps.

… image:: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3689/9755961864_577e32a106_c.jpg

Simple usage of route decorator:

… code-block:: python

from flask import Flask
from flask_sockets import Sockets


app = Flask(__name__)
sockets = Sockets(app)


@sockets.route('/echo')
def echo_socket(ws):
    while not ws.closed:
        message = ws.receive()
        ws.send(message)


@app.route('/')
def hello():
    return 'Hello World!'


if __name__ == "__main__":
    from gevent import pywsgi
    from geventwebsocket.handler import WebSocketHandler
    server = pywsgi.WSGIServer(('', 5000), app, handler_class=WebSocketHandler)
    server.serve_forever()

Usage of Flask blueprints_:

… code-block:: python

from flask import Flask, Blueprint
from flask_sockets import Sockets


html = Blueprint(r'html', __name__)
ws = Blueprint(r'ws', __name__)


@html.route('/')
def hello():
    return 'Hello World!'

@ws.route('/echo')
def echo_socket(socket):
    while not socket.closed:
        message = socket.receive()
        socket.send(message)


app = Flask(__name__)
sockets = Sockets(app)

app.register_blueprint(html, url_prefix=r'/')
sockets.register_blueprint(ws, url_prefix=r'/')


if __name__ == "__main__":
    from gevent import pywsgi
    from geventwebsocket.handler import WebSocketHandler
    server = pywsgi.WSGIServer(('', 5000), app, handler_class=WebSocketHandler)
    server.serve_forever()

Combining WebSockets with Ajax (XHR) endpoints also comes handy with the support of session handling built-in to sockets as well. As an example you could use an Ajax login call which would create a new session and accordingly set a secure HttpOnly cookie to the browser. After authorization, you can connect to the WebSocket endpoint and reuse the session handling from Flask there as well (as shown here: https://pythonhosted.org/Flask-Session/). Access to other custom cookies is also possible via Flasks request.cookies property.

Serving WebSockets in Python was really difficult. Now it’s not.

Installation

To install Flask-Sockets, simply::

$ pip install Flask-Sockets

Deployment

A custom Gunicorn worker is included to make deployment as friendly as possible::

$ gunicorn -k flask_sockets.worker hello:app

Production services are provided by gevent <http://www.gevent.org>_
and gevent-websocket <https://bitbucket.org/noppo/gevent-websocket>_.

The given example can run standalone as main.

Anything that inserts wsgi.websocket into the WSGI environ is
supported, but gevent-websocket is recommended.

Development / Testing

Because the Werkzeug development server cannot provide the WSGI environ with
a websocket interface, it is not possible to run a Flask app using the standard
app.run().

If you try to, Flask will still try to serve on all the specified routes, and
throw a KeyError whenever a client tries to connect to a websocket route.

Instead, just use the included gunicorn worker (explained above), or anything that
can insert wsgi.websocket into the WSGI environ.

WebSocket Interface

The websocket interface that is passed into your routes is
provided by gevent-websocket <https://bitbucket.org/noppo/gevent-websocket>_.
The basic methods are fairly straightforward — 
send, receive, send_frame, and close.

Release History

v0.2.1

- Add support of `Flask blueprints`_.


v0.2.0

• Add request context into the socket handler.
• Fallback to Flask logic if websocket environment is not available.
• Use Flask routing to allow for variables in URL

v0.1.0

- Initial release.


.. _Flask blueprints: http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/latest/blueprints/