Python provides support for both connection-oriented and connectionless protocols using low level sockets.
It also has libraries that provide higher-level access to specific application-level network protocols, such as FTP, HTTP & EMAIL etc.
Sockets are the endpoints of a bidirectional communications channel. Sockets may communicate within a process, between processes on the same machine, or between processes on different continents.
Sockets may be implemented over a number of different channel types: Unix domain sockets, TCP, UDP, and so on. The socket library provides specific classes for handling the common transports as well as a generic interface for handling the rest.
To create a socket, you must use the socket.socket() function available in socket module, which has the general syntax −
s = socket.socket (socket_family, socket_type, protocol=0)
socket_family: This is either AF_UNIX or AF_INET
socket_type: This is either SOCK_STREAM or SOCK_DGRAM.
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| s.bind() | This method binds address (hostname, port number pair) to socket. |
| s.listen() | This method sets up and start TCP listener. |
| s.accept() | This passively accept TCP client connection, waiting until connection arrives (blocking). |
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| s.connect() | This method actively initiates TCP server connection. |
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| s.recv() | This method receives TCP message |
| s.send() | This method transmits TCP message |
| s.recvfrom() | This method receives UDP message |
| s.sendto() | This method transmits UDP message |
| s.close() | This method closes socket |
| socket.gethostname() | Returns the hostname. |