interrupt.py

"""Demonstrate interrupting the main thread,
and cleanly shutting down sockets in other threads via ctx.term()
"""

import zmq
from threading import Thread, current_thread

def blocking_recv():
    """simple thread that will call recv, and block forever since nobody is sending"""
    ctx = zmq.Context.instance()
    s = ctx.socket(zmq.REP)
    s.bind_to_random_port('tcp://127.0.0.1')
    # block here
    try:
        s.recv()
    except zmq.ZMQError as e:
        print "%s interrupted with: %s" % (current_thread().name, str(e))
    finally:
        s.close()

# everybody gets the same Context:
ctx = zmq.Context.instance()

# start 5 background threads
threads = []
for i in range(5):
    t = Thread(target=blocking_recv)
    t.start()


# same call in the main thread:
print "use ^C to interrupt the main thread"
try:
    blocking_recv()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    print "\nMain thread interrupted, terminating context"
    ctx.term()