tcp server and client in python.md

Transmission Control Protocol

TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol. TCP is a communication standard that enables application programs and computing devices to exchange messages over a network. TCP establishes a connection between the source and destination before it starts transmitting the data. It breaks large amounts of data into smaller packets while ensuring data integrity.

TCP server in python

We import socket and threading module. The socket module provides various objects, constants , functions and related exceptions for building full-fledged network applications including client and server programs. The threading module allows a program to run multiple operations concurrently in the same process space.

import socket
import threading

We create a socket object with the the AF_INET and SOCK_STREAM parameters. AF_INET specifies the address family that our socket will use and in this case, it is Internet Protocol Version 4 address. SOCK_STREAM shows that the socket object will use TCP.

#create TCP/IP socket
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)

We define the IP and the port number for the server and we pass these arguments to the socket. This tells the socket object to listen on this IP address and port number.

server_ip = "0.0.0.0"
server_port = 9999

#Bind socket to port
sock.bind((server_ip,server_port))

This sets the number of maximum connections that can be connected to the server.in this case, the the server can only have a maximum of 5 connections.

#Listen for incomming connections
sock.listen(5)

Once a client has established a connection to the server, we keep the client's socket in the connection variable and the connection details in the client_addr variable. client_addr[0] stores the IP address of the client and client_addr[1] stores the port that the client used to establish a connection to the server.

For each client connection, we spin up a thread object that calls the handle_client function and we pass in the connection variable as the argument to the function.

while True:
    #wait for connection
    connection,client_addr = sock.accept()
    print("[*] Accepted connection from: %s:%d" %(client_addr[0],client_addr[1]))

    client_handler =  threading.Thread(target=handle_client, args=(connection,))
    client_handler.start()

The handle_client function receives what the client socket sent and it sends back an ACK! message to the client to acknowledge that the message was received.

Then it closes the connection.

def handle_client(client_socket):

    request = client_socket.recv(1024)

    print("[*] Recieved: %s" %request)

    #send acknowldgement
    data = "ACK!".encode('utf-8')
    client_socket.send(data)

    client_socket.close()

Here is the full code for the tcp server in python.

import socket
import threading

#create TCP/IP socket
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)

server_ip = "0.0.0.0"
server_port = 9999

#Bind socket to port
sock.bind((server_ip,server_port))

#Listen for incomming connections
sock.listen(5)

print ("[*] Listening on %s:%d" %(server_ip,server_port))

def handle_client(client_socket):

    request = client_socket.recv(1024)

    print("[*] Recieved: %s" %request)

    #send acknowldgement
    data = "ACK!".encode('utf-8')
    client_socket.send(data)

    client_socket.close()
while True:
    #wait for connection
    connection,client_addr = sock.accept()
    print("[*] Accepted connection from: %s:%d" %(client_addr[0],client_addr[1]))

    client_handler =  threading.Thread(target=handle_client, args=(connection,))
    client_handler.start()

Let's run the server.

python3 tcp_server.py 
[*] Listening on 0.0.0.0:9999

The server is listening on 0.0.0.0:9999 and is ready for any incoming connections.

TCP client in python

Creating a tcp client is the same as creating the tcp server with only a few changes. Here the client connects to the server running on 0.0.0.0:9999 and sends a Hello World! message. Then, it prints the response it receives from the server.

import socket

target_ip = "0.0.0.0"
target_port = 9999

#create a socket object
client = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_STREAM)

#connect the client
client.connect((target_ip,target_port))

#send data
data = "Hello World!".encode('utf-8')
client.send(data)

#recieve data
response = client.recv(1024)

print(response)

Let's run the client in another shell.

python3 tcp_client.py 
b'ACK!'

Let's go back to the server and this is now the output of the server.

python3 tcp_server.py 
[*] Listening on 0.0.0.0:9999
[*] Accepted connection from: 127.0.0.1:55760
[*] Recieved: b'Hello World!'

If you stop the server and run it again, you will get an error about the address already being in use. To fix this run pkill -9 python3 and then you should now be able to run the server again.

We have successfully built a tcp server and a tcp client in python.