Pure Python OPC UA / IEC 62541 Client and Server Python 2, 3 and pypy. http://freeopcua.github.io/, https://github.com/FreeOpcUa/python-opcua
The library is in maintenance mode. The plan is now to focus on the asyncio version of this library: python-asyncio which also has a sync-wrapper, with very few changes in API
PR to fix bugs to python-opcua are welcome, but if you want to write new fancy features or architectural changes, please look at opcua-asyncio
Why asyncio? because it makes code easier to read and safer(read: less chances for bugs) and since python is monoprocess it might even be faster. It is also a good timing to remove all Python2 code
OPC UA binary protocol implementation is quasi complete and has been tested against many different OPC UA stacks. API offers both a low level interface to send and receive all UA defined structures and high level classes allowing to write a server or a client in a few lines. It is easy to mix high level objects and low level UA calls in one application.
Most low level code is autogenerated from xml specification, thus adding missing functionality to client or server is often trivial.
coverage.py reports a test coverage of over 95 % of code, most of non-tested code is autogenerated code that is not used yet.
Installation
With pip (note: the package was ealier called freeopcua)
pip install opcua
Ubuntu:
apt install python-opcua # Library
apt install python-opcua-tools # Command-line tools
Dependencies:
- Python > 3.4:
cryptography
,dateutil
,lxml
andpytz
. - Python 2.7 or pypy < 3: you also need to install
enum34
,trollius
(asyncio
), andfutures
(concurrent.futures
), with pip for example.
Documentation
Some documentation is available on ReadTheDocs.
A simple GUI client is available: https://github.com/FreeOpcUa/opcua-client-gui
Examples: https://github.com/FreeOpcUa/python-opcua/tree/master/examples
Minimal client example: https://github.com/FreeOpcUa/python-opcua/blob/master/examples/client-minimal.py Minimal server example: https://github.com/FreeOpcUa/python-opcua/blob/master/examples/server-minimal.py
A set of command line tools also available: https://github.com/FreeOpcUa/python-opcua/tree/master/tools
uadiscover
(find_servers, get_endpoints and find_servers_on_network calls)uals
(list children of a node)uahistoryread
uaread
(read attribute of a node)uawrite
(write attribute of a node)uacall
(call method of a node)uasubscribe
(subscribe to a node and print datachange events)uaclient
(connect to server and start python shell)uaserver
(starts a demo OPC UA server)
tools/uaserver --populate --certificate cert.pem --private_key pk.pem
How to generate certificate: https://github.com/FreeOpcUa/python-opcua/tree/master/examples/generate_certificate.sh
Client
What works:
- connection to server, opening channel, session
- browsing and reading attributes value
- getting nodes by path and nodeids
- creating subscriptions
- subscribing to items for data change
- subscribing to events
- adding nodes
- method call
- user and password
- history read
- login with certificate
- communication encryption
- removing nodes
Tested servers: freeopcua C++, freeopcua Python, prosys, kepware, beckhoff, winCC, B&R, …
Not implemented yet:
- localized text feature
- XML protocol
- UDP
- maybe automatic reconnection...
Server
What works:
- creating channel and sessions
- read/set attributes and browse
- getting nodes by path and nodeids
- autogenerate address space from spec
- adding nodes to address space
- datachange events
- events
- methods
- basic user implementation (one existing user called admin, which can be disabled, all others are read only)
- encryption
- certificate handling
- removing nodes
- history support for data change and events
Tested clients: freeopcua C++, freeopcua Python, uaexpert, prosys, quickopc
Not yet implemented:
- more high level solution to create custom structures
- UDP
- session restore
- alarms
- XML protocol
- views
- localized text features
- better security model with users and password
Running a server on a Raspberry Pi
Setting up the standard address-space from XML is the most time-consuming step of the startup process which may lead to long startup times on less powerful devices like a Raspberry Pi. By passing a path to a cache-file to the server constructor, a shelve holding the address space will be created during the first startup. All following startups will make use of the cache-file which leads to significantly better startup performance (~3.5 vs 125 seconds on a Raspberry Pi Model B).
Development
Code follows PEP8 apart for line lengths which should be max 120 characters and OPC UA structures that keep camel case from XML definition.
All protocol code is under opcua directory
opcua/ua
contains all UA structures from specification, most are autogeneratedopcua/common
contains high level objects and methods used both in server and clientopcua/client
contains client specific codeopcua/server
contains server specific codeopcua/utils
contains some utilities function and classesopcua/tools
contains code for command lines toolsschemas
contains the XML and text files from specification and the python scripts used to autogenerate codetests
contains testsdocs
contains files to auto generate documentation from doc stringsexamples
contains many example filestools
contains python scripts that can be used to run command line tools from repository without installing
Running tests:
./run-tests.sh
Coverage
coverage run tests.py
coverage html
firefox htmlcov/index.html