Twisted

For information on what's new in Twisted 19.2.0, see the NEWS file that comes with the distribution.

What is this?

Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications, supporting Python 2.7 and Python 3.5+. It includes modules for many different purposes, including the following:

twisted.web: HTTP clients and servers, HTML templating, and a WSGI server
twisted.conch: SSHv2 and Telnet clients and servers and terminal emulators
twisted.words: Clients and servers for IRC, XMPP, and other IM protocols
twisted.mail: IMAPv4, POP3, SMTP clients and servers
twisted.positioning: Tools for communicating with NMEA-compatible GPS receivers
twisted.names: DNS client and tools for making your own DNS servers
twisted.trial: A unit testing framework that integrates well with Twisted-based code.

Twisted supports all major system event loops -- select (all platforms), poll (most POSIX platforms), epoll (Linux), kqueue (FreeBSD, macOS), IOCP (Windows), and various GUI event loops (GTK+2/3, Qt, wxWidgets). Third-party reactors can plug into Twisted, and provide support for additional event loops.

Installing

To install the latest version of Twisted using pip:

$ pip install twisted

Additional instructions for installing this software are in the installation instructions.

Documentation and Support

Twisted's documentation is available from the Twisted Matrix website. This documentation contains how-tos, code examples, and an API reference.

Help is also available on the Twisted mailing list.

There is also a pair of very lively IRC channels, #twisted (for general Twisted questions) and #twisted.web (for Twisted Web), on chat.freenode.net.

Unit Tests

Twisted has a comprehensive test suite, which can be run by tox:

$ tox -l            # to view all test environments
$ tox -e py27-tests # to run the tests for Python 2.7
$ tox -e py35-tests # to run the tests for Python 3.5

You can test running the test suite under the different reactors with the TWISTED_REACTOR environment variable:

$ env TWISTED_REACTOR=epoll tox -e py27-tests

Some of these tests may fail if you:

don't have the dependencies required for a particular subsystem installed,
have a firewall blocking some ports (or things like Multicast, which Linux NAT has shown itself to do), or
run them as root.

Copyright

Twisted is made available under the MIT license. The included LICENSE file describes this in detail.

Warranty

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE IS WITH YOU.

IN NO EVENT WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE LIBRARY, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES, EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Again, see the included LICENSE file for specific legal details.