valkhyr/txZMQ

ZeroMQ bindings for Twisted

Twisted bindings for 0MQ

Contents

• Introduction
• Requirements
• Details
• Example
• Hacking

Introduction

txZMQ allows to integrate easily ØMQ sockets into Twisted event loop (reactor).

txZMQ supports both CPython and PyPy.

Requirements

Non-Python library required:

• ØMQ library >= 2.1 (heavily tested with 2.1.4)

Python packages required:

• pyzmq (for CPython)
• pyzmq-ctypes (for PyPy)
• Twisted

Details

txZMQ introduces support for general 0MQ sockets by class ZmqConnection that can do basic event loop integration, sending-receiving messages in non-blocking manner, scatter-gather for multipart messages.

txZMQ uses ØMQ APIs to get file descriptor that is used to signal pending actions from ØMQ library IO thread running in separate thread. This is used in a custom file descriptor reader, which is then added to the Twisted reactor.

From this class, one may implement the various patterns defined by 0MQ. For example, special descendants of the ZmqConnection class, ZmqPubConnection and ZmqSubConnection, add special nice features for PUB/SUB sockets.

Request/reply pattern is achieved via DEALER/ROUTER sockets and classes ZmqREQConnection, ZmqREPConection, which provide REQ-REP like semantics in asynchronous case.

Other socket types could be easily derived from ZmqConnection.

Example

Here is an example of using txZMQ:

import sys

from optparse import OptionParser

from twisted.internet import reactor, defer

parser = OptionParser("")
parser.add_option("-m", "--method", dest="method", help="0MQ socket connection: bind|connect")
parser.add_option("-e", "--endpoint", dest="endpoint", help="0MQ Endpoint")
parser.add_option("-M", "--mode", dest="mode", help="Mode: publisher|subscriber")

parser.set_defaults(method="connect", endpoint="epgm://eth1;239.0.5.3:10011")

(options, args) = parser.parse_args()

from txzmq import ZmqFactory, ZmqEndpoint, ZmqPubConnection, ZmqSubConnection
import time

zf = ZmqFactory()
e = ZmqEndpoint(options.method, options.endpoint)

if options.mode == "publisher":
    s = ZmqPubConnection(zf, e)

    def publish():
        data = str(time.time())
        print "publishing %r" % data
        s.publish(data)

        reactor.callLater(1, publish)

    publish()
else:
    s = ZmqSubConnection(zf, e)
    s.subscribe("")

    def doPrint(*args):
        print "message received: %r" % (args, )

    s.gotMessage = doPrint

reactor.run()

The same example is available in the source code. You can run it from the checkout directory with the following commands (in two different terminals):

examples/pub_sub.py --method=bind --endpoint=ipc:///tmp/sock --mode=publisher

examples/pub_sub.py --method=connect --endpoint=ipc:///tmp/sock --mode=subscriber

Hacking

Source code for txZMQ is available at github; forks and pull requests are welcome.

To start hacking, fork at github and clone to your working directory. To use the Makefile (for running unit tests, checking for PEP8 compliance and running pyflakes), you will want to have virtualenv installed (it includes a pip installation).

Create a branch, add some unit tests, write your code, check it and test it! Some useful make targets are:

• make env
• make check
• make test

If you don't have an environment set up, a new one will be created for you in ./env. Additionally, txZMQ will be installed as well as required development libs.