sockets: How to know when your data is sent

[Marc Ederis]

Richie Hindle <richie at entrian.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.6214.1100100615.5135.python-list at python.org>...
> If you want to ensure that all the data has been sent before *closing* the
> socket, which sounds like Marc's requirement, you can use
> setsockopt(SO_LINGER):
> 
>        SO_LINGER
>               Sets  or gets the SO_LINGER option. The argument is
>               a linger structure.
> 
>               struct linger {
>                   int   l_onoff;    /* linger active */
>                   int   l_linger;   /* how many seconds to linger for */
>               };
> 
>               When enabled, a close(2) or  shutdown(2)  will  not
>               return  until  all  queued  messages for the socket
>               have been successfully sent or the  linger  timeout
>               has been reached. Otherwise, the call returns imme­
>               diately and the closing is done in the  background.
>               When  the  socket  is closed as part of exit(2), it
>               always lingers in the background.
> 
> (from the GNU manpages).  I don't believe that's true for shutdown() on
> all platforms, but I do believe it's true for close() / closesocket().
> Calling it from Python is a bit of a chore involving the struct module,
> and is left as an exercise for the reader.  8-)

SO_LINGER... Interesting, I'll keep that in mind for the future. In
the end, acknowledging receipt of the data, as it was arriving at the
server, turned out to be the best solution for me. I wanted to be able
to show a progress bar (at the client) of the data being sent.

Thanks guys,
-Marc