How to receive a data file of unknown length using a python socket?

[Nobody]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:33:48 -0700, twgray wrote:

> It appears to be locking up in  'data=self.s.recv(MAXPACKETLEN)' on
> the final packet, which will always be less than MAXPACKETLEN.
> 
> I guess my question is, how do I detect end of data on the client side?

recv() should return zero when the sender closes its end of the connection.

Is the sender actually closing its end? If you are unsure, use a packet
sniffer such as tcpdump to look for a packet with the FIN flag.

If you need to keep the connection open for further transfers, you need to
incorporate some mechanism for identifying the end of the data into the
protocol. As others have suggested, prefixing the data by its length is
one option. Another is to use an end-of-data marker, but then you need a
mechanism to "escape" the marker if it occurs in the data. A length prefix
is probably simpler to implement, but has the disadvantage that you can't
start sending the data until you know how long it is going to be.