[Tutor] Socket Programming HOWTO doesn't work!

[Jeff Shannon]

Patrick Kirk wrote:

> There is a Python socket programming tutorial shipped with PythonWin, 
> it always comes up on Google and seems to be considered the reference 
> for Python.
>
> So I tried it.
>
> It bombs out on Windows and Linux.  I tried adding from socket import 
> * to the top but that failed as well. 


You need to 'import socket' instead of 'from socket import *'.  Notice 
that all the socket features are accessed using 'socket.XXXXX' -- this 
means 'look in the object named socket for the object named XXXXX'.  You 
need to have that 'socket' module object for that to work.  'import 
socket' binds the module to the name socket; 'from socket import *' 
loads the module, and puts all of the names *within* the module into the 
current namespace, but it doesn't bind the name 'socket' to the module 
object.  (In fact, it binds the name 'socket' to a particular class 
within that module, which is referred to in the example as 
'socket.socket'.  The interpreter then tries to find various module 
attributes within that class, and gives an error when it can't find them.)

Keep in mind, also, that when you run this script, that process will be 
tied up listening on the socket.  This means that if you run it from 
within PythonWin or IDLE, the interpreter will appear to be "locked up" 
-- in fact, it's just waiting for something to come in on the socket. 
 You may want to open a separate command (DOS) window to run this in, so 
that you'll still be able to access the IDE while it's running.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International