What is websockets?

websockets is a library for building WebSocket servers and clients in Python with a focus on correctness and simplicity.

Built on top of asyncio, Python’s standard asynchronous I/O framework, it provides an elegant coroutine-based API.

Documentation is available on Read the Docs.

Here’s how a client sends and receives messages:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import asyncio
from websockets import connect

async def hello(uri):
    async with connect(uri) as websocket:
        await websocket.send("Hello world!")
        await websocket.recv()

asyncio.run(hello("ws://localhost:8765"))

And here’s an echo server:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import asyncio
from websockets import serve

async def echo(websocket, path):
    async for message in websocket:
        await websocket.send(message)

async def main():
    async with serve(echo, "localhost", 8765):
        await asyncio.Future()  # run forever

asyncio.run(main())

Does that look good?

Get started with the tutorial!

Why should I use websockets?

The development of websockets is shaped by four principles:

1. Simplicity: all you need to understand is msg = await ws.recv() and await ws.send(msg); websockets takes care of managing connections so you can focus on your application.
2. Robustness: websockets is built for production; for example it was the only library to handle backpressure correctly before the issue became widely known in the Python community.
3. Quality: websockets is heavily tested. Continuous integration fails under 100% branch coverage. Also it passes the industry-standard Autobahn Testsuite.
4. Performance: memory usage is configurable. An extension written in C accelerates expensive operations. It’s pre-compiled for Linux, macOS and Windows and packaged in the wheel format for each system and Python version.

Documentation is a first class concern in the project. Head over to Read the Docs and see for yourself.

Why shouldn’t I use websockets?

• If you prefer callbacks over coroutines: websockets was created to provide the best coroutine-based API to manage WebSocket connections in Python. Pick another library for a callback-based API.
• If you’re looking for a mixed HTTP / WebSocket library: websockets aims at being an excellent implementation of RFC 6455: The WebSocket Protocol and RFC 7692: Compression Extensions for WebSocket. Its support for HTTP is minimal — just enough for a HTTP health check.
• If you want to use Python 2: websockets builds upon asyncio which only works on Python 3. websockets requires Python ≥ 3.7.

What else?

Bug reports, patches and suggestions are welcome!

To report a security vulnerability, please use the Tidelift security contact. Tidelift will coordinate the fix and disclosure.

For anything else, please open an issue or send a pull request.

Participants must uphold the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

websockets is released under the BSD license.