From the link Jweede posted:
exception socket.timeout:
This exception is raised when a timeout occurs on a socket which has had timeouts enabled via a prior call to settimeout(). The accompanying value is a string whose value is currently always “timed out”.
Here are the demo server and client programs for the socket module from the python docs
# Echo server program
import socket
HOST = '' # Symbolic name meaning all available interfaces
PORT = 50007 # Arbitrary non-privileged port
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind((HOST, PORT))
s.listen(1)
conn, addr = s.accept()
print 'Connected by', addr
while 1:
data = conn.recv(1024)
if not data: break
conn.send(data)
conn.close()
And the client:
# Echo client program
import socket
HOST = 'daring.cwi.nl' # The remote host
PORT = 50007 # The same port as used by the server
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((HOST, PORT))
s.send('Hello, world')
data = s.recv(1024)
s.close()
print 'Received', repr(data)
On the docs example page I pulled these from, there are more complex examples that employ this idea, but here is the simple answer:
Assuming you're writing the client program, just put all your code that uses the socket when it is at risk of being dropped, inside a try block...
try:
s.connect((HOST, PORT))
s.send("Hello, World!")
...
except socket.timeout:
# whatever you need to do when the connection is dropped