[python] Testing socket connection in Python

This question will expand on: Best way to open a socket in Python
When opening a socket how can I test to see if it has been established, and that it did not timeout, or generally fail.

Edit: I tried this:

try:
    s.connect((address, '80'))
except:
    alert('failed' + address, 'down')

but the alert function is called even when that connection should have worked.

This question is related to python sockets

The answer is


12 years later for anyone having similar problems.

try:
    s.connect((address, '80'))
except:
    alert('failed' + address, 'down')

doesn't work because the port '80' is a string. Your port needs to be int.

try:
    s.connect((address, 80))

This should work. Not sure why even the best answer didnt see this.


You should really post:

  1. The complete source code of your example
  2. The actual result of it, not a summary

Here is my code, which works:

import socket, sys

def alert(msg):
    print >>sys.stderr, msg
    sys.exit(1)

(family, socktype, proto, garbage, address) = \
         socket.getaddrinfo("::1", "http")[0] # Use only the first tuple
s = socket.socket(family, socktype, proto)

try:
    s.connect(address) 
except Exception, e:
    alert("Something's wrong with %s. Exception type is %s" % (address, e))

When the server listens, I get nothing (this is normal), when it doesn't, I get the expected message:

Something's wrong with ('::1', 80, 0, 0). Exception type is (111, 'Connection refused')

You should really post:

  1. The complete source code of your example
  2. The actual result of it, not a summary

Here is my code, which works:

import socket, sys

def alert(msg):
    print >>sys.stderr, msg
    sys.exit(1)

(family, socktype, proto, garbage, address) = \
         socket.getaddrinfo("::1", "http")[0] # Use only the first tuple
s = socket.socket(family, socktype, proto)

try:
    s.connect(address) 
except Exception, e:
    alert("Something's wrong with %s. Exception type is %s" % (address, e))

When the server listens, I get nothing (this is normal), when it doesn't, I get the expected message:

Something's wrong with ('::1', 80, 0, 0). Exception type is (111, 'Connection refused')

12 years later for anyone having similar problems.

try:
    s.connect((address, '80'))
except:
    alert('failed' + address, 'down')

doesn't work because the port '80' is a string. Your port needs to be int.

try:
    s.connect((address, 80))

This should work. Not sure why even the best answer didnt see this.


You should really post:

  1. The complete source code of your example
  2. The actual result of it, not a summary

Here is my code, which works:

import socket, sys

def alert(msg):
    print >>sys.stderr, msg
    sys.exit(1)

(family, socktype, proto, garbage, address) = \
         socket.getaddrinfo("::1", "http")[0] # Use only the first tuple
s = socket.socket(family, socktype, proto)

try:
    s.connect(address) 
except Exception, e:
    alert("Something's wrong with %s. Exception type is %s" % (address, e))

When the server listens, I get nothing (this is normal), when it doesn't, I get the expected message:

Something's wrong with ('::1', 80, 0, 0). Exception type is (111, 'Connection refused')

You can use the function connect_ex. It doesn't throw an exception. Instead of that, returns a C style integer value (referred to as errno in C):

s =  socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
result = s.connect_ex((host, port))
s.close()
if result:
    print "problem with socket!"
else:
    print "everything it's ok!"