Python - Network Programming Introduction

As python’s versatility as a programming language grown over the years, we find that python is very suitable in the world of network programming too. With growth in cloud computing , network programming has become even a more hot topic and python has a big role to play. Below are the few important reasons for python’s use as a preferred language for network Programming.

Socket programming

Sockets are the links through which the client and servers communicate with each other. For example when a browser is opened a socket is automatically created to connect with the server. Python has a socket module which an be used to implement various socket functionalities like binding an address or starting a listener port. Socket programming is fundamental to computer networking and python handles it well.

Client programming

The client is the computer which requests for information and waits for the response. Python programs can be written to validate many client-side actions like parsing a URL, sending parameters with the URL while submitting a request, connect to a alternate URL if access to one URL becomes unsuccessful etc. These programs are run in the client programs and handle all the communication needs with the server even without using a browser. For example – you can provide an URL to the python program for downloading a file and it will get done by the program itself without taking help from the browser program.

Building web servers

It is possible to create simple web servers which are good enough to run websites using python as a programming language. Python already has some inbuilt web servers which can be tweaked to achieve some additional functionalities needed.

The SimpleHTTPServer module provides the functionalities of a web server out of the box and you can start running it from the local python installation. In python 3 it is named as http.serverCherryPy and Tornado are examples of webservers written in python which run as good as non python well known web servers like Apache or Ngnix.

Web Scrapping

One of the important reasons python became famous is the its dominance among the languages used for scrapping the web. Its data structure and network access abilities makes it ideal for visiting webpages and download their data automatically. And if there is some API connectivity available for the target website, then python will handle it even more easily through its program structures.

Web Frame works

Web Frame works makes application development easy and fast by offering pre-defined structures and modularity. The developer has to do minimal coding to leverage those existing libraries and customize a little to achieve the goal. Django and Flask are two famous ones which have seen much commercial use even though they are opensource.

Getting Geo Locations

Python has libraries which handle geographical data. It can find name of the business addresses if the latitude and longitude is known and vice versa. Of course it takes help of other map provider’s data like google maps. Python’s capability for networking truly extends even to different geographic boundaries !