How to use Python Socket IO with Django

Learn to use socketio with django. This tutorial is update to django-socketio. In this tutorial i will explain how to use python-socketio Library with Django Integrations. Learn how to integrate Python Socket IO with Django WsGi Server and build real time applications like games, chat, chatbot. This is an alternative to Django Channels where it uses websockets.

Intergrating Python Socket IO with Django WSGI Application

Install SocketIO Dependencies

Create a Django project and Add following in the .txt and install all the dependencies.

dnspython==1.16.0
enum-compat==0.0.3
eventlet==0.25.2
greenlet==0.4.16
monotonic==1.5
python-engineio
python-socketio
pytz==2020.1
six==1.15.0

Example – pip install -r requirements.txt

Django with SocketIO

Create a socket app in Django project and add it to INSTALLED_APPS.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'socketio_app',
    ....
]

Now inside socketio_app, edit views.py and add following code. Download views.py file from here. This code will create socket events for your applications.

In your urls.py file add following path

from socketio_app.views import index

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
]

In your socketio_app folder, create a static folder and inside that add the following index.html file. Download index.html file from here.

Edit WSGI File for Python SocketIO

Note that socketio runs in async mode i.e. it will not be part of the request response process. Hence, we have mentioned async_mode='eventlet'. 

Eventlet is the module which will spawn a new thread for each connection. We will talk more about it in the deployment section.

Apart from this, we need to override callback methods if we want to do something when connection is established or disconnected.

Add following code in wsgi file for connecting to the client

from socketio_app.views import sio
import socketio

application = socketio.WSGIApp(sio, application)

import eventlet
import eventlet.wsgi

eventlet.wsgi.server(eventlet.listen(('', 8000)), application)

Note – While running server, if eventlet ask permission, then allow it.

Now you can run the server.

Static Files Not Serving Using Evenlet and Socket IO

If you project is not able to serve static file using eventlet server. Do following changes in your wsgi.py file.

import os

from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
import socketio

from django.contrib.staticfiles.handlers import StaticFilesHandler

from apps.chatbox.views import sio

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "chatbot.settings")
django_app = StaticFilesHandler(get_wsgi_application())
application = socketio.Middleware(sio, wsgi_app=django_app, socketio_path='socket.io')

import eventlet
import eventlet.wsgi
eventlet.wsgi.server(eventlet.listen(('', 8000)), application)

Find this project on GitHub.