Python - Running Autobahn|Python asyncio websocket server in a separate subprocess or thread

Question

I have a tkinter based GUI program running in Python 3.4.1. I have several threads running in the program to get JSON data from various urls. I am wanting to add some WebSocket

Answer 1

The answer by @dano might be correct, but creates an new process which is unnessesary in most situations.

I found this question on Google because i had the same issue myself. I have written an application where i wanted an websocket api to not run on the main thread and this caused your issue.

I found my alternate sollution by simply reading about event loops on the python documentation and found the asyncio.new_event_loop and asyncio.set_event_loop functions which solved this issue.

I didn't use AutoBahn but the pypi websockets library, and here's my solution

import websockets
import asyncio
import threading

class WebSocket(threading.Thread):    
    @asyncio.coroutine
    def handler(self, websocket, path):
        name = yield from websocket.recv()
        print("< {}".format(name))
        greeting = "Hello {}!".format(name)
        yield from websocket.send(greeting)
        print("> {}".format(greeting))

    def run(self):
        start_server = websockets.serve(self.handler, '127.0.0.1', 9091)
        eventloop = asyncio.new_event_loop()
        asyncio.set_event_loop(eventloop)
        eventloop.run_until_complete(start_server)
        eventloop.run_forever()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    ws = WebSocket()
    ws.start()