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Python socket recv in thread

Here is my problem. I have a server on lua which sends data via socket. Data go constantly - it is a stream of exchange transactions. My python script as client should receive data.
def listen():
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
host = socket.gethostname()
sock.connect(("localhost", 1111))
with BytesIO() as response_bytes:
while True:
try:
fragment = sock.recv(8196)
print("Фрагмент: {}".format(fragment))
except Exception:
pass
if __name__ == "__main__":
t2 = threading.Thread(listen())
t2.start()
while True:
print ("test")
Main thread wait sock.recv(8196) line. I want that data from a socket were accepted in parallel, and the main stream continued to work. The current code blocks performance of main until listen is executed. I am not familiar with multiple tasks in Python. What decisions can be?

You have to pass the listen function to threading.Thread(). You're calling the function in the main thread, waiting for it to finish, and then passing its return value (which is just None, since the function never returns anything).
t2 = threading.Thread(target = listen)

Python how to stop the interference of a print and input in cmd?

I'm trying to make a chat between 2 computers with python, nothing fancy just using command prompt lines.
Now the code on the servers side looks like this:
import socket
import threading
import time
def socket_create():
try:
global host
global port
global s
host = #Some IP
port = 9998
s = socket.socket()
except socket.error as msg:
print(msg)
def socket_bind():
try:
global port
global host
global s
print("Binding socket to port: " + str(port))
s.bind((host ,port))
s.listen(4)
except socket.error as msg:
print(msg)
socket_bind
def socket_accept():
global conn
conn, address = s.accept()
print("Connection with" + address[0] + str(address[1]))
t1 = threading.Thread(target = receive_message)
t2 = threading.Thread(target = send_message)
t1.daemon = True
t2.daemon= True
t1.start()
t2.start()
def send_message():
global conn
time.sleep(1)
while True:
print(2)
send_msg = input("You>")
if send_msg != b'':
conn.send(str.encode(send_msg))
print("msg sent")
def receive_message():
global conn
time.sleep(0.5)
while True:
receive_msg = conn.recv(2048)
print("Him>" + receive_msg.decode())
def main():
global conn
socket_create()
socket_bind()
socket_accept()
main()
while the code on the clients side looks like this:
import threading
import socket
import time
s = socket.socket()
host = #SomeIP
port = 22222
s.connect((host,port))
def receive_message():
time.sleep(0.5)
while True:
print(1)
msg = s.recv(1024)
print(3)
print(msg.decode())
def send_message():
time.sleep(1)
while True:
print(2)
message = input()
s.send(str.encode(message))
t1 = threading.Thread(target = receive_message)
t2 = threading.Thread(target = send_message)
t1.daemon = True
t2.daemon = True
t1.start()
t2.start()
Now the issue I'm having is that when a person is typing, and receives a message from the other side it writes it on the input.
For example, when I'm busy typing "Hey have you finis" and receive a message like "Hey", it looks like this "Hey have you finisHey".
I've tried printing it on a new line with '\n' but that doesnt work either because then I have to start typing all over again.
Anyone have any ideas?
Cheers.

This is not really trivial to solve. In normal circumstances the simplest answer would be to place a 'lock' (multi-threading primitive) around the regions that you want to have exclusive usage. For example you could put a lock around the places where you print, and a lock around the places where you request input.
In your case this probably will work to some extend, it should make the 'receiving' messages stop from being printed until after you type something. For the recipient he/she needs to type something before they see the messages, so at the same time not entirely desired behavior.
The problem with the input call is that it is blocking all the way until somebody hits enter. So for your program it's also not able to detect, if you are writing a message or if it is safe to print something. You could solve that maybe that by reading the keyboard directly.
On that note it's probably just easier to actually do this with a user-interface: have one textbox for receiving texts, one textbox for sending text. Trying to solve this in a command-line program is probably going to give you a unnecessary hard-time.

Have a function time out if a certain condition is not fulfilled in time

The issue I have is that my chat client is supposed to recieve and print data from server when the server sends it, and then allow the client to reply.
This works fine, except that the entire process stops when the client is prompted to reply. So messages pile up until you type something, and after you do that, then it prints all the recieved messages.
Not sure how to fix this, so I decided why not have the client's time to type a reply timeout after 5 seconds, so that the replies can come through regardless. It's pretty flawed, because the input will reset itself, but it works better anyways.
Here's the function that needs to have a timeout:
# now for outgoing data
def outgoing():
global out_buffer
while 1:
user_input=input("your message: ")+"\n"
if user_input:
out_buffer += [user_input.encode()]
# for i in wlist:
s.send(out_buffer[0])
out_buffer = []
How should I go about using a timeout? I was thinking of using time.sleep, but that just pauses the entire operation.
I tried looking for documentation. But I didn't find anything that would help me make the program count up to a set limit, then continue.
Any idea's about how to solve this? (Doesn't need to use a timeout, just needs to stop the message pileup before the clients reply can be sent) (Thanks to all who helped me get this far)
For Ionut Hulub:
from socket import *
import threading
import json
import select
import signal # for trying to create timeout
print("client")
HOST = input("connect to: ")
PORT = int(input("on port: "))
# create the socket
s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((HOST, PORT))
print("connected to:", HOST)
#--------- need 2 threads for handling incoming and outgoing messages--
# 1: create out_buffer:
out_buffer = []
# for incoming data
def incoming():
rlist,wlist,xlist = select.select([s], out_buffer, [])
while 1:
for i in rlist:
data = i.recv(1024)
if data:
print("\nreceived:", data.decode())
# now for outgoing data
def outgoing():
global out_buffer
while 1:
user_input=input("your message: ")+"\n"
if user_input:
out_buffer += [user_input.encode()]
# for i in wlist:
s.send(out_buffer[0])
out_buffer = []
thread_in = threading.Thread(target=incoming, args=())
thread_out = threading.Thread(target=outgoing, args=())
thread_in.start() # this causes the thread to run
thread_out.start()
thread_in.join() # this waits until the thread has completed
thread_out.join()

We can use signals for the same. I think the below example will be useful for you.
import signal
def timeout(signum, frame):
raise Exception
#this is an infinite loop, never ending under normal circumstances
def main():
print 'Starting Main ',
while 1:
print 'in main ',
#SIGALRM is only usable on a unix platform
signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, timeout)
#change 5 to however many seconds you need
signal.alarm(5)
try:
main()
except:
print "whoops"

Thread synchronization in Python

I am currently working on a school project where the assignment, among other things, is to set up a threaded server/client system. Each client in the system is supposed to be assigned its own thread on the server when connecting to it. In addition i would like the server to run other threads, one concerning input from the command line and another concerning broadcasting messages to all clients. However, I can't get this to run as i want to. It seems like the threads are blocking each other. I would like my program to take inputs from the command line, at the "same time" as the server listens to connected clients, and so on.
I am new to python programming and multithreading, and allthough I think my idea is good, I'm not suprised my code doesn't work. Thing is I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to implement the message passing between the different threads. Nor am I sure exactly how to implement the resource lock commands properly. I'm going to post the code for my server file and my client file here, and I hope someone could help me with this. I think this actually should be two relative simple scripts. I have tried to comment on my code as good as possible to some extend.
import select
import socket
import sys
import threading
import client
class Server:
#initializing server socket
def __init__(self, event):
self.host = 'localhost'
self.port = 50000
self.backlog = 5
self.size = 1024
self.server = None
self.server_running = False
self.listen_threads = []
self.local_threads = []
self.clients = []
self.serverSocketLock = None
self.cmdLock = None
#here i have also declared some events for the command line input
#and the receive function respectively, not sure if correct
self.cmd_event = event
self.socket_event = event
def openSocket(self):
#binding server to port
try:
self.server = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
self.server.bind((self.host, self.port))
self.server.listen(5)
print "Listening to port " + str(self.port) + "..."
except socket.error, (value,message):
if self.server:
self.server.close()
print "Could not open socket: " + message
sys.exit(1)
def run(self):
self.openSocket()
#making Rlocks for the socket and for the command line input
self.serverSocketLock = threading.RLock()
self.cmdLock = threading.RLock()
#set blocking to non-blocking
self.server.setblocking(0)
#making two threads always running on the server,
#one for the command line input, and one for broadcasting (sending)
cmd_thread = threading.Thread(target=self.server_cmd)
broadcast_thread = threading.Thread(target=self.broadcast,args=[self.clients])
cmd_thread.daemon = True
broadcast_thread.daemon = True
#append the threads to thread list
self.local_threads.append(cmd_thread)
self.local_threads.append(broadcast_thread)
cmd_thread.start()
broadcast_thread.start()
self.server_running = True
while self.server_running:
#connecting to "knocking" clients
try:
c = client.Client(self.server.accept())
self.clients.append(c)
print "Client " + str(c.address) + " connected"
#making a thread for each clientn and appending it to client list
listen_thread = threading.Thread(target=self.listenToClient,args=[c])
self.listen_threads.append(listen_thread)
listen_thread.daemon = True
listen_thread.start()
#setting event "client has connected"
self.socket_event.set()
except socket.error, (value, message):
continue
#close threads
self.server.close()
print "Closing client threads"
for c in self.listen_threads:
c.join()
def listenToClient(self, c):
while self.server_running:
#the idea here is to wait until the thread gets the message "client
#has connected"
self.socket_event.wait()
#then clear the event immidiately...
self.socket_event.clear()
#and aquire the socket resource
self.serverSocketLock.acquire()
#the below is the receive thingy
try:
recvd_data = c.client.recv(self.size)
if recvd_data == "" or recvd_data == "close\n":
print "Client " + str(c.address) + (" disconnected...")
self.socket_event.clear()
self.serverSocketLock.release()
return
print recvd_data
#I put these here to avoid locking the resource if no message
#has been received
self.socket_event.clear()
self.serverSocketLock.release()
except socket.error, (value, message):
continue
def server_cmd(self):
#this is a simple command line utility
while self.server_running:
#got to have a smart way to make this work
self.cmd_event.wait()
self.cmd_event.clear()
self.cmdLock.acquire()
cmd = sys.stdin.readline()
if cmd == "":
continue
if cmd == "close\n":
print "Server shutting down..."
self.server_running = False
self.cmdLock.release()
def broadcast(self, clients):
while self.server_running:
#this function will broadcast a message received from one
#client, to all other clients, but i guess any thread
#aspects applied to the above, will work here also
try:
send_data = sys.stdin.readline()
if send_data == "":
continue
else:
for c in clients:
c.client.send(send_data)
self.serverSocketLock.release()
self.cmdLock.release()
except socket.error, (value, message):
continue
if __name__ == "__main__":
e = threading.Event()
s = Server(e)
s.run()
And then the client file
import select
import socket
import sys
import server
import threading
class Client(threading.Thread):
#initializing client socket
def __init__(self,(client,address)):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.client = client
self.address = address
self.size = 1024
self.client_running = False
self.running_threads = []
self.ClientSocketLock = None
def run(self):
#connect to server
self.client.connect(('localhost',50000))
#making a lock for the socket resource
self.clientSocketLock = threading.Lock()
self.client.setblocking(0)
self.client_running = True
#making two threads, one for receiving messages from server...
listen = threading.Thread(target=self.listenToServer)
#...and one for sending messages to server
speak = threading.Thread(target=self.speakToServer)
#not actually sure wat daemon means
listen.daemon = True
speak.daemon = True
#appending the threads to the thread-list
self.running_threads.append(listen)
self.running_threads.append(speak)
listen.start()
speak.start()
#this while-loop is just for avoiding the script terminating
while self.client_running:
dummy = 1
#closing the threads if the client goes down
print "Client operating on its own"
self.client.close()
#close threads
for t in self.running_threads:
t.join()
return
#defining "listen"-function
def listenToServer(self):
while self.client_running:
#here i acquire the socket to this function, but i realize I also
#should have a message passing wait()-function or something
#somewhere
self.clientSocketLock.acquire()
try:
data_recvd = self.client.recv(self.size)
print data_recvd
except socket.error, (value,message):
continue
#releasing the socket resource
self.clientSocketLock.release()
#defining "speak"-function, doing much the same as for the above function
def speakToServer(self):
while self.client_running:
self.clientSocketLock.acquire()
try:
send_data = sys.stdin.readline()
if send_data == "close\n":
print "Disconnecting..."
self.client_running = False
else:
self.client.send(send_data)
except socket.error, (value,message):
continue
self.clientSocketLock.release()
if __name__ == "__main__":
c = Client((socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM),'localhost'))
c.run()
I realize this is quite a few code lines for you to read through, but as I said, I think the concept and the script in it self should be quite simple to understand. It would be very much appriciated if someone could help me synchronize my threads in a proper way =)
Thanks in advance
---Edit---
OK. So I now have simplified my code to just containing send and receive functions in both the server and the client modules. The clients connecting to the server gets their own threads, and the send and receive functions in both modules operetes in their own separate threads. This works like a charm, with the broadcast function in the server module echoing strings it gets from one client to all clients. So far so good!
The next thing i want my script to do, is taking specific commands, i.e. "close", in the client module to shut down the client, and join all running threads in the thread list. Im using an event flag to notify the listenToServer and the main thread that the speakToServer thread has read the input "close". It seems like the main thread jumps out of its while loop and starts the for loop that is supposed to join the other threads. But here it hangs. It seems like the while loop in the listenToServer thread never stops even though server_running should be set to False when the event flag is set.
I'm posting only the client module here, because I guess an answer to get these two threads to synchronize will relate to synchronizing more threads in both the client and the server module also.
import select
import socket
import sys
import server_bygg0203
import threading
from time import sleep
class Client(threading.Thread):
#initializing client socket
def __init__(self,(client,address)):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.client = client
self.address = address
self.size = 1024
self.client_running = False
self.running_threads = []
self.ClientSocketLock = None
self.disconnected = threading.Event()
def run(self):
#connect to server
self.client.connect(('localhost',50000))
#self.client.setblocking(0)
self.client_running = True
#making two threads, one for receiving messages from server...
listen = threading.Thread(target=self.listenToServer)
#...and one for sending messages to server
speak = threading.Thread(target=self.speakToServer)
#not actually sure what daemon means
listen.daemon = True
speak.daemon = True
#appending the threads to the thread-list
self.running_threads.append((listen,"listen"))
self.running_threads.append((speak, "speak"))
listen.start()
speak.start()
while self.client_running:
#check if event is set, and if it is
#set while statement to false
if self.disconnected.isSet():
self.client_running = False
#closing the threads if the client goes down
print "Client operating on its own"
self.client.shutdown(1)
self.client.close()
#close threads
#the script hangs at the for-loop below, and
#refuses to close the listen-thread (and possibly
#also the speak thread, but it never gets that far)
for t in self.running_threads:
print "Waiting for " + t[1] + " to close..."
t[0].join()
self.disconnected.clear()
return
#defining "speak"-function
def speakToServer(self):
#sends strings to server
while self.client_running:
try:
send_data = sys.stdin.readline()
self.client.send(send_data)
#I want the "close" command
#to set an event flag, which is being read by all other threads,
#and, at the same time set the while statement to false
if send_data == "close\n":
print "Disconnecting..."
self.disconnected.set()
self.client_running = False
except socket.error, (value,message):
continue
return
#defining "listen"-function
def listenToServer(self):
#receives strings from server
while self.client_running:
#check if event is set, and if it is
#set while statement to false
if self.disconnected.isSet():
self.client_running = False
try:
data_recvd = self.client.recv(self.size)
print data_recvd
except socket.error, (value,message):
continue
return
if __name__ == "__main__":
c = Client((socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM),'localhost'))
c.run()
Later on, when I get this server/client system up and running, I will use this system on some elevator models we have here on the lab, with each client receiving floor orders or "up" and "down" calls. The server will be running an distribution algorithm and updating the elevator queues on the clients that are most appropriate for the requested order. I realize it's a long way to go, but I guess one should just take one step at the time =)
Hope someone has the time to look into this. Thanks in advance.

The biggest problem I see with this code is that you have far too much going on right away to easily debug your problem. Threading can get extremely complicated because of how non-linear the logic becomes. Especially when you have to worry about synchronizing with locks.
The reason you are seeing clients blocking on each other is because of the way you are using your serverSocketLock in your listenToClient() loop in the server. To be honest this isn't exactly your problem right now with your code, but it became the problem when I started to debug it and turned the sockets into blocking sockets. If you are putting each connection into its own thread and reading from them, then there is no reason to use a global server lock here. They can all read from their own sockets at the same time, which is the purpose of the thread.
Here is my recommendation to you:
Get rid of all the locks and extra threads that you don't need, and start from the beginning
Have the clients connect as you do, and put them in their thread as you do. And simply have them send data every second. Verify that you can get more than one client connecting and sending, and that your server is looping and receiving. Once you have this part working, you can move on to the next part.
Right now you have your sockets set to non-blocking. This is causing them all to spin really fast over their loops when data is not ready. Since you are threading, you should set them to block. Then the reader threads will simply sit and wait for data and respond immediately.
Locks are used when threads will be accessing shared resources. You obviously need to for any time a thread will try and modify a server attribute like a list or a value. But not when they are working on their own private sockets.
The event you are using to trigger your readers doesn't seem necessary here. You have received the client, and you start the thread afterwards. So it is ready to go.
In a nutshell...simplify and test one bit at a time. When its working, add more. There are too many threads and locks right now.
Here is a simplified example of your listenToClient method:
def listenToClient(self, c):
while self.server_running:
try:
recvd_data = c.client.recv(self.size)
print "received:", c, recvd_data
if recvd_data == "" or recvd_data == "close\n":
print "Client " + str(c.address) + (" disconnected...")
return
print recvd_data
except socket.error, (value, message):
if value == 35:
continue
else:
print "Error:", value, message

Backup your work, then toss it - partially.
You need to implement your program in pieces, and test each piece as you go. First, tackle the input part of your program. Don't worry about how to broadcast the input you received. Instead worry that you are able to successfully and repeatedly receive input over your socket. So far - so good.
Now, I assume you would like to react to this input by broadcasting to the other attached clients. Well too bad, you can't do that yet! Because, I left one minor detail out of the paragraph above. You have to design a PROTOCOL.
What is a protocol? It's a set of rules for communication. How does your server know when the client had finished sending it's data? Is it terminated by some special character? Or perhaps you encode the size of the message to be sent as the first byte or two of the message.
This is turning out to be a lot of work, isn't it? :-)
What's a simple protocol. A line-oriented protocol is simple. Read 1 character at a time until you get to the end of record terminator - '\n'. So, clients would send records like this to your server --
HELO\n
MSG DAVE Where Are Your Kids?\n
So, assuming you have this simple protocol designed, implement it. For now, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE MULTITHREADING STUFF! Just worry about making it work.
Your current protocol is to read 1024 bytes. Which may not be bad, just make sure you send 1024 byte messages from the client.
Once you have the protocol stuff setup, move on to reacting to the input. But for now you need something that will read input. Once that is done, we can worry about doing something with it.
jdi is right, you have too much program to work with. Pieces are easier to fix.

How to exit a multithreaded program?

I was just messing around with threading in python, wrote this basic IM thingy [code at bottom]
I noticed that when I kill the program with C-c it doesn't exit, it just hangs forever.
I'm just guessing it's waiting for each thread to finish what they are doing, but since it's an endless loop that will never happen.
So I guess I need to kill each thread manually, or end the loop when the killsignal comes in.
How would I do that?
#!/usr/bin/env python
import threading
import socket
class Listen(threading.Thread):
def run(self):
conn = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
conn.bind(('', 2727))
conn.listen(1)
while True:
channel, details = conn.accept()
print str(details)+": "+channel.recv(250)
channel.send("got it")
channel.close()
class Shout(threading.Thread):
def run(self):
while True:
try:
address = raw_input("who u talking to? ")
conn = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
conn.connect((address, 2727))
break
except:
print "can't connect to "+ str(address)
while True:
conn = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
conn.connect((address, 2727))
conn.send(raw_input())
conn.close()
listen = Listen().start()
shout = Shout().start()

I see several causes of the misbehavior in your code.
Ctrl+C causes a "KeyboardInterrupt" exception in the main thread. So you should handle it there.
Your socket is in blocking mode. This causes several socket functions to block the calling thread until the function returns. During this state the thread cannot react to any termination event.
As you already said: your endless loop in the thread's run() function is ... really endless. So the thread execution is never ending (at least not without an unexpected exception). You should use some kind of synchronization object, like an threading.Event object, to be able to tell a thread externally that it should terminate itself.
I would discourage the use of raw_input() out of the main thread. Imagine what happens when you have more than one Shout thread.
Why are you always closing and reconnecting the socket when a message has been transmitted in your Shout class? Network connections should be re-established only in special cases because of the setup costs.
Without a frame protocol for the communication you can never expect to have received all data that was sent by the other host when the recv() function returns.
The start() function of the thread object does not return a value or object. So saving the returned value (=None) doesn't make much sense.
You can never expect the send() function to transmit all passed data. Therefore you must check the result of the function and appropriately handle the situation when not all bytes were really transmitted.
To learn threading there are surely better problems to solve than network communication, since that topic is in itself really complex.
Beside all these things, here is my try for a solution. Still there is much that can be improved. You should consider the answer from Mark Tolonen too, since the SocketServer class is surely provided to ease several things in handling this kind of stuff. But you should keep on studying the basics too.
#!/usr/bin/env python
import threading
import socket
import time
import errno
class StoppableThread(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.stop_event = threading.Event()
def stop(self):
if self.isAlive() == True:
# set event to signal thread to terminate
self.stop_event.set()
# block calling thread until thread really has terminated
self.join()
class Accept(StoppableThread):
def __init__(self, port):
StoppableThread.__init__(self)
self.port = port
self.threads = []
def run(self):
# handle connection acception
conn = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
conn.bind(('', self.port ))
conn.listen(5)
# set socket timeout to ~10ms
conn.settimeout(0.01)
while self.stop_event.is_set() == False:
try:
csock, caddr = conn.accept()
# spawn a new thread to handle the client connection
listen_thread = Listen(csock, caddr)
self.threads.append(listen_thread)
listen_thread.start()
except socket.timeout:
# socket operation timeout
# clear all terminated threads from thread list
for thread in self.threads:
if thread.isAlive() == False:
self.threads.remove(thread)
self.stop_threads()
def stop_threads(self):
# stop all running threads
for listen_thread in self.threads:
if listen_thread.isAlive() == True:
listen_thread.stop()
self.threads = []
class Listen(StoppableThread):
def __init__(self, csock, caddr):
StoppableThread.__init__(self)
self.csock = csock
self.caddr = caddr
self.csock.setblocking(False)
def run(self):
while self.stop_event.is_set() == False:
try:
recv_data = self.csock.recv(250)
if len(recv_data) > 0:
print str(self.caddr)+": " + recv_data
self.csock.send("got it")
else:
# connection was closed by foreign host
self.stop_event.set()
except socket.error as (sock_errno, sock_errstr):
if (sock_errno == errno.EWOULDBLOCK):
# socket would block - sleep sometime
time.sleep(0.1)
else:
# unexpected / unhandled error - terminate thread
self.stop_event.set()
channel.close()
class Shout(StoppableThread):
def __init__(self, sport):
StoppableThread.__init__(self)
self.sport = sport
def run(self):
while self.stop_event.is_set() == False:
try:
address = raw_input("who u talking to? ")
conn = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
conn.connect((address, self.sport))
break
except socket.error:
# handle connection problems
print "can't connect to "+ str(address)
except:
# exit thread in case of an unexpected error
self.stop_event.set()
while self.stop_event.is_set() == False:
try:
# chat loop: send messages to remote host
print "what to send? :",
msg = raw_input()
# beware: send() function may block indefinitly here and it might not send all bytes as expected !!
conn.send(msg)
except:
# exit thread in case of an unexpected error
self.stop_event.set()
# close socket before thread terminates
conn.close()
def main():
do_exit = False
server_port = 2727
# start server socket thread
accept = Accept(server_port)
accept.start()
# start transmitting client socket thread
shout = Shout(server_port)
shout.start()
while do_exit == False:
try:
# sleep some time
time.sleep(0.1)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
# Ctrl+C was hit - exit program
do_exit = True
# stop all running threads
shout.stop()
accept.stop()
# exit main program after all threads were terminated gracefully
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

Look at the Python library source for SocketServer.py, in particular the implementation of server_forever() to see how a server implements a quit. It uses select() to poll the server socket for new connections and tests a quit flag. Here's a hack on your source to use SocketServer, and I added a quit flag to Shout(). It will run the Shout and Listen threads for 5 seconds and then stop them.
import socket
import SocketServer
import threading
import time
class Handler(SocketServer.StreamRequestHandler):
def handle(self):
print str(self.client_address) + ": " + self.request.recv(250)
self.request.send("got it\n")
class Listen(threading.Thread):
def run(self):
self.server = SocketServer.TCPServer(('',2727),Handler)
self.server.serve_forever()
def stop(self):
self.server.shutdown()
class Shout(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.quit = False
def run(self):
while not self.quit:
conn = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
conn.connect(('localhost', 2727))
conn.send('sending\n')
print conn.recv(100)
conn.close()
def stop(self):
self.quit = True
listen = Listen()
listen.start()
shout = Shout()
shout.start()
time.sleep(5)
shout.stop()
listen.stop()