Asynchronous context manager

Question

I have an asynchronous API which I'm using to connect and send mail to an SMTP server which has some setup and tear down to it. So it fits nicely into using a contextmanager from Python 3's contextlib.

Though, I don't know if it's possible write because they both use the generator syntax to write.

This might demonstrate the problem (contains a mix of yield-base and async-await syntax to demonstrate the difference between async calls and yields to the context manager).

@contextmanager async def smtp_connection():     client = SMTPAsync()     ...      try:         await client.connect(smtp_url, smtp_port)         await client.starttls()         await client.login(smtp_username, smtp_password)         yield client     finally:         await client.quit() 

Is this kind of thing possible within python currently? and how would I use a with as statement if it is? If not is there a alternative way I could achieve this - maybe using the old style context manager?

Answer 1

Since Python 3.7, you can write:

from contextlib import asynccontextmanager  @asynccontextmanager async def smtp_connection():     client = SMTPAsync()     ...      try:         await client.connect(smtp_url, smtp_port)         await client.starttls()         await client.login(smtp_username, smtp_password)         yield client     finally:         await client.quit() 

Before 3.7, you can use the async_generator package for this. On 3.6, you can write:

# This import changed, everything else is the same from async_generator import asynccontextmanager  @asynccontextmanager async def smtp_connection():     client = SMTPAsync()     ...      try:         await client.connect(smtp_url, smtp_port)         await client.starttls()         await client.login(smtp_username, smtp_password)         yield client     finally:         await client.quit() 

And if you want to work all the way back to 3.5, you can write:

# This import changed again: from async_generator import asynccontextmanager, async_generator, yield_  @asynccontextmanager @async_generator      # <-- added this async def smtp_connection():     client = SMTPAsync()     ...      try:         await client.connect(smtp_url, smtp_port)         await client.starttls()         await client.login(smtp_username, smtp_password)         await yield_(client)    # <-- this line changed     finally:         await client.quit() 

Answer 2

Thanks to @jonrsharpe was able to make an async context manager.

Here's what mine ended up looking like for anyone who want's some example code:

class SMTPConnection():     def __init__(self, url, port, username, password):         self.client   = SMTPAsync()         self.url      = url         self.port     = port         self.username = username         self.password = password      async def __aenter__(self):         await self.client.connect(self.url, self.port)         await self.client.starttls()         await self.client.login(self.username, self.password)          return self.client      async def __aexit__(self, exc_type, exc, tb):         await self.client.quit() 

usage:

async with SMTPConnection(url, port, username, password) as client:     await client.sendmail(...) 

Feel free to point out if I've done anything stupid.