How do you UDP multicast in Python?

Question

This works for me:

Receive

import socket
import struct

MCAST_GRP = '224.1.1.1'
MCAST_PORT = 5007
IS_ALL_GROUPS = True

sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM, socket.IPPROTO_UDP)
sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
if IS_ALL_GROUPS:
    # on this port, receives ALL multicast groups
    sock.bind(('', MCAST_PORT))
else:
    # on this port, listen ONLY to MCAST_GRP
    sock.bind((MCAST_GRP, MCAST_PORT))
mreq = struct.pack("4sl", socket.inet_aton(MCAST_GRP), socket.INADDR_ANY)

sock.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, mreq)

while True:
  # For Python 3, change next line to "print(sock.recv(10240))"
  print sock.recv(10240)

Send

import socket

MCAST_GRP = '224.1.1.1'
MCAST_PORT = 5007
# regarding socket.IP_MULTICAST_TTL
# ---------------------------------
# for all packets sent, after two hops on the network the packet will not 
# be re-sent/broadcast (see https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Multicast-HOWTO-6.html)
MULTICAST_TTL = 2

sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM, socket.IPPROTO_UDP)
sock.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_TTL, MULTICAST_TTL)

# For Python 3, change next line to 'sock.sendto(b"robot", ...' to avoid the
# "bytes-like object is required" msg (https://stackoverflow.com/a/42612820)
sock.sendto("robot", (MCAST_GRP, MCAST_PORT))

It is based off the examples from http://wiki.python.org/moin/UdpCommunication which didn't work.

My system is... Linux 2.6.31-15-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 10 14:54:29 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux Python 2.6.4

Multicast sender that broadcasts to a multicast group:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import socket
import struct

def main():
  MCAST_GRP = '224.1.1.1'
  MCAST_PORT = 5007
  sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM, socket.IPPROTO_UDP)
  sock.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_TTL, 32)
  sock.sendto('Hello World!', (MCAST_GRP, MCAST_PORT))

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()

Multicast receiver that reads from a multicast group and prints hex data to the console:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import socket
import binascii

def main():
  MCAST_GRP = '224.1.1.1' 
  MCAST_PORT = 5007
  sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM, socket.IPPROTO_UDP)
  try:
    sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
  except AttributeError:
    pass
  sock.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_TTL, 32) 
  sock.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_LOOP, 1)

  sock.bind((MCAST_GRP, MCAST_PORT))
  host = socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
  sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_IP, socket.IP_MULTICAST_IF, socket.inet_aton(host))
  sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_IP, socket.IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, 
                   socket.inet_aton(MCAST_GRP) + socket.inet_aton(host))

  while 1:
    try:
      data, addr = sock.recvfrom(1024)
    except socket.error, e:
      print 'Expection'
      hexdata = binascii.hexlify(data)
      print 'Data = %s' % hexdata

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()

Better use:

sock.bind((MCAST_GRP, MCAST_PORT))

instead of:

sock.bind(('', MCAST_PORT))

because, if you want to listen to multiple multicast groups on the same port, you'll get all messages on all listeners.

In order to Join multicast group Python uses native OS socket interface. Due to portability and stability of Python environment many of socket options are directly forwarded to native socket setsockopt call. Multicast mode of operation such as joining and dropping group membership can be accomplished by setsockopt only.

Basic program for receiving multicast IP packet can look like:

from socket import *

multicast_port  = 55555
multicast_group = "224.1.1.1"
interface_ip    = "10.11.1.43"

s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM )
s.bind(("", multicast_port ))
mreq = inet_aton(multicast_group) + inet_aton(interface_ip)
s.setsockopt(IPPROTO_IP, IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, str(mreq))

while 1:
    print s.recv(1500)

Firstly it creates socket, binds it and triggers triggers multicast group joining by issuing setsockopt. At very end it receives packets forever.

Sending multicast IP frames is straight forward. If you have single NIC in your system sending such packets does not differ from usual UDP frames sending. All you need to take care of is just set correct destination IP address in sendto() method.

I noticed that lot of examples around Internet works by accident in fact. Even on official python documentation. Issue for all of them are using struct.pack incorrectly. Please be advised that typical example uses 4sl as format and it is not aligned with actual OS socket interface structure.

I will try to describe what happens underneath the hood when exercising setsockopt call for python socket object.

Python forwards setsockopt method call to native C socket interface. Linux socket documentation (see man 7 ip) introduces two forms of ip_mreqn structure for IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP option. Shortest is form is 8 bytes long and longer is 12 bytes long. Above example generates 8 byte setsockopt call where first four bytes define multicast_group and second four bytes define interface_ip.