How to use socket in Python as a context manager?

The socket module is fairly low-level, giving you almost direct access to the C library functionality.

You can always use the contextlib.contextmanager decorator to build your own:

import socketfrom contextlib import contextmanager@contextmanagerdef socketcontext(*args, **kw):    s = socket.socket(*args, **kw)    try:        yield s    finally:        s.close()with socketcontext(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM) as s:

or use contextlib.closing() to achieve the same effect:

from contextlib import closingwith closing(socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)) as s:

but the contextmanager() decorator gives you the opportunity to do other things with the socket first.

Python 3.x does make socket() a context manager, but the documentation wasn't updated to reflect this until well into the Python 3.5 cycle, in 2016. See the socket class in the source code, which adds __enter__ and __exit__ methods.

The socket module is just a wrapper around the BSD socket interface. It's low-level, and does not really attempt to provide you with a handy or easy to use Pythonic API. You may want to use something higher-level.

That said, it does in fact implement a context manager:

>>> with socket.socket() as s:...   print(s)... <socket.socket object, fd=3, family=2, type=1, proto=0>

But you need to use Python 3.

For Python 2 compatibility you can use contextlib.

from contextlib import closingimport socketwith closing(socket.socket()) as s:    print s

Please have a look on following snippets, for both TCP and UDP sockets

import socketfrom contextlib import contextmanager@contextmanagerdef tcp_connection_to(*args, **kwargs):    s = socket.create_connection(*args, **kwargs)    yield s    s.close()@contextmanagerdef udp_connection():    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)    yield s    s.close()

So that you can use them in following way:

MY_SERVER = ('localhost', 5000)   # Yes, we need tuple heresome_data = bytes("Hello.")with tcp_connection_to(MY_SERVER) as conn:    conn.send(some_data)with udp_connection() as conn:    conn.sendto(some_data, MY_SERVER)

I've also tried to emphasise the difference in behaviour and approach to term 'connection' between TCP and UDP in method names.