How to stop BaseHTTPServer.serve_forever() in a BaseHTTPRequestHandler subclass?

I am running my HTTPServer in a separate thread (using the threading module which has no way to stop threads...) and want to stop serving requests when the main thread also shuts down.

The Python documentation states that BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer is a subclass of SocketServer.TCPServer, which supports a shutdown method, but it is missing in HTTPServer.

The whole BaseHTTPServer module has very little documentation :(

Solution 1:

I should start by saying that "I probably wouldn't do this myself, but I have in the past". The serve_forever (from SocketServer.py) method looks like this:

def serve_forever(self):
    """Handle one request at a time until doomsday."""
    while 1:
        self.handle_request()

You could replace (in subclass) while 1 with while self.should_be_running, and modify that value from a different thread. Something like:

def stop_serving_forever(self):
    """Stop handling requests"""
    self.should_be_running = 0
    # Make a fake request to the server, to really force it to stop.
    # Otherwise it will just stop on the next request.
    # (Exercise for the reader.)
    self.make_a_fake_request_to_myself()

Edit: I dug up the actual code I used at the time:

class StoppableRPCServer(SimpleXMLRPCServer.SimpleXMLRPCServer):

    stopped = False
    allow_reuse_address = True

    def __init__(self, *args, **kw):
        SimpleXMLRPCServer.SimpleXMLRPCServer.__init__(self, *args, **kw)
        self.register_function(lambda: 'OK', 'ping')

    def serve_forever(self):
        while not self.stopped:
            self.handle_request()

    def force_stop(self):
        self.server_close()
        self.stopped = True
        self.create_dummy_request()

    def create_dummy_request(self):
        server = xmlrpclib.Server('http://%s:%s' % self.server_address)
        server.ping()

Solution 2:

Another way to do it, based on http://docs.python.org/2/library/basehttpserver.html#more-examples, is: instead of serve_forever(), keep serving as long as a condition is met, with the server checking the condition before and after each request. For example:

import CGIHTTPServer
import BaseHTTPServer

KEEP_RUNNING = True

def keep_running():
    return KEEP_RUNNING

class Handler(CGIHTTPServer.CGIHTTPRequestHandler):
    cgi_directories = ["/cgi-bin"]

httpd = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer(("", 8000), Handler)

while keep_running():
    httpd.handle_request()

Solution 3:

The event-loops ends on SIGTERM, Ctrl+C or when shutdown() is called.

server_close() must be called after server_forever() to close the listening socket.

import http.server

class StoppableHTTPServer(http.server.HTTPServer):
    def run(self):
        try:
            self.serve_forever()
        except KeyboardInterrupt:
            pass
        finally:
            # Clean-up server (close socket, etc.)
            self.server_close()

Simple server stoppable with user action (SIGTERM, Ctrl+C, ...):

server = StoppableHTTPServer(("127.0.0.1", 8080),
                             http.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler)
server.run()

Server running in a thread:

import threading

server = StoppableHTTPServer(("127.0.0.1", 8080),
                             http.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler)

# Start processing requests
thread = threading.Thread(None, server.run)
thread.start()

# ... do things ...

# Shutdown server
server.shutdown()
thread.join()

Solution 4:

In my python 2.6 installation, I can call it on the underlying TCPServer - it still there inside your HTTPServer:

TCPServer.shutdown


>>> import BaseHTTPServer
>>> h=BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer(('',5555), BaseHTTPServer.BaseHTTPRequestHandler)
>>> h.shutdown
<bound method HTTPServer.shutdown of <BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer instance at 0x0100D800>>
>>>