Zero: A Wrapper Around the ØMQ Python Library

A wrapper for a wrapper... Does that make any sense?

This is the question @philipbergen poses in the README for Zero. I can say with almost certainty that it does make sense. I do not use ØMQ but by just looking at some examples of how to use the standard python library and this wrapper, “a wrapper for a wrapper” just makes sense. So let’s look at some code!

Comparing Zero to PyZMQ

Let’s look at the Hello World example client that ØMQ provides in their GitHub repository:

#
# Hello World client in Python
# Connects REQ socket to tcp://localhost:5555
# Sends "Hello" to server, expects "World" back
#
import zmq

context = zmq.Context()

# Socket to talk to server
print "Connecting to hello world server…"
socket = context.socket(zmq.REQ)
socket.connect ("tcp://localhost:5555")

# Do 10 requests, waiting each time for a response
for request in range (10):
    print "Sending request ", request,"…"
    socket.send ("Hello")

    # Get the reply.
    message = socket.recv()
    print "Received reply ", request, "[", message, "]"

And the Hello World example server that is needed to see it work properly:

#
#   Hello World server in Python
#   Binds REP socket to tcp://*:5555
#   Expects "Hello" from client, replies with "World"
#
import zmq
import time

context = zmq.Context()
socket = context.socket(zmq.REP)
socket.bind("tcp://*:5555")

while True:
    #  Wait for next request from client
    message = socket.recv()
    print "Received request: ", message

    #  Do some 'work'
    time.sleep (1)        #   Do some 'work'

    #  Send reply back to client
    socket.send("World")

Now let’s look at how this would be done in Zero. The equivalent client code would be:

from zero import Zero, ZeroSetup
zero = Zero(ZeroSetup('req', 5555).debugging())
for request in range(10):
    reply = zero('Hello')

And the equivalent for the server would be:

from zero import Zero, ZeroSetup
zero = Zero(ZeroSetup('rep', 5555).debugging())
for msg in zero:
    zero('World')

(Code samples courtesy of @philipbergen.)

But wait! There's more!

If you call 1-888-CHANGELOG in the next 5 minutes… Oh wait, that’s not right.

Philip has also built a command-line tool around his new library and includes it by default. This way you can even run some of these same examples in your favorite shell. For example,

# Hello World Client
yes Hello | head -10 | zero req 5555 -

# Hello World Server
yes '"World"' | zero rep 5555 -

Installing Zero

At the moment, Philip does not have Zero on PyPI but you can install it by cloning the repository from GitHub and running ./install.sh.