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classification
Title: Add Option to Bind to a Local IP Address in httplib.py
Type: enhancement Stage: test needed
Components: Library (Lib) Versions: Python 3.2, Python 2.7
process
Status: closed Resolution: fixed
Dependencies: Superseder:
Assigned To: gregory.p.smith Nosy List: eldonz@atlanticdb.com, giampaolo.rodola, greg.hellings, gregory.p.smith, pitrou, r.david.murray
Priority: normal Keywords: easy, patch

Created on 2008-09-26 09:58 by eldonz@atlanticdb.com, last changed 2022-04-11 14:56 by admin. This issue is now closed.

Files
File name Uploaded Description Edit
httplib2.4.diff eldonz@atlanticdb.com, 2008-09-26 09:58 Patch file
httplibmod2.6.tar.gz eldonz@atlanticdb.com, 2009-12-28 22:48 patch files and test file
Messages (18)
msg73840 - (view) Author: Eldon Ziegler (eldonz@atlanticdb.com) Date: 2008-09-26 09:58
I updated httplib.py, python 2.4, to be able to bind to a specific IP
address when connecting to a remote site.

  conn = httplib.HTTPConnection('82.94.237.218', 80)

will connect to '82.94.237.218' using one of the local IP addresses. For
example, if a machine has an primary IP address and an alias such as

eth0    192.168.1.10
eth0:1  192.168.1.11

the outbound connection might use either eth0 or eth0:1. I'm not sure
how it picks now. I added a bind option both for http and https so we
can direct the connection through one or the other. For example,

  conn = httplib.HTTPConnection('82.94.237.218', 80, None, None, None,
'192.168.1.10')

would make sure it used 192.168.1.10 not 192.168.1.11.

I ran into this on a server that is contacted by an external legacy
server which requires a reverse connection over the same IP address that
the original connection came in on.
msg74184 - (view) Author: Gregory P. Smith (gregory.p.smith) * (Python committer) Date: 2008-10-02 18:17
This is useful but as its a feature we won't be able to add it until
2.7/3.1.  Assigning to me to make sure it happens.

Until then, the approach I suggest is to subclass httplib.HTTPConnection
and HTTPSConnection to add your own variants that do bind before connecting.
msg74185 - (view) Author: Eldon Ziegler (eldonz@atlanticdb.com) Date: 2008-10-02 18:38
Sounds good. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

Eldon

On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 18:17 +0000, Gregory P. Smith wrote:
> Gregory P. Smith <greg@krypto.org> added the comment:
> 
> This is useful but as its a feature we won't be able to add it until
> 2.7/3.1.  Assigning to me to make sure it happens.
> 
> Until then, the approach I suggest is to subclass httplib.HTTPConnection
> and HTTPSConnection to add your own variants that do bind before connecting.
> 
> ----------
> assignee:  -> gregory.p.smith
> nosy: +gregory.p.smith
> priority:  -> normal
> versions:  -Python 2.4, Python 2.5, Python 2.6, Python 3.0
> 
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue3972>
> _______________________________________
msg96963 - (view) Author: Greg (greg.hellings) Date: 2009-12-28 18:56
Did this ever happen?  It seems like overkill in the non-Python sort of 
way to continue pointing people to over-riding classes and extending 
objects when such a small patch adds so powerful and useful a 
functionality to the library.
msg96964 - (view) Author: R. David Murray (r.david.murray) * (Python committer) Date: 2009-12-28 19:39
Since Gregory didn't update the ticket, it seems likely that it hasn't
happened yet.  If you'd care to try the patch and report on your
results, that would help the process.  We'll also need unit tests and
documentation updates, so patches for those would also speed the process.
msg96966 - (view) Author: Greg (greg.hellings) Date: 2009-12-28 20:47
Just looking at the indicated file in the 2.6.4 release tarball, it does 
not seem that it would apply cleanly.  The line numbers do not apply 
properly anymore, though the edited lines themselves still appear to be 
unaffected.  Without context diff in the original patch, it's difficult 
for me to asseess exactly which lines should be the affected ones.

Unfortunately, I'm not in a position right now with my job to spend the 
time necessary to produce this as a patch since I'm on a timescale that 
requires equivalent functionality by Wednesday on production systems.  
Modifying it to apply cleanly to the latest versions of Python appears 
like it would be easy, if the internals of that file have not changed 
drastically in structure since 2.6.4.

Documentation should be relatively straightforward as well, since the 
functionality the patch introduces is rather transparent.  Unit tests 
are beyond my expertise to comment on.

Would have loved to have seen this in the 2.7/3.1 series, as it would 
make my task much easier!  I'll keep it in mind for my "off time" this 
holiday weekend.
msg96968 - (view) Author: Antoine Pitrou (pitrou) * (Python committer) Date: 2009-12-28 21:57
I'm not sure why this is needed in httplib. Isn't it a matter of
configuring the machine's routing tables properly?
msg96970 - (view) Author: Greg (greg.hellings) Date: 2009-12-28 22:03
For my own case, I have a machine with 50 IP addresses set and I need to 
run a script to grab data that will randomly select one of those IP 
addresses to use for its outgoing connection.  That's something which 
needs to be selected at the socket level, as best I understand the issue, 
not on the routing end.
msg96971 - (view) Author: Antoine Pitrou (pitrou) * (Python committer) Date: 2009-12-28 22:11
> For my own case, I have a machine with 50 IP addresses set and I need to 
> run a script to grab data that will randomly select one of those IP 
> addresses to use for its outgoing connection.  That's something which 
> needs to be selected at the socket level, as best I understand the issue, 
> not on the routing end.

Why do you need to select manually between those 50 IP addresses?
Load-balancing? Fooling the remote server so that you don't get
blacklisted for opening too many connections?

The problem I see with adding this to httplib is that it's not
HTTP-specific. Other modules (smtplib etc.) might want to benefit,
depending on the use case.

By the way, what I mean by routing is your OS' internal routing table
for outbound packets. For example under Linux:

# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
X.Y.223.0       0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth1
X.Y.222.0       0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
0.0.0.0         X.Y.222.254     0.0.0.0         UG    100    0        0 eth0

The interface for each outbound route is part of the routing table.
msg96973 - (view) Author: R. David Murray (r.david.murray) * (Python committer) Date: 2009-12-28 22:23
You are correct that more than just httplib may need this; however, it
is a real need.  Consider for example a machine that has multiple IPs on
the same network (perhaps there used to be two machines but the services
were consolidated onto one or something), and some other server it talks
to is using IP based security in its .htaccess file.  So the client
machine needs to bind to the IP address that the server machine has
authorized to access the web service.  This is why, for example, the ssh
command has a '-b' option to specify the port to which the client binds.
 Or, for an even more apropos example, wget has a --bind-address option
for this reason.
msg96974 - (view) Author: Giampaolo Rodola' (giampaolo.rodola) * (Python committer) Date: 2009-12-28 22:30
In case it helps, a guy recently reported the same issue for pyftpdlib:
http://code.google.com/p/pyftpdlib/issues/detail?id=123
msg96975 - (view) Author: Eldon Ziegler (eldonz@atlanticdb.com) Date: 2009-12-28 22:48
The patch files for Python 2.6 and a test file are in the attached tar
file. Both httplib.py and socket.py need to be patched now.

httplib.HTTPConnection(host[, port[, strict[, timeout]]])

becomes

httplib.HTTPConnection(host[, port[, strict[, timeout[, bindip]]]])

and

httplib.HTTPSConnection(host[, port[, key_file[, cert_file[, strict[,
timeout]]]]])

becomes

httplib.HTTPSConnection(host[, port[, key_file[, cert_file[, strict[,
timeout[, bindip]]]]]])
msg96976 - (view) Author: R. David Murray (r.david.murray) * (Python committer) Date: 2009-12-28 23:19
If you want the maximum chance for this to get applied, it would be best
to have one or a set of patch files in 'svn diff' format against trunk
(see http://python.org/dev for information on how to produce such a
patch, specifically section 6.1 of the dev FAQ).  The tests will need to
be in unittest format (they would go in test_httplib and/or test_socket).

I imagine that writing the unittests so they will run on any machine
might be a tad tricky.  If I were doing it I'd try binding to 127.0.0.1
and checking to see that the socket is bound to that address rather than
0.0.0.0 in the binaddr case, and that it is bound to 0.0.0.0 in the
default case.
msg96982 - (view) Author: Gregory P. Smith (gregory.p.smith) * (Python committer) Date: 2009-12-29 01:14
yes its a real need and yes we should support this in the standard 
library.  no i have not had time to look at it since my comment a 14 
months ago.

Thanks for the updated patch Eldon!
msg97154 - (view) Author: Gregory P. Smith (gregory.p.smith) * (Python committer) Date: 2010-01-03 02:07
trunk r77263 and r77264 add this feature, including documentation and tests.
msg97162 - (view) Author: Antoine Pitrou (pitrou) * (Python committer) Date: 2010-01-03 12:57
It seems to break at least one buildbot:

======================================================================
ERROR: testSourceAddress (test.test_socket.NetworkConnectionAttributesTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/var/lib/buildslave/trunk.murray-gentoo-wide/build/Lib/test/test_socket.py", line 120, in _tearDown
    self.fail(msg)
AssertionError: Tuples differ: ('199.125.120.107', 40732) != ('127.0.0.1', 40732)

First differing element 0:
199.125.120.107
127.0.0.1

- ('199.125.120.107', 40732)
+ ('127.0.0.1', 40732)

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 100 tests in 11.505s

By the way, does the new "source_address" parameter have to be of the
same family as the target address?  That is, if I pass e.g. "127.0.0.1"
as source address, what happens if the target host resolves to an IPv6
address?
msg97167 - (view) Author: R. David Murray (r.david.murray) * (Python committer) Date: 2010-01-03 15:41
Ah, and I was even the one that suggested the bind to 127.0.0.1 strategy for the test :(

My buildbots run in linux-vserver virtual hosts, and they way they handle localhost (127.0.0.1) is to alias it to the IP address assigned to the virthost (otherwise multiple virthosts opening ports on 127.0.0.1 would potentially conflict with each other).

I'd consider this a bug in the virthost software (lack of feature?).  Not sure what the best workaround is, but if all else fails we could put in some special case skip code.

Would be good enough to have the test check that the returned IP address is *not* 0.0.0.0?  Or perhaps issue a warning if the address is not 0.0.0.0 but isn't 127.0.0.1.
msg97179 - (view) Author: Gregory P. Smith (gregory.p.smith) * (Python committer) Date: 2010-01-03 21:14
I took the easy route and remove the test of the hostname all together.  The fact that the source port was used is sufficient indication that the bind call was made.
History
Date User Action Args
2022-04-11 14:56:39adminsetgithub: 48222
2010-01-03 21:14:34gregory.p.smithsetmessages: + msg97179
2010-01-03 15:41:22r.david.murraysetmessages: + msg97167
2010-01-03 12:57:25pitrousetmessages: + msg97162
2010-01-03 02:07:07gregory.p.smithsetstatus: open -> closed
resolution: fixed
messages: + msg97154
2009-12-29 01:14:43gregory.p.smithsetmessages: + msg96982
2009-12-28 23:19:31r.david.murraysetmessages: + msg96976
2009-12-28 22:48:10eldonz@atlanticdb.comsetfiles: + httplibmod2.6.tar.gz

messages: + msg96975
2009-12-28 22:30:21giampaolo.rodolasetmessages: + msg96974
2009-12-28 22:23:32r.david.murraysetmessages: + msg96973
2009-12-28 22:11:04pitrousetmessages: + msg96971
2009-12-28 22:03:03greg.hellingssetmessages: + msg96970
2009-12-28 21:57:54pitrousetnosy: + pitrou
messages: + msg96968
2009-12-28 20:47:08greg.hellingssetmessages: + msg96966
2009-12-28 19:39:31r.david.murraysetversions: + Python 3.2, - Python 3.1
nosy: + r.david.murray

messages: + msg96964

keywords: + easy
stage: test needed
2009-12-28 18:56:39greg.hellingssetnosy: + greg.hellings
messages: + msg96963
2008-10-02 20:57:39giampaolo.rodolasetnosy: + giampaolo.rodola
2008-10-02 18:38:38eldonz@atlanticdb.comsetmessages: + msg74185
2008-10-02 18:17:37gregory.p.smithsetpriority: normal
assignee: gregory.p.smith
messages: + msg74184
nosy: + gregory.p.smith
versions: - Python 2.6, Python 2.5, Python 2.4, Python 3.0
2008-09-26 09:58:50eldonz@atlanticdb.comcreate