http://czmq.zeromq.org/

The documentation for this binding can be found at readthedocs:

http://pyczmq.readthedocs.org/

This is still a work in progress, not all of the API is fully wrapped yet.

Most of the core context, socket, socket option, polling, beacon, auth, and cert functions are provided.

Some functions will probably not be wrapped, notably those that provide duplicate functionality to built-in python type or libraries like zlist, zhash, zsys, zclock, zdir, etc.

You need zmq and czmq to be installed on your system. This code has only been tested with zmq 4.0.1 and czmq 2.0.2. You can download both and install them with the usual configure/make/make install dance.

You will also need libffi. On Ubuntu this can be installed with 'sudo apt-get install libffi-dev'. Other OSes may have a different package name. On Ubuntu you'll also need python-dev and python-virtualenv.

After that, pyczmq can be installed from the Cheese Shop with 'pip install pyczmq.'

CZMQ functions are exposed via the cffi library's ABI access mode. No compiler is required to use it. The czmq library is accessed with dlopen and a set of parsed function declarations.

All CZMQ functions can be accessed directly via the low-level cffi binding, ie:

• pyczmq.C.zctx_new

• pyczmq.C.zsocket_bind

• pyczmq.C.zstr_send

• etc...

Functions also have aliases in a module level namespace interface, so:

• pyczmq.C.zctx_new is pyczmq.zctx.new (with caveat, see below)

• pyczmq.C.zsocket_bind is pyczmq.zsocket.bind

• pyczmq.C.zstr_send is pyczmq.zstr.send

• etc...

For example a simple PUSH/PULL socket pipeline::

ctx = zctx.new()
push = zsocket.new(ctx, zsocket.PUSH)
pull = zsocket.new(ctx, zsocket.PULL)
zsocket.bind(push, 'inproc://test')
zsocket.connect(pull, 'inproc://test')
zstr.send(push, 'foo')
assert zstr.recv(pull) == 'foo'
zstr.send(push, 'foo')
zsocket.poll(pull, 1)
assert zstr.recv_nowait(pull) == 'foo'

Some of the 'new' functions in the module namespaces (like pyczmq.zctx.new) are wrappers that plug into Python's garbage collector, so you typically never need to explicitly destroy objects if you use the namespace interface. Therefore, pyczmq.zctx.new isn't really pyczmq.C.zmq_new, but the effect is exactly the same. If you use the "raw" C binding interface pyczmq.C.zctx_new, however, you must explicitly garbage collect your own resources by calling the coresponding destroy method (pyczmq.C.zctx_destroy, etc.).

Some 'new' functions do not do this wrapping behavior, because they are meant to be destroyed by czmq. zmsg objects for example are destroyed by zmsg_send, and zframe objects have their ownership taken over by various functions in zmsg and are destroyed when the msg is sent and destroyed. If you create these objects and don't in turn call the functions that destroy them, you must explicitly destroy them yourself with zmsg.destroy or zframe.destroy.