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flask server with ssl_context freezes if it receives http request

I'm trying to create a simple flask server that redirects any http requests to https. I've created a certificate and key file and registered a before_request hook to see if the request is secure and redirect appropriately, following advise this SO answer.
The flask server responds to https requests as expected. However, when I send an http request, the before_request hook never gets called and ther server hangs forever. If I send the http request from the browser, I see an "ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE". The server doesn't even respond to https requests afterwards. No logs are printed either.
Running the app with gunicorn didn't help either. The only difference was that gunicorn is able to detect that the worker is frozen and eventually kills and replaces it. I've also tried using flask-talisman, with the same results.
Below is the code I'm running
### server.py
from flask import Flask, request, redirect
def verify_https():
if not request.is_secure:
url = request.url.replace("http://", "https://", 1)
return redirect(url, 301)
def create_flask_app():
app = Flask(__name__)
app.before_request(verify_https)
app.add_url_rule('/', 'root', lambda: "Hello World")
return app
if __name__ == '__main__':
app = create_flask_app()
app.run(
host="0.0.0.0",
port=5000,
ssl_context=('server.crt', 'server.key')
)
Running it with either python3.8 server.py or gunicorn --keyfile 'server.key' --certfile 'server.crt' --bind '0.0.0.0:5000' 'server:create_flask_app()' and opening a browser window to localhost:5000 causes the server to hang.

Talking about freezes, its not. Flask and gunicorn can serve only one variant of connection. So it's not freezing because your browser canceled the request and is idling.
I think it is better to use a faster web server, for example, Nginx, if you want to change HTTP to HTTPS. I would recommend it to you.
But it's possible to trigger your verify_https function if you run multiple instances of gunicorn at the same time.
I took your example, generated a certificate, and then run this script in my console (it contains a background job and can be runned in twoo separate ter)
gunicorn --bind '0.0.0.0:80' 'server:create_flask_app()' & gunicorn --certfile server.crt --keyfile server.key --bind '0.0.0.0:443' 'server:create_flask_app()'
now chrome goes to the secure page as expected.

Typically servers don't listen for both http and https on the same port. I have a similar requirement for my personal portfolio, but I use nginx to forward http requests (port 80) to https (port 443) and then the https server passes it off to my uwsgi backend, which listens on port 3031. That's probably more complex than you need, but a possible solution. If you go that route I would recommend letsencrypt for your certificate needs. It will set up the certificates AND the nginx.conf for you.
If you don't want to go the full nginx/apache route I think your easiest solution is the one suggested here on that same thread that you linked.

Python socket.io server error 400 (NodeJS server works)

I'm trying to make JavaScript client to a Python websocket server through an Apache2 proxy.
The client is dead simple:
const socket = io({
transports: ['websocket']
});
I have a NodeJS websocket server and a working Apache2 reverse proxy setup.
Now I want to replace the NodeJS server with a Python server - but none of the example implementations from socket.io works. With each of the my client reports an "error 400" when setting up the websocket connection.
The Python server examples come from here:
https://github.com/miguelgrinberg/python-socketio/tree/master/examples/server
Error 400 stands for "Bad Request" - but I know that my requests are fine because my NodeJS server understands them.
When not running behind a proxy then all Python examples work fine.
What could be the problem?

I found the solution - all the Python socket.io server examples that I refered to are not configured to run behind a reverse proxy. The reason is, that the socket.io server is managing a list of allowed request origins and the automatic list creation is failing in the reverse proxy situation.
This function creates the automatic list of allowed origins (engineio/asyncio_server.py):
def _cors_allowed_origins(self, environ):
default_origins = []
if 'wsgi.url_scheme' in environ and 'HTTP_HOST' in environ:
default_origins.append('{scheme}://{host}'.format(
scheme=environ['wsgi.url_scheme'], host=environ['HTTP_HOST']))
if 'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST' in environ:
scheme = environ.get(
'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO',
environ['wsgi.url_scheme']).split(',')[0].strip()
default_origins.append('{scheme}://{host}'.format(
scheme=scheme, host=environ['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST'].split(
',')[0].strip()))
As you can see, it only adds URLs with {scheme} as a protocol. When behind a reverse proxy, {scheme} will always be "http". So if the initial request was HTTPS based, it will not be in the list of allowed origins.
The solution to this problem is very simple: when creating the socket.io server, you have to either tell him to allow all origins or specify your origin:
import socketio
sio = socketio.AsyncServer(cors_allowed_origins="*") # allow all
# or
sio = socketio.AsyncServer(cors_allowed_origins="https://example.com") # allow specific

Python HTTP Server - Create without using HTTP modules

Can I create a HTTP server without using
python -m http.server [port number]
Using an old school style with sockets and such.
Latest code and errors...
import socketserver
response = """HTTP/1.0 500 Internal Server Error
Content-type: text/html
Invalid Server Error"""
class MyTCPHandler(socketserver.BaseRequestHandler):
"""
The RequestHandler class for our server.
It is instantiated once per connection to the server, and must
override the handle() method to implement communication to the
client.
"""
def handle(self):
# self.request is the TCP socket connected to the client
self.data = self.request.recv(1024).strip()
self.request.sendall(response)
if __name__ == "__main__":
HOST, PORT = "localhost", 8000
server = socketserver.TCPServer((HOST, PORT), MyTCPHandler)
server.serve_forever()
TypeError: 'str' does not support the buffer interface

Yes, you can, but it's a terrible idea -- in fact, even http.server is at best a toy implementation.
You're better off writing whatever webapp you want as a standard WSGI application (most Python web frameworks do that -- Django, Pyramid, Flask...), and serving it with one of the dozens of production-grade HTTP servers that exist for Python.
uWSGI (https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/) is my personal favorite, with Gevent a close second.
If you want more info about how it's done, I recommend that you read the source code to the CherryPy server (http://www.cherrypy.org/). While not as powerful as the aforementioned uWSGI, it's a good reference implementation written in pure Python, that serves WSGI apps through a thread pool.

Sure you can, and servers like Tornado already do it this way.
For simple test servers which can do only HTTP/1.0 GET requests and handle only a single request at a time it should not be that hard once you understood the basics of the HTTP protocol. But if you care even a bit about performance it gets complex fast.

Combining websockets and WSGI in a python app

I'm working on a scientific experiment where about two dozen test persons play a turn-based game with/against each other. Right now, it's a Python web app with a WSGI interface. I'd like to augment the usability with websockets: When all players have finished their turns, I'd like to notify all clients to update their status. Right now, everyone has to either wait for the turn timeout, or continually reload and wait for the "turn is still in progress" error message not to appear again (busy waiting, effectively).
I read through multiple websocket libraries' documentation and I understand how websockets work, but I'm not sure about the architecture for mixing WSGI and websockets: Can I have a websockets and a WSGI server in the same process (and if so, how, using really any websockets library) and just call my_websocket.send_message() from a WSGI handler, or should I have a separate websockets server and do some IPC? Or should I not mix them at all?
edit, 6 months later: I ended up starting a separate websockets server process (using Autobahn), instead of integrating it with the WSGI server. The reason was that it's much easier and cleaner to separate the two of them, and talking to the websockets server from the WSGI process (server to server communication) was straight forward and worked on the first attempt using websocket-client.

Here is an example that does what you want:
https://github.com/tavendo/AutobahnPython/tree/master/examples/twisted/websocket/echo_wsgi
It runs a WSGI web app (Flask-based in this case, but can be anything WSGI conforming) plus a WebSocket server under 1 server and 1 port.
You can send WS messages from within Web handlers. Autobahn also provides PubSub on top of WebSocket, which greatly simplifies the sending of notifications (via WampServerProtocol.dispatch) like in your case.
http://autobahn.ws/python
Disclosure: I am author of Autobahn and work for Tavendo.

but I'm not sure about the architecture for mixing WSGI and websockets
I made it
use WSocket
Simple WSGI HTTP + Websocket Server, Framework, Middleware And App.
Includes
Server(WSGI) included - works with any WSGI framework
Middleware - adds Websocket support for any WSGI framework
Framework - simple Websocket WSGI web application framework
App - Event based app for Websocket communication
When external server used, some clients like Firefox requires http 1.1 Server. for Middleware, Framework, App
Handler - adds Websocket support to wsgiref(python builtin WSGI server)
Client -Coming soon...
Common Features
only single file less than 1000 lines
websocket sub protocol supported
websocket message compression supported (works if client asks)
receive and send pong and ping messages(with automatic pong sender)
receive and send binary or text messages
works for messages with or without mask
closing messages supported
auto and manual close
example using bottle web framework and WSocket middleware
from bottle import request, Bottle
from wsocket import WSocketApp, WebSocketError, logger, run
from time import sleep
logger.setLevel(10) # for debugging
bottle = Bottle()
app = WSocketApp(bottle)
# app = WSocketApp(bottle, "WAMP")
#bottle.route("/")
def handle_websocket():
wsock = request.environ.get("wsgi.websocket")
if not wsock:
return "Hello World!"
while True:
try:
message = wsock.receive()
if message != None:
print("participator : " + message)
wsock.send("you : "+message)
sleep(2)
wsock.send("you : "+message)
except WebSocketError:
break
run(app)

Python Web Server

I want a simple python web server for the following use case:
I want to write a simple server that will accept HTTP requests from my application running on Google App Engine.
The server will accept HTTP requests, and then send iphone notifications. (Basically, I need this extra server to account for the lack of socket support in google app engine).
I guess I need the server to be able to maintain this persistent connection with Apple's Push Notification Service. So I'll need to have some sort of thread always open for this. So I need some sort of web server that can accept the request pass it off to the other thread with the persistent connection to APNS.
Maybe multiple processes and one of pythons queuing tools to communicate between them? Accept the HTTP request, then enqueue a message to the other process?
I was wondering what someone with a bit of experience would suggest. I'm starting to think that maybe even writing my own simple server is a good option (http://fragments.turtlemeat.com/pythonwebserver.php).

One option would be the (appropriately named) SimpleHTTPServer, which is part of the Python standard library. Another, more flexible but more complicated option would be to write your server in Twisted.

I've been writing simple http servers using gevent and bottle -- an example:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import gevent.monkey
gevent.monkey.patch_all()
import bottle
bottle.debug(True)
import gevent.wsgi
from bottle import route, run, request, response, static_file, abort
#route('/echo')
def echo():
s = request.GET.get('s', 'o hai')
return '<html><head><title>echo server</title></head><body>%s</body></html>\r\n' % (s)
#route('/static/:filename')
def send_static(filename):
root = os.getcwd() + '/static'
return static_file(filename, root=root)
if __name__ == '__main__':
app = bottle.app()
wsgi_server = gevent.wsgi.WSGIServer(('0.0.0.0', 8000), app)
print 'Starting wsgi search on port 8000'
wsgi_server.serve_forever()
So you could write a simple server that sticks a job into a Queue (see gevent.queue) and have another worker greenlet that handles reading requests from the queue and processing them...