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I am creating a robot which is going to be driven by the commands received over TCP connection. Therefore, I will have a robot class with methods (e.g. sense(), drive()...) and the class for TCP connection.
To establish TCP connection, I looked at examples from twisted. On the client side, I have written a client.py script for connection handling:
from twisted.internet import reactor, protocol
import random
from eventhook import EventHook
import common
#from Common.socketdataobjects import response
# a client protocol
class EchoClient(protocol.Protocol):
"""Once connected, send a message, then print the result."""
def connectionMade(self):
self.transport.write("hello, world!")
#the server should be notified that the connection to the robot has been established
#along with robot state (position)
#eventConnectionEstablishedHook.fire()
def dataReceived(self, data):
print "Server said:", data
self.transport.write("Hello %s" % str(random.randint(1,10)))
'''
serverMessage = common.deserializeJson(data)
command = serverMessage.command
arguments = serverMessage.arguments
#here we get for example command = "DRIVE"
#arguments = {motor1Speed: 50, motor2Speed: 40}
instead of above response, used for testing purposes,
the commands should be extracted from the data and according to the command,
the method in Robot instance should be called.
When the command execution finishes, the self.transport.write() method should be called
to notify the server that the command execution finished
'''
def connectionLost(self, reason):
print "connection lost"
class EchoFactory(protocol.ClientFactory):
protocol = EchoClient
def clientConnectionFailed(self, connector, reason):
print "Connection failed - goodbye!"
reactor.stop()
def clientConnectionLost(self, connector, reason):
print "Connection lost - goodbye!"
reactor.stop()
# this connects the protocol to a server runing on port 8000
def initializeEventHandlers(connectionEstablishedHook):
global connection
connection.established = 0
global eventConnectionEstablishedHook
eventConnectionEstablishedHook = connectionEstablishedHook
def main():
f = EchoFactory()
reactor.connectTCP("localhost", 8000, f)
reactor.run()
# this only runs if the module was *not* imported
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
Beside this script, I have a robot class:
Class Robot(object():
def __init(self)__:
self.position = (0,0)
def drive(self, speedMotor1, speedMotor2, driveTime)
updateMotor1State(speedMotor1)
updateMotor2State(speedMotor2)
time.sleep(driveTime)
#when the execution finished, the finish status should be sent to client in order to inform the server
return "Finished"
def sense(self)
#logic to get the data from the environment
What I would like to do, is to receive the data(commands) from TCP connection and then call the according method in Robot instance. Some procedures might take longer (e.g. driving), so I tried to use events, but haven't figured out the appropriate way to communicate between TCP client and robot using events:
if __name__ == '__main__':
robotController = Robot()
eventController = Controller()
connectionEstablishedHook = EventHook()
client.initializeEventHandlers(connectionEstablishedHook)
eventController.connection = connectionEstablishedHook
client.main()
I tried to create ClientMainProgram script, where I wanted to create an instance of a robot, an instance of TCP client and implement the communication between them using events.
Previously I have managed to implement event handling using Michael Foord's events pattern on a simpler example. I would be very thankful if anyone could provide the solution to this question or any similar example which might be helpful to solve this problem.
Events are easily represented using regular Python function calls.
For example, if your protocol looks like this:
from twisted.internet.protocol import Protocol
class RobotController(Protocol):
def __init__(self, robot):
self.robot = robot
def dataReceived(self, data):
for byte in data:
self.commandReceived(byte)
def commandReceived(self, command):
if command == "\x00":
# drive:
self.robot.drive()
elif command == "\x01":
# sense:
self.robot.sense()
...
(The specifics of the protocol used in this example are somewhat incidental. I picked this protocol because it's very simple and has almost no parsing logic. For your real application I suggest you use twisted.protocols.amp.)
Then all you need to do is make sure the robot attribute is properly initialized. You can do this easily using the somewhat newer endpoint APIs that can often replace use of factories:
from sys import argv
from twisted.internet.endpoints import clientFromString, connectProtocol
from twisted.internet.task import react
def main(reactor, description):
robot = ...
endpoint = clientFromString(reactor, description)
connecting = connectProtocol(endpoint, RobotController(robot))
def connected(controller):
...
connecting.addCallback(connected)
return connecting
react(main, argv[1:])
I'm trying to write unittests for my application that uses Autobahn.
I want to test my controllers which gets received data from protocol, parses it and reacts to it.
But when my test comes to a point when protocol should be disconnected (self.sendClose) then it raises error
exceptions.AttributeError: 'MyProtocol' object has no attribute 'state'.
I was trying to makeConnection using proto_helpers.StringTransport but then I have errors too
exceptions.AttributeError: StringTransport instance has no attribute 'setTcpNoDelay'`
I'm using trial and I don't want to run dummy server/client for testing purposes only, because it's not recommended.
How should I write my tests so I can test functions that sends data, read data, disconnects etc. using fake connection and trial ?
It is difficult to say exactly what is going on without having a peek at MyProtocol class. The problem sounds a lot like it is caused by the fact that you are directly messing round with low level functions and therefore also the state attribute of WebSocket class, which is, well, a representation of the internal state of the WebSocket connection.
According to the autobahn reference doc, the APIs from the WebSicketProtocol that you could directly use and override are:
onOpen
onMessage
onClose
sendMessage
sendClose
Your approach of using the StringTransport to test your protocol is not ideal. The problem lays in the fact that MyProtocol is a tiny layer on top of the WebSocketProtocol framework provided by autobahn which, for better or worse, hides the details about managing the connection, the transport and the internal protocol state.
If you think about it, you want to test your stuff, not WebSocketProtocol and therefore if you do not want to embed a dummy server or client, your best bet is to test directly the methods that MyProtocol overrides.
An example of what I am saying is the following
class MyPublisher(object):
cbk=None
def publish(self, msg):
if self.cbk:
self.cbk(msg)
class MyProtocol(WebSocketServerProtocol):
def __init__(self, publisher):
WebSocketServerProtocol.__init__(self)
#Defining callback for publisher
publisher.cbk = self.sendMessage
def onMessage(self, msg, binary)
#Stupid echo
self.sendMessage(msg)
class NotificationTest(unittest.TestCase):
class MyProtocolFactory(WebSocketServerFactory):
def __init__(self, publisher):
WebSocketServerFactory.__init__(self, "ws://127.0.0.1:8081")
self.publisher = publisher
self.openHandshakeTimeout = None
def buildProtocol(self, addr):
protocol = MyProtocol(self.listener)
protocol.factory = self
protocol.websocket_version = 13 #Hybi version 13 is supported by pretty much everyone (apart from IE <8 and android browsers)
return protocol
def setUp(self):
publisher = task.LoopingCall(self.send_stuff, "Hi there")
factory = NotificationTest.MyProtocolFactory(listener)
protocol = factory.buildProtocol(None)
transport = proto_helpers.StringTransport()
def play_dumb(*args): pass
setattr(transport, "setTcpNoDelay", play_dumb)
protocol.makeConnection(transport)
self.protocol, self.transport, self.publisher, self.fingerprint_handler = protocol, transport, publisher, fingerprint_handler
def test_onMessage(self):
#Following 2 lines are the problematic part. Here you are manipulating explicitly a hidden state which your implementation should not be concerned with!
self.protocol.state = WebSocketProtocol.STATE_OPEN
self.protocol.websocket_version = 13
self.protocol.onMessage("Whatever")
self.assertEqual(self.transport.value()[2:], 'Whatever')
def test_push(self):
#Following 2 lines are the problematic part. Here you are manipulating explicitly a hidden state which your implementation should not be concerned with!
self.protocol.state = WebSocketProtocol.STATE_OPEN
self.protocol.websocket_version = 13
self.publisher.publish("Hi there")
self.assertEqual(self.transport.value()[2:], 'Hi There')
As you might have noticed, using the StringTransport here is very cumbersome. You must have knowledge of the underline framework and bypass its state management, something you don't really want to do. Unfortunately autobahn does not provide a ready-to-use test object that would permit easy state manipulation and therefore my suggestion of using dummy servers and clients is still valid
Testing your server WITH network
The test provided shows how you can test server push, asserting that what your are getting is what you expect, and using also a hook on how to determine when to finish.
The server protocol
from twisted.trial.unittest import TestCase as TrialTest
from autobahn.websocket import WebSocketServerProtocol, WebSocketServerFactory, WebSocketClientProtocol, WebSocketClientFactory, connectWS, listenWS
from twisted.internet.defer import Deferred
from twisted.internet import task
START="START"
class TestServerProtocol(WebSocketServerProtocol):
def __init__(self):
#The publisher task simulates an event that triggers a message push
self.publisher = task.LoopingCall(self.send_stuff, "Hi there")
def send_stuff(self, msg):
#this method sends a message to the client
self.sendMessage(msg)
def _on_start(self):
#here we trigger the task to execute every second
self.publisher.start(1.0)
def onMessage(self, message, binary):
#According to this stupid protocol, the server starts sending stuff when the client sends a "START" message
#You can plug other commands in here
{
START : self._on_start
#Put other keys here
}[message]()
def onClose(self, wasClean, code, reason):
#After closing the connection, we tell the task to stop sending messages
self.publisher.stop()
The client protocol and factory
Next class is the client protocol. It basically tells the server to start pushing messages. It calls the close_condition on them to see if it is time to close the connection and as a last thing, it calls the assertion function on the messages it received to see if the test was successful or not
class TestClientProtocol(WebSocketClientProtocol):
def __init__(self, assertion, close_condition, timeout, *args, **kwargs):
self.assertion = assertion
self.close_condition = close_condition
self._received_msgs = []
from twisted.internet import reactor
#This is a way to set a timeout for your test
#in case you never meet the conditions dictated by close_condition
self.damocle_sword = reactor.callLater(timeout, self.sendClose)
def onOpen(self):
#After the connection has been established,
#you can tell the server to send its stuff
self.sendMessage(START)
def onMessage(self, msg, binary):
#Here you get the messages pushed from the server
self._received_msgs.append(msg)
#If it is time to close the connection
if self.close_condition(msg):
self.damocle_sword.cancel()
self.sendClose()
def onClose(self, wasClean, code, reason):
#Now it is the right time to check our test assertions
self.assertion.callback(self._received_msgs)
class TestClientProtocolFactory(WebSocketClientFactory):
def __init__(self, assertion, close_condition, timeout, **kwargs):
WebSocketClientFactory.__init__(self, **kwargs)
self.assertion = assertion
self.close_condition = close_condition
self.timeout = timeout
#This parameter needs to be forced to None to not leave the reactor dirty
self.openHandshakeTimeout = None
def buildProtocol(self, addr):
protocol = TestClientProtocol(self.assertion, self.close_condition, self.timeout)
protocol.factory = self
return protocol
The trial based test
class WebSocketTest(TrialTest):
def setUp(self):
port = 8088
factory = WebSocketServerFactory("ws://localhost:{}".format(port))
factory.protocol = TestServerProtocol
self.listening_port = listenWS(factory)
self.factory, self.port = factory, port
def tearDown(self):
#cleaning up stuff otherwise the reactor complains
self.listening_port.stopListening()
def test_message_reception(self):
#This is the test assertion, we are testing that the messages received were 3
def assertion(msgs):
self.assertEquals(len(msgs), 3)
#This class says when the connection with the server should be finalized.
#In this case the condition to close the connectionis for the client to get 3 messages
class CommunicationHandler(object):
msg_count = 0
def close_condition(self, msg):
self.msg_count += 1
return self.msg_count == 3
d = Deferred()
d.addCallback(assertion)
#Here we create the client...
client_factory = TestClientProtocolFactory(d, CommunicationHandler().close_condition, 5, url="ws://localhost:{}".format(self.port))
#...and we connect it to the server
connectWS(client_factory)
#returning the assertion as a deferred purely for demonstration
return d
This is obviously just an example, but as you can see I did not have to mess around with makeConnection or any transport explicitly
I'm working on a P2P application based on the Twisted framework. As such I can have both incoming as well as outgoing connections. Is there a simple way to distinguish them? Currently I just create another Factory that marks the connection as outgoing and delegates all factory calls to the original factory, but there must be a simpler way.
class OutgoingProtocolFactory(MyProtocolFactory):
"""
A rather simple factory that is used to earmark connections as outgoing.
"""
def __init__(self, parentFactory):
self.factory = parentFactory
def buildProtocol(self, addr):
connection = MyProtocolFactory.buildProtocol(self.factory, addr)
connection.factory = self.factory
connection.incoming = False
return connection
def clientConnectionFailed(self, connector, reason):
self.factory.clientConnectionFailed(connector, reason)
def clientConnectionLost(self, connector, reason):
self.factory.clientConnectionLost(connector, reason)
Any thoughts?
Each protocol instance constructed by any of the factories included in Twisted get a free factory attribute that refers back to the factory that created them.
By convention, accepted (server) connections have a ServerFactory (or subclass) instance as their factory and connected (client) connections have a ClientFactory (or subclass) instance.
However, if you really want your code to be completely general, you can't rely on this, and it's better to keep track of it yourself, as it sounds like you're currently doing.
In case the code you currently have for forwarding calls from one factory to another is more cumbersome than necessary, here's an example of how simple it could be:
from twisted.internet.protocol import ClientFactory
from twisted.protocols.policies import WrappingFactory
IN, OUT = 1, 2
class YourFactory(ClientFactory):
# Your application logic
...
class Incoming(WrappingFactory):
direction = IN
def buildProtocol(self, addr):
protocol = self.wrappedFactory.buildProtocol(addr)
protocol.direction = self.direction
return protocol
class Outgoing(Incoming):
direction = OUT
yourFactory = YourFactory(...)
reactor.listenTCP(0, Incoming(yourFactory))
reactor.connectTCP('example.com', 1234, Outgoing(yourFactory))
If that's still too complicated for you, then I don't know what to say. I'm not clever enough to think of a simpler solution.
I have been asked to write a class that connects to a server, asynchronously sends the server various commands, and then provides the returned data to the client. I've been asked to do this in Python, which is a new language to me. I started digging around and found the Twisted framework which offers some very nice abstractions (Protocol, ProtocolFactory, Reactor) that do a lot of the things that I would have to do if I would roll my own socket-based app. It seems like the right choice given the problem that I have to solve.
I've looked through numerous examples on the web (mostly Krondo), but I still haven't seen a good example of creating a client that will send multiple commands across the wire and I maintain the connection I create. The server (of which I have no control over), in this case, doesn't disconnect after it sends the response. So, what's the proper way to design the client so that I can tickle the server in various ways?
Right now I do this:
class TestProtocol(Protocol)
def connectionMade(self):
self.transport.write(self.factory.message)
class TestProtocolFactory(Factory):
message = ''
def setMessage(self, msg):
self.message = msg
def main():
f = TestProtocolFactory()
f.setMessage("my message")
reactor.connectTCP(...)
reactor.run()
What I really want to do is call self.transport.write(...) via the reactor (really, call TestProtocolFactory::setMessage() on-demand from another thread of execution), not just when the connection is made.
Depends. Here are some possibilities:
I'm assuming
Approach 1. You have a list of commands to send the server, and for some reason can't do them all at once. In that case send a new one as the previous answer returns:
class proto(parentProtocol):
def stringReceived(self, data):
self.handle_server_response(data)
next_command = self.command_queue.pop()
# do stuff
Approach 2. What you send to the server is based on what the server sends you:
class proto(parentProtocol):
def stringReceived(self, data):
if data == "this":
self.sendString("that")
elif data == "foo":
self.sendString("bar")
# and so on
Approach 3. You don't care what the server sends to, you just want to periodically send some commands:
class proto(parentProtocol):
def callback(self):
next_command = self.command_queue.pop()
# do stuff
def connectionMade(self):
from twisted.internet import task
self.task_id = task.LoopingCall(self.callback)
self.task_id.start(1.0)
Approach 4: Your edit now mentions triggering from another thread. Feel free to check the twisted documentation to find out if proto.sendString is threadsafe. You may be able to call it directly, but I don't know. Approach 3 is threadsafe though. Just fill the queue (which is threadsafe) from another thread.
Basically you can store any amount of state in your protocol; it will stay around until you are done. The you either send commands to the server as a response to it's messages to you, or you set up some scheduling to do your stuff. Or both.
You may want to use a Service.
Services are pieces of functionality within a Twisted app which are started and stopped, and are nice abstractions for other parts of your code to interact with. For example, in this case you might have a SayStuffToServerService (I know, terrible name, but without knowing more about its job it was the best I could do here :) ) that exposed something like this:
class SayStuffToServerService:
def __init__(self, host, port):
# this is the host and port to connect to
def sendToServer(self, whatToSend):
# send some line to the remote server
def startService(self):
# call me before using the service. starts outgoing connection efforts.
def stopService(self):
# clean reactor shutdowns should call this method. stops outgoing
# connection efforts.
(That might be all the interface you need, but it should be fairly clear where you can add things to this.)
The startService() and stopService() methods here are just what Twisted's Services expose. And helpfully, there is a premade Twisted Service which acts like a TCP client and takes care of all the reactor stuff for you. It's twisted.application.internet.TCPClient, which takes arguments for a remote host and port, along with a ProtocolFactory to take care of handling the actual connection attempt.
Here is the SayStuffToServerService, implemented as a subclass of TCPClient:
from twisted.application import internet
class SayStuffToServerService(internet.TCPClient):
factoryclass = SayStuffToServerProtocolFactory
def __init__(self, host, port):
self.factory = self.factoryclass()
internet.TCPClient.__init__(self, host, port, self.factory)
def sendToServer(self, whatToSend):
# we'll do stuff here
(See below for the SayStuffToServerProtocolFactory.)
Using this Service architecture is convenient in a lot of ways; you can group Services together in one container, so that they all get stopped and started as one when you have different parts of your app that you want active. It may make good sense to implement other parts of your app as separate Services. You can set Services as child services to application- the magic name that twistd looks for in order to know how to initialize, daemonize, and shut down your app. Actually yes, let's add some code to do that now.
from twisted.application import service
...
application = service.Application('say-stuff')
sttss = SayStuffToServerService('localhost', 65432)
sttss.setServiceParent(service.IServiceCollection(application))
That's all. Now when you run this module under twistd (i.e., for debugging, twistd -noy saystuff.py), that application will be started under the right reactor, and it will in turn start the SayStuffToServerService, which will start a connection effort to localhost:65432, which will use the service's factory attribute to set up the connection and the Protocol. You don't need to call reactor.run() or attach things to the reactor yourself anymore.
So we haven't implemented SayStuffToServerProtocolFactory yet. Since it sounds like you would prefer that your client reconnect if it has lost the connection (so that callers of sendToServer can usually just assume that there's a working connection), I'm going to put this protocol factory on top of ReconnectingClientFactory.
from twisted.internet import protocol
class SayStuffToServerProtocolFactory(protocol.ReconnectingClientFactory):
_my_live_proto = None
protocol = SayStuffToServerProtocol
This is a pretty nice minimal definition, which will keep trying to make outgoing TCP connections to the host and port we specified, and instantiate a SayStuffToServerProtocol each time. When we fail to connect, this class will do nice, well-behaved exponential backoff so that your network doesn't get hammered (you can set a maximum wait time). It will be the responsibility of the Protocol to assign to _my_live_proto and call this factory's resetDelay() method, so that exponential backoff will continue to work as expected. And here is that Protocol now:
class SayStuffToServerProtocol(basic.LineReceiver):
def connectionMade(self):
# if there are things you need to do on connecting to ensure the
# connection is "all right" (maybe authenticate?) then do that
# before calling:
self.factory.resetDelay()
self.factory._my_live_proto = self
def connectionLost(self, reason):
self.factory._my_live_proto = None
del self.factory
def sayStuff(self, stuff):
self.sendLine(stuff)
def lineReceived(self, line):
# do whatever you want to do with incoming lines. often it makes sense
# to have a queue of Deferreds on a protocol instance like this, and
# each incoming response gets sent to the next queued Deferred (which
# may have been pushed on the queue after sending some outgoing
# message in sayStuff(), or whatever).
pass
This is implemented on top of twisted.protocols.basic.LineReceiver, but would work as well with any other sort of Protocol, in case your protocol isn't line-oriented.
The only thing left is hooking up the Service to the right Protocol instance. This is why the Factory keeps a _my_live_proto attribute, which should be set when a connection is successfully made, and cleared (set to None) when that connection is lost. Here's the new implementation of SayStuffToServerService.sendToServer:
class NotConnectedError(Exception):
pass
class SayStuffToServerService(internet.TCPClient):
...
def sendToServer(self, whatToSend):
if self.factory._my_live_proto is None:
# define here whatever behavior is appropriate when there is no
# current connection (in case the client can't connect or
# reconnect)
raise NotConnectedError
self.factory._my_live_proto.sayStuff(whatToSend)
And now to tie it all together in one place:
from twisted.application import internet, service
from twisted.internet import protocol
from twisted.protocols import basic
class SayStuffToServerProtocol(basic.LineReceiver):
def connectionMade(self):
# if there are things you need to do on connecting to ensure the
# connection is "all right" (maybe authenticate?) then do that
# before calling:
self.factory.resetDelay()
self.factory._my_live_proto = self
def connectionLost(self, reason):
self.factory._my_live_proto = None
del self.factory
def sayStuff(self, stuff):
self.sendLine(stuff)
def lineReceived(self, line):
# do whatever you want to do with incoming lines. often it makes sense
# to have a queue of Deferreds on a protocol instance like this, and
# each incoming response gets sent to the next queued Deferred (which
# may have been pushed on the queue after sending some outgoing
# message in sayStuff(), or whatever).
pass
class SayStuffToServerProtocolFactory(protocol.ReconnectingClientFactory):
_my_live_proto = None
protocol = SayStuffToServerProtocol
class NotConnectedError(Exception):
pass
class SayStuffToServerService(internet.TCPClient):
factoryclass = SayStuffToServerProtocolFactory
def __init__(self, host, port):
self.factory = self.factoryclass()
internet.TCPClient.__init__(self, host, port, self.factory)
def sendToServer(self, whatToSend):
if self.factory._my_live_proto is None:
# define here whatever behavior is appropriate when there is no
# current connection (in case the client can't connect or
# reconnect)
raise NotConnectedError
self.factory._my_live_proto.sayStuff(whatToSend)
application = service.Application('say-stuff')
sttss = SayStuffToServerService('localhost', 65432)
sttss.setServiceParent(service.IServiceCollection(application))
Hopefully that gives enough of a framework with which to start. There is sometimes a lot of plumbing to do to handle client disconnections just the way you want, or to handle out-of-order responses from the server, or handle various sorts of timeout, canceling pending requests, allowing multiple pooled connections, etc, etc, but this should help.
The twisted framework is event-based programming; and by nature, its method is all called in async, and result is get by defer object.
The framework's nature is approprivate for protocol developing, just you have to change your minding from traditional sequential programming. The Protocol class is like a finite state machine with events like: connection make, connection lost, receive data.
You can convert your client code into FSM and then will be easily to fit into the Protocol class.
Below is an rough example of what I want to express. A bit of rouge, but this is i can provide now:
class SyncTransport(Protocol):
# protocol
def dataReceived(self, data):
print 'receive data', data
def connectionMade(self):
print 'i made a sync connection, wow'
self.transport.write('x')
self.state = I_AM_LIVING
def connectionLost(self):
print 'i lost my sync connection, sight'
def send(self, data):
if self.state == I_AM_LIVING:
if data == 'x':
self.transport.write('y')
if data == 'Y':
self.transport.write('z')
self.state = WAITING_DEAD
if self.state == WAITING_DEAD:
self.transport.close()
I am looking for a way to periodically send some data over all clients connected to a TCP port. I am looking at twisted python and I am aware of reactor.callLater. But how do I use it to send some data to all connected clients periodically ? The data sending logic is in Protocol class and it is instantiated by the reactor as needed. I don't know how to tie it from reactor to all protocol instances...
You would probably want to do this in the Factory for the connections. The Factory is not automatically notified of every time a connection is made and lost, so you can notify it from the Protocol.
Here is a complete example of how to use twisted.internet.task.LoopingCall in conjunction with a customised basic Factory and Protocol to announce that '10 seconds has passed' to every connection every 10 seconds.
from twisted.internet import reactor, protocol, task
class MyProtocol(protocol.Protocol):
def connectionMade(self):
self.factory.clientConnectionMade(self)
def connectionLost(self, reason):
self.factory.clientConnectionLost(self)
class MyFactory(protocol.Factory):
protocol = MyProtocol
def __init__(self):
self.clients = []
self.lc = task.LoopingCall(self.announce)
self.lc.start(10)
def announce(self):
for client in self.clients:
client.transport.write("10 seconds has passed\n")
def clientConnectionMade(self, client):
self.clients.append(client)
def clientConnectionLost(self, client):
self.clients.remove(client)
myfactory = MyFactory()
reactor.listenTCP(9000, myfactory)
reactor.run()
I'd imagine the easiest way to do that is to manage a list of clients in the protocol with connectionMade and connectionLost in the client and then use a LoopingCall to ask each client to send data.
That feels a little invasive, but I don't think you'd want to do it without the protocol having some control over the transmission/reception. Of course, I'd have to see your code to really know how it'd fit in well. Got a github link? :)