PySocks

Updated and semi-actively maintained version of SocksiPy, with bug fixes and extra features.

Acts as a drop-in replacement to the socket module.

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Features

• SOCKS proxy client for Python 2.6 - 3.x
• TCP and UDP both supported
• HTTP proxy client included but not supported or recommended (you should use urllib2's or requests' own HTTP proxy interface)
• urllib2 handler included. pip install / setup.py install will automatically install the sockshandler module.

Installation

pip install PySocks

Or download the tarball / git clone and...

python setup.py install

These will install both the socks and sockshandler modules.

Alternatively, include just socks.py in your project.

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Warning: PySocks/SocksiPy only supports HTTP proxies that use CONNECT tunneling. Certain HTTP proxies may not work with this library. If you wish to use HTTP (not SOCKS) proxies, it is recommended that you rely on your HTTP client's native proxy support (proxies dict for requests, or urllib2.ProxyHandler for urllib2) instead.

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Usage

socks.socksocket

import socks

s = socks.socksocket() # Same API as socket.socket in the standard lib

s.set_proxy(socks.SOCKS5, "localhost") # SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 use port 1080 by default
# Or
s.set_proxy(socks.SOCKS4, "localhost", 4444)
# Or
s.set_proxy(socks.HTTP, "5.5.5.5", 8888)

# Can be treated identical to a regular socket object
s.connect(("www.somesite.com", 80))
s.sendall("GET / HTTP/1.1 ...")
print s.recv(4096)

Monkeypatching

To monkeypatch the entire standard library with a single default proxy:

import urllib2
import socket
import socks

socks.set_default_proxy(socks.SOCKS5, "localhost")
socket.socket = socks.socksocket

urllib2.urlopen("http://www.somesite.com/") # All requests will pass through the SOCKS proxy

Note that monkeypatching may not work for all standard modules or for all third party modules, and generally isn't recommended. Monkeypatching is usually an anti-pattern in Python.

urllib2 Handler

Example use case with the sockshandler urllib2 handler. Note that you must import both socks and sockshandler, as the handler is its own module separate from PySocks. The module is included in the PyPI package.

import urllib2
import socks
from sockshandler import SocksiPyHandler

opener = urllib2.build_opener(SocksiPyHandler(socks.SOCKS5, "127.0.0.1", 9050))
print opener.open("http://www.somesite.com/") # All requests made by the opener will pass through the SOCKS proxy

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Original SocksiPy README attached below, amended to reflect API changes.

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SocksiPy

A Python SOCKS module.

(C) 2006 Dan-Haim. All rights reserved.

See LICENSE file for details.

WHAT IS A SOCKS PROXY?

A SOCKS proxy is a proxy server at the TCP level. In other words, it acts as a tunnel, relaying all traffic going through it without modifying it. SOCKS proxies can be used to relay traffic using any network protocol that uses TCP.

WHAT IS SOCKSIPY?

This Python module allows you to create TCP connections through a SOCKS proxy without any special effort. It also supports relaying UDP packets with a SOCKS5 proxy.

PROXY COMPATIBILITY

SocksiPy is compatible with three different types of proxies:

1. SOCKS Version 4 (SOCKS4), including the SOCKS4a extension.
2. SOCKS Version 5 (SOCKS5).
3. HTTP Proxies which support tunneling using the CONNECT method.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Being written in Python, SocksiPy can run on any platform that has a Python interpreter and TCP/IP support. This module has been tested with Python 2.3 and should work with greater versions just as well.

INSTALLATION

Simply copy the file "socks.py" to your Python's lib/site-packages directory, and you're ready to go. [Editor's note: it is better to use python setup.py install for PySocks]

USAGE

First load the socks module with the command:

>>> import socks
>>>

The socks module provides a class called socksocket, which is the base to all of the module's functionality.

The socksocket object has the same initialization parameters as the normal socket object to ensure maximal compatibility, however it should be noted that socksocket will only function with family being AF_INET and type being either SOCK_STREAM or SOCK_DGRAM. Generally, it is best to initialize the socksocket object with no parameters

>>> s = socks.socksocket()
>>>

The socksocket object has an interface which is very similiar to socket's (in fact the socksocket class is derived from socket) with a few extra methods. To select the proxy server you would like to use, use the set_proxy method, whose syntax is:

set_proxy(proxy_type, addr[, port[, rdns[, username[, password]]]])

Explanation of the parameters:

proxy_type - The type of the proxy server. This can be one of three possible choices: PROXY_TYPE_SOCKS4, PROXY_TYPE_SOCKS5 and PROXY_TYPE_HTTP for SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP servers respectively. SOCKS4, SOCKS5, and HTTP are all aliases, respectively.

addr - The IP address or DNS name of the proxy server.

port - The port of the proxy server. Defaults to 1080 for socks and 8080 for http.

rdns - This is a boolean flag than modifies the behavior regarding DNS resolving. If it is set to True, DNS resolving will be preformed remotely, on the server. If it is set to False, DNS resolving will be preformed locally. Please note that setting this to True with SOCKS4 servers actually use an extension to the protocol, called SOCKS4a, which may not be supported on all servers (SOCKS5 and http servers always support DNS). The default is True.

username - For SOCKS5 servers, this allows simple username / password authentication with the server. For SOCKS4 servers, this parameter will be sent as the userid. This parameter is ignored if an HTTP server is being used. If it is not provided, authentication will not be used (servers may accept unauthenticated requests).

password - This parameter is valid only for SOCKS5 servers and specifies the respective password for the username provided.

Example of usage:

>>> s.set_proxy(socks.SOCKS5, "socks.example.com") # uses default port 1080
>>> s.set_proxy(socks.SOCKS4, "socks.test.com", 1081)

After the set_proxy method has been called, simply call the connect method with the traditional parameters to establish a connection through the proxy:

>>> s.connect(("www.sourceforge.net", 80))
>>>

Connection will take a bit longer to allow negotiation with the proxy server. Please note that calling connect without calling set_proxy earlier will connect without a proxy (just like a regular socket).

Errors: Any errors in the connection process will trigger exceptions. The exception may either be generated by the underlying socket layer or may be custom module exceptions, whose details follow:

class ProxyError - This is a base exception class. It is not raised directly but rather all other exception classes raised by this module are derived from it. This allows an easy way to catch all proxy-related errors. It descends from IOError.

All ProxyError exceptions have an attribute socket_err, which will contain either a caught socket.error exception, or None if there wasn't any.

class GeneralProxyError - When thrown, it indicates a problem which does not fall into another category.

• Sent invalid data - This error means that unexpected data has been received from the server. The most common reason is that the server specified as the proxy is not really a SOCKS4/SOCKS5/HTTP proxy, or maybe the proxy type specified is wrong.

• Connection closed unexpectedly - The proxy server unexpectedly closed the connection. This may indicate that the proxy server is experiencing network or software problems.

• Bad proxy type - This will be raised if the type of the proxy supplied to the set_proxy function was not one of SOCKS4/SOCKS5/HTTP.

• Bad input - This will be raised if the connect() method is called with bad input parameters.

class SOCKS5AuthError - This indicates that the connection through a SOCKS5 server failed due to an authentication problem.

• Authentication is required - This will happen if you use a SOCKS5 server which requires authentication without providing a username / password at all.

• All offered authentication methods were rejected - This will happen if the proxy requires a special authentication method which is not supported by this module.

• Unknown username or invalid password - Self descriptive.

class SOCKS5Error - This will be raised for SOCKS5 errors which are not related to authentication. The parameter is a tuple containing a code, as given by the server, and a description of the error. The possible errors, according to the RFC, are:

• 0x01 - General SOCKS server failure - If for any reason the proxy server is unable to fulfill your request (internal server error).
• 0x02 - connection not allowed by ruleset - If the address you're trying to connect to is blacklisted on the server or requires authentication.
• 0x03 - Network unreachable - The target could not be contacted. A router on the network had replied with a destination net unreachable error.
• 0x04 - Host unreachable - The target could not be contacted. A router on the network had replied with a destination host unreachable error.
• 0x05 - Connection refused - The target server has actively refused the connection (the requested port is closed).
• 0x06 - TTL expired - The TTL value of the SYN packet from the proxy to the target server has expired. This usually means that there are network problems causing the packet to be caught in a router-to-router "ping-pong".
• 0x07 - Command not supported - For instance if the server does not support UDP.
• 0x08 - Address type not supported - The client has provided an invalid address type. When using this module, this error should not occur.

class SOCKS4Error - This will be raised for SOCKS4 errors. The parameter is a tuple containing a code and a description of the error, as given by the server. The possible error, according to the specification are:

• 0x5B - Request rejected or failed - Will be raised in the event of an failure for any reason other then the two mentioned next.
• 0x5C - request rejected because SOCKS server cannot connect to identd on the client - The Socks server had tried an ident lookup on your computer and has failed. In this case you should run an identd server and/or configure your firewall to allow incoming connections to local port 113 from the remote server.
• 0x5D - request rejected because the client program and identd report different user-ids - The Socks server had performed an ident lookup on your computer and has received a different userid than the one you have provided. Change your userid (through the username parameter of the set_proxy method) to match and try again.

class HTTPError - This will be raised for HTTP errors. The message will contain the HTTP status code and provided error message.

After establishing the connection, the object behaves like a standard socket.

Methods like makefile() and settimeout() should behave just like regular sockets. Call the close() method to close the connection.

In addition to the socksocket class, an additional function worth mentioning is the set_default_proxy function. The parameters are the same as the set_proxy method. This function will set default proxy settings for newly created socksocket objects, in which the proxy settings haven't been changed via the set_proxy method. This is quite useful if you wish to force 3rd party modules to use a SOCKS proxy, by overriding the socket object. For example:

>>> socks.set_default_proxy(socks.SOCKS5, "socks.example.com")
>>> socket.socket = socks.socksocket
>>> urllib.urlopen("http://www.sourceforge.net/")

PROBLEMS

Please open a GitHub issue at https://github.com/Anorov/PySocks