How to send the content of a dictionary properly over sockets in python3x?
dictionary, python, python-3.x, sockets
Solution
This is primarily summarizing the comments, but you need to convert the dict to a json `str` object, convert that `str` object to a `bytes` object by encoding it, and then send that over the socket. On the server-side, you need to decode the `bytes` object sent over the socket back to a `str`, and then use `json.loads` to turn it back into a `dict`.
Client:
b = json.dumps(a).encode('utf-8')
s.sendall(b)
Server:
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind(('localhost', 1234))
s.listen(1)
conn, addr = s.accept()
b = b''
while 1:
tmp = conn.recv(1024)
b += tmp
d = json.loads(b.decode('utf-8'))
print(d)
Problem
Using sockets in `python3.x` I want to send the content of a dictionary over a socket, which for some reasons is NOT answered by the link just above this line... client.py: ``` a = {'test':1, 'dict':{1:2, 3:4}, 'list': [42, 16]} bytes = foo(a) sock.sendall(bytes) ``` server.py: ``` bytes = sock.recv() a = bar(bytes) print(a) ``` How to convert any dictionary to a sequence of bytes (to be able to be sent through a socket) and how to be converted back? I prefer a clean and simple way to do this. What I have tried so far: ``` sock.sendall(json.dumps(data)) TypeError: 'str' does not support the buffer interface sock.sendall(bytes(data, 'UTF-8')) TypeError: encoding or errors without a string argument data = sock.recv(100) a= data.decode('UTF-8') AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode' ```