A non-blocking read on a subprocess.PIPE in Python

Question

I\'m using the subprocess module to start a subprocess and connect to its output stream (standard output). I want to be able to execute non-blocking reads on its standard ou

Answer 1

Python 3.4 introduces new provisional API for asynchronous IO -- asyncio module.

The approach is similar to twisted-based answer by @Bryan Ward -- define a protocol and its methods are called as soon as data is ready:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import asyncio
import os

class SubprocessProtocol(asyncio.SubprocessProtocol):
    def pipe_data_received(self, fd, data):
        if fd == 1: # got stdout data (bytes)
            print(data)

    def connection_lost(self, exc):
        loop.stop() # end loop.run_forever()

if os.name == 'nt':
    loop = asyncio.ProactorEventLoop() # for subprocess' pipes on Windows
    asyncio.set_event_loop(loop)
else:
    loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
try:
    loop.run_until_complete(loop.subprocess_exec(SubprocessProtocol, 
        "myprogram.exe", "arg1", "arg2"))
    loop.run_forever()
finally:
    loop.close()

See "Subprocess" in the docs.

There is a high-level interface asyncio.create_subprocess_exec() that returns Process objects that allows to read a line asynchroniosly using StreamReader.readline() coroutine (with async/await Python 3.5+ syntax):

#!/usr/bin/env python3.5
import asyncio
import locale
import sys
from asyncio.subprocess import PIPE
from contextlib import closing

async def readline_and_kill(*args):
    # start child process
    process = await asyncio.create_subprocess_exec(*args, stdout=PIPE)

    # read line (sequence of bytes ending with b'\n') asynchronously
    async for line in process.stdout:
        print("got line:", line.decode(locale.getpreferredencoding(False)))
        break
    process.kill()
    return await process.wait() # wait for the child process to exit


if sys.platform == "win32":
    loop = asyncio.ProactorEventLoop()
    asyncio.set_event_loop(loop)
else:
    loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()

with closing(loop):
    sys.exit(loop.run_until_complete(readline_and_kill(
        "myprogram.exe", "arg1", "arg2")))

readline_and_kill() performs the following tasks:

• start subprocess, redirect its stdout to a pipe
• read a line from subprocess' stdout asynchronously
• kill subprocess
• wait for it to exit

Each step could be limited by timeout seconds if necessary.