chat server raises TypeError: descriptor 'encode' requires a 'str' object but received a 'unicode'

Question

I am pretty much a beginner to Python Socket programming. I made a chat server, but it doesn't work right.

It works fine with receiving data, but does not work with sending data. When i use the 'conn.send()', the client never receives the message. Please help me.

This is my code for the socket server:

'''
    Simple socket server using threads
'''

import socket
import sys
from _thread import *

HOST = ''   # Symbolic name meaning all available interfaces
PORT = 8888 # Arbitrary non-privileged port

s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
print ( 'Socket created on Port: '+str(PORT))

#Bind socket to local host and port
try:
    s.bind((HOST, PORT))
except socket.error as msg:
    print ( 'Bind failed. Error Code : ' + str(msg[0]) + ' Message ' + msg[1])
    sys.exit()

print ( 'Socket bind complete')

#Start listening on socket
s.listen(10)
print ( 'Socket now listening')

connectmsg = 'Welcome to OmniBean\'s Chat server!'
#Function for handling connections. This will be used to create threads
def clientthread(conn):
    #Sending message to connected client
    print('Sending Welcome Message...')
    #print(conn)
    conn.send(str.encode(connectmsg)) #send only takes string ENCODED!

    #infinite loop so that function do not terminate and thread do not end.
    while True:

        #Receiving from client
        data = bytes.decode(conn.recv(1024))
        print (data)
        reply = 'OK...' + data
        if not data:
            break

        conn.sendall(str.encode(reply))

    #came out of loop
    conn.close()

#now keep talking with the client
while 1:
    #wait to accept a connection - blocking call
    conn, addr = s.accept()
    print ( 'Connected with ' + addr[0] + ':' + str(addr[1]))
    conn.send(str.encode(connectmsg)) 
    #start new thread takes 1st argument as a function name to be run, second is the tuple of arguments to the function.
    start_new_thread(clientthread ,(conn,))

s.close()

If you can figure out why this is, then can you let me know? My client code is here: My client is using the SimpleNet Library from OmniBean

import os
from simplenet import *
myname = input ('Enter a login name: ')
host = input('Enter Host Name: ')
port = input('Enter Host Port: ')
connect(host,port)
welcome = receive()
input('Received Message: '+welcome)
while True:
    os.system('cls')
    #room = receive()
    #print (room)
    msg = input('Enter a message to send to server: ')
    send(myname+': '+msg)

Theoretically, since I send the data twice from the server, the client should receive the data; however, the client just keeps waiting forever for a message from the server that never comes. Please aid me in solving this problem.

Solution

This is not a client/server problem.

The actual error I received on testing your script was:

File "chat.py", line 42, in clientthread conn.sendall(str.encode(reply)) TypeError: descriptor 'encode' requires a 'str' object but received a 'unicode'

Generally, it would be useful to post the full error message when problems occur....

A bit of google searching on the error and following the discussion at Python - Descriptor 'split' requires a 'str' object but received a 'unicode'

I changed

conn.sendall(str.encode(reply))

to

conn.sendall(reply.encode('ascii'))

and now it works fine for me using telnet localhost 8888 as the client.

Comments

[OmniBean]

Thank you very much! I am forever grateful you saved my chat server. However, on my machine, there was no error!

[Rohit Nishad]

It's working properly, but can you please explain in depth.