Creating a stream class in Python

Question

I have a class that expects a stream containing an XML file.
I don’t necessarily need a file stream, and I can use other sources such as database, socket, etc.
What class do I need for a subclass from io module to provide a stream interface from other sources?

Answer 1

Dynamic typing allows you to not subclass from any base class in this case. You must implement some methods with proper names. Related Blog Post

Answer 2

The answer given by Andrey is not entirely correct.

In Python, streams are file objects. You can read / write them using the tools defined in the io module. The module also provides interfaces that should be implemented if you want to define a stream object.

Note that the io module distinguishes between three different types of streams that require slightly different interfaces. (They differ mainly in data types.)

• Text I / O - TextIOBase Interface
• BufferedIOBase Binary I / O Interface
• Raw I / O - RawIOBase Interface

StringIO, for example, is an implementation of TextIOBase in memory.

Please note that these interfaces are available in both Python 2 and 3.