Kill Python thread running a web server

Question

I'm trying to reboot a web server written in Python during some integration testing. The server runs as a thread during the tests, so I can continue sending POST \\ GET requests to it, and asserting the answers.

I tried killing the thread by force:

t = threading.Thread(name='server', target=main, daemon=True)
.....
t._tstate_lock = None
t._stop()
t.join()

While debugging, I can actually see that the thread is stopped, but the webserver is still up, for some reason.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

For future generations, here is the code I used to create a killable thread in Python.

import threading
import inspect
import ctypes


def _async_raise(tid, exctype):
    """raises the exception, performs cleanup if needed"""
    if not inspect.isclass(exctype):
        raise TypeError("Only types can be raised (not instances)")
    res = ctypes.pythonapi.PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(tid, ctypes.py_object(exctype))
    if res == 0:
        raise ValueError("invalid thread id")
    elif res != 1:
        # """if it returns a number greater than one, you're in trouble,
        # and you should call it again with exc=NULL to revert the effect"""
        ctypes.pythonapi.PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(tid, 0)
        raise SystemError("PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc failed")


class Thread(threading.Thread):
    def _get_my_tid(self):
        """determines this (self's) thread id"""
        if not self.isAlive():
            raise threading.ThreadError("the thread is not active")

        # do we have it cached?
        if hasattr(self, "_thread_id"):
            return self._thread_id

        # no, look for it in the _active dict
        for tid, tobj in threading._active.items():
            if tobj is self:
                self._thread_id = tid
                return tid

        raise AssertionError("could not determine the thread's id")

    def raise_exc(self, exctype):
        """raises the given exception type in the context of this thread"""
        _async_raise(self._get_my_tid(), exctype)

    def terminate(self):
        """raises SystemExit in the context of the given thread, which should
        cause the thread to exit silently (unless caught)"""
        self.raise_exc(SystemExit)