API Documentation

All public API members can (and should) be imported from blinker:

from blinker import ANY, signal

Basic Signals

base.ANY = ANY
base.receiver_connected = <blinker.base.Signal object>
class blinker.base.Signal(doc=None)

A notification emitter.

Parameters:doc – optional. If provided, will be assigned to the signal’s __doc__ attribute.
ANY = ANY

An ANY convenience synonym, allows Signal.ANY without an additional import.

receiver_connected

Emitted after each connect().

The signal sender is the signal instance, and the connect() arguments are passed through: receiver, sender, and weak.

New in version 1.2.

receiver_disconnected

Emitted after disconnect().

The sender is the signal instance, and the disconnect() arguments are passed through: receiver and sender.

Note, this signal is emitted only when disconnect() is called explicitly.

The disconnect signal can not be emitted by an automatic disconnect (due to a weakly referenced receiver or sender going out of scope), as the receiver and/or sender instances are no longer available for use at the time this signal would be emitted.

An alternative approach is available by subscribing to receiver_connected and setting up a custom weakref cleanup callback on weak receivers and senders.

New in version 1.2.

receivers = None

A mapping of connected receivers.

The values of this mapping are not meaningful outside of the internal Signal implementation, however the boolean value of the mapping is useful as an extremely efficient check to see if any receivers are connected to the signal.

connect(receiver, sender=ANY, weak=True)

Connect receiver to signal events sent by sender.

Parameters:
  • receiver – A callable. Will be invoked by send() with sender= as a single positional argument and any **kwargs that were provided to a call to send().
  • sender – Any object or ANY, defaults to ANY. Restricts notifications delivered to receiver to only those send() emissions sent by sender. If ANY, the receiver will always be notified. A receiver may be connected to multiple sender values on the same Signal through multiple calls to connect().
  • weak – If true, the Signal will hold a weakref to receiver and automatically disconnect when receiver goes out of scope or is garbage collected. Defaults to True.
connect_via(sender, weak=False)

Connect the decorated function as a receiver for sender.

Parameters:
  • sender – Any object or ANY. The decorated function will only receive send() emissions sent by sender. If ANY, the receiver will always be notified. A function may be decorated multiple times with differing sender values.
  • weak – If true, the Signal will hold a weakref to the decorated function and automatically disconnect when receiver goes out of scope or is garbage collected. Unlike connect(), this defaults to False.
The decorated function will be invoked by send() with
sender= as a single positional argument and any **kwargs that were provided to the call to send().

New in version 1.1.

connected_to(*args, **kwds)

Execute a block with the signal temporarily connected to receiver.

Parameters:
  • receiver – a receiver callable
  • sender – optional, a sender to filter on

This is a context manager for use in the with statement. It can be useful in unit tests. receiver is connected to the signal for the duration of the with block, and will be disconnected automatically when exiting the block:

with on_ready.connected_to(receiver):
   # do stuff
   on_ready.send(123)

New in version 1.1.

disconnect(receiver, sender=ANY)

Disconnect receiver from this signal’s events.

Parameters:
  • receiver – a previously connected callable
  • sender – a specific sender to disconnect from, or ANY to disconnect from all senders. Defaults to ANY.
has_receivers_for(sender)

True if there is probably a receiver for sender.

Performs an optimistic check only. Does not guarantee that all weakly referenced receivers are still alive. See receivers_for() for a stronger search.

receivers_for(sender)

Iterate all live receivers listening for sender.

send(*sender, **kwargs)

Emit this signal on behalf of sender, passing on **kwargs.

Returns a list of 2-tuples, pairing receivers with their return value. The ordering of receiver notification is undefined.

Parameters:
  • *sender – Any object or None. If omitted, synonymous with None. Only accepts one positional argument.
  • **kwargs – Data to be sent to receivers.
temporarily_connected_to(receiver, sender=ANY)

An alias for connected_to().

Parameters:
  • receiver – a receiver callable
  • sender – optional, a sender to filter on

New in version 0.9.

Changed in version 1.1: Renamed to connected_to(). temporarily_connected_to was deprecated in 1.2 and removed in a subsequent version.

Named Signals

blinker.base.signal(name, doc=None)

Return the NamedSignal name, creating it if required.

Repeated calls to this function will return the same signal object. Signals are created in a global Namespace.

class blinker.base.NamedSignal(name, doc=None)

Bases: blinker.base.Signal

A named generic notification emitter.

name = None

The name of this signal.

class blinker.base.Namespace

Bases: dict

A mapping of signal names to signals.

signal(name, doc=None)

Return the NamedSignal name, creating it if required.

Repeated calls to this function will return the same signal object.