What this book covers

Chapter 1, Network Programming and Python, introduces core networking concepts for readers that are new to networking, and also covers how network programming is approached in Python.

Chapter 2, HTTP and Working with the Web, introduces you to the HTTP protocol and covers how we can retrieve and manipulate web content using Python as an HTTP client. We also take a look at the standard library urllib and third-party Requests modules.

Chapter 3, APIs in Action, introduces you to working with web APIs using HTTP. We also cover the XML and JSON data formats, and walk you through developing applications using the Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (S3) and Twitter APIs.

Chapter 4, Engaging with E-mails, covers the principle protocols used in sending and receiving e-mails, such as SMTP, POP3, and IMAP, and how to work with them in Python 3.

Chapter 5, Interacting with Remote Systems, guides you through the ways of using Python to connect to servers and performing common administrative tasks, including the execution of shell commands through SSH, file transfers with FTP and SMB, authentication with LDAP, and to monitor systems with SNMP.

Chapter 6, IP and DNS, discusses the details of the Internet Protocol (IP), ways of working with IP in Python, and how to use DNS to resolve hostnames.

Chapter 7, Programming with Sockets, covers using TCP and UDP sockets from Python for writing low-level network applications. We also cover HTTPS and TLS for secure data transport.

Chapter 8, Client and Server Applications, looks at writing client and server programs for socket-based communication. By writing an echo application and a chat application we look at developing basic protocols, framing network data, and compare the multithreading and event-based server architectures.

Chapter 9, Applications for the Web, introduces you to writing web applications in Python. We cover the main approaches, methods of hosting Python web applications, and develop an example application in the Flask microframework.

Appendix, Working with Wireshark, covers packet sniffers, the installation of Wireshark, and how to capture and filter packets using the Wireshark application.