Decoding bytes received in a socket with Python

Question

I'm using a LabVIEW simulator that I have connected to via the Python3 socket Library

import socket
client = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_STREAM)
ip=socket.gethostbyname("127.0.0.1")
port=1234
address=(ip,port)
client.connect(address)
while True:
    data = client.recv(1024)
    print(data)
    client.close()

The output of data is:

b'&&\r\n0108500.00\r\n01410.000000\r\n01420.000000\r\n01430.000000\r\n01440.000000\r\n01450.000000\r\n0146200.000000\r\n0147100.000000\r\n!!\r\n&&\r\n0108500.00\r\n01410.000000\r\n01420.000000\r\n01430.000000\r\n01440.000000\r\n01450.000000\r\n0146200.000000\r\n0147100.000000\r\n!!\r\n'

The simulator is outputting two constant values of 200 and 100 which I correspond to \r\n0146200.000000\r\n0147100.000000\ 0146 and 0147 are tag ID's from the simulator. Whats the best way to parse this data (Lets assume for this question I only want the tagID and Value of the last two)? I've tried to output it with:

print(data.decode("utf-8", "strict"))

output:

&& 0108500.00 01410.000000 01420.000000 01430.000000 01440.000000 01450.000000 0146200.000000 0147100.000000 !! && 0108500.00 01410.000000 01420.000000 01430.000000 01440.000000 01450.000000 0146200.000000 0147100.000000 !!

Answer 1

Use a regular expression to extract the keys and values:

import re

results = [
    dict(re.findall(r"(\d{4})([\d.]+)", string))
    for string in filter(
        bool,  # non-empty
        data.decode("utf8", "replace").split("&&"),
    )
]

Results for your data:

[{'0108': '500.00',
  '0141': '0.000000',
  '0142': '0.000000',
  '0143': '0.000000',
  '0144': '0.000000',
  '0145': '0.000000',
  '0146': '200.000000',
  '0147': '100.000000'},
 {'0108': '500.00',
  '0141': '0.000000',
  '0142': '0.000000',
  '0143': '0.000000',
  '0144': '0.000000',
  '0145': '0.000000',
  '0146': '200.000000',
  '0147': '100.000000'}]