joefis' answer is basically sound, but I bet some examples would be helpful. First, there are a few ways you can have some code run right after the reactor starts.
This one is pretty straightforward:
def f():
print "the reactor is running now"
reactor.callWhenRunning(f)
Another way is to use timed events, although there's probably no reason to do it this way instead of using callWhenRunning:
reactor.callLater(0, f)
You can also use the underlying API which callWhenRunning is implemented in terms of:
reactor.addSystemEventTrigger('after', 'startup', f)
You can also use services. This is a bit more involved, since it involves using using twistd(1) (or something else that's going to hook the service system up to the reactor). But you can write a class like this:
from twisted.application.service import Service
class ThingDoer(Service):
def startService(self):
print "The reactor is running now."
And then write a .tac file like this:
from twisted.application.service import Application
from thatmodule import ThingDoer
application = Application("Do Things")
ThingDoer().setServiceParent(application)
And finally, you can run this .tac file using twistd(1):
$ twistd -ny thatfile.tac
Of course, this only tells you how to do one thing after the reactor is running, which isn't exactly what you're asking. It's the same idea, though - you define some event handler and ask to receive an event by having that handler called; when it is called, you get to do stuff. The same idea applies to anything you do with Conch.
You can see this in the Conch examples, for example in sshsimpleclient.py we have:
class CatChannel(channel.SSHChannel):
name = 'session'
def openFailed(self, reason):
print 'echo failed', reason
def channelOpen(self, ignoredData):
self.data = ''
d = self.conn.sendRequest(self, 'exec', common.NS('cat'), wantReply = 1)
d.addCallback(self._cbRequest)
def _cbRequest(self, ignored):
self.write('hello conch\n')
self.conn.sendEOF(self)
def dataReceived(self, data):
self.data += data
def closed(self):
print 'got data from cat: %s' % repr(self.data)
self.loseConnection()
reactor.stop()
In this example, channelOpen is the event handler called when a new channel is opened. It sends a request to the server. It gets back a Deferred, to which it attaches a callback. That callback is an event handler which will be called when the request succeeds (in this case, when cat has been executed). _cbRequest is the callback it attaches, and that method takes the next step - writing some bytes to the channel and then closing it. Then there's the dataReceived event handler, which is called when bytes are received over the chnanel, and the closed event handler, called when the channel is closed.
So you can see four different event handlers here, some of which are starting operations that will eventually trigger a later event handler.
So to get back to your question about doing one thing after another, if you wanted to open two cat channels, one after the other, then in the closed event handler could open a new channel (instead of stopping the reactor as it does in this example).