Are Django Channels WebSocketConsumers stateless

Question

I'm trying to use Django channels to create an object that stays persistent for everyone connected to the socket/

When I try to create an object that stays persistent between multiple receive() runs, it throws a NoneType exception

class MyConsumer(WebsocketConsumer):


    def __init__(self,path):
        self.protocol = None
        WebsocketConsumer.__init__(self, path)


    def connection_groups(self):
        return ["test"]

    # Connected to websocket.connect
    def connect(self,message):
        try:
            self.protocol = "hello"
        except Exception as exc:
            print ("Unable to accept incoming connection.  Reason: %s" % str(exc))
        self.message.reply_channel.send({"accept": True})


    # Connected to websocket.receive
    def receive(self,text=None, bytes=None):
        text = self.protocol[1] # This throws an error that says protocol is none
        self.send(text=text, bytes=bytes)

    # Connected to websocket.disconnect
    def disconnect(self,message):
        pass

Answer 1

Class-based consumers are uninstantiated, i. e. each time a new message gets routed to a consumer, it creates an entirely new consumer. Hence there is no way to persist data between to messages in the consumer itself.