start_client#

start_client(*, server_address: str, client_fn: Callable[[str], Client] | None = None, client: Client | None = None, grpc_max_message_length: int = 536870912, root_certificates: str | bytes | None = None, insecure: bool | None = None, transport: str | None = None, authentication_keys: Tuple[EllipticCurvePrivateKey, EllipticCurvePublicKey] | None = None, max_retries: int | None = None, max_wait_time: float | None = None) → None[source]#

Start a Flower client node which connects to a Flower server.

Parameters:

  • server_address (str) – The IPv4 or IPv6 address of the server. If the Flower server runs on the same machine on port 8080, then server_address would be “[::]:8080”.

  • client_fn (Optional[ClientFn]) – A callable that instantiates a Client. (default: None)

  • client (Optional[flwr.client.Client]) – An implementation of the abstract base class flwr.client.Client (default: None)

  • grpc_max_message_length (int (default: 536_870_912, this equals 512MB)) – The maximum length of gRPC messages that can be exchanged with the Flower server. The default should be sufficient for most models. Users who train very large models might need to increase this value. Note that the Flower server needs to be started with the same value (see flwr.server.start_server), otherwise it will not know about the increased limit and block larger messages.

  • root_certificates (Optional[Union[bytes, str]] (default: None)) – The PEM-encoded root certificates as a byte string or a path string. If provided, a secure connection using the certificates will be established to an SSL-enabled Flower server.

  • insecure (bool (default: True)) – Starts an insecure gRPC connection when True. Enables HTTPS connection when False, using system certificates if root_certificates is None.

  • transport (Optional[str] (default: None)) – Configure the transport layer. Allowed values: - ‘grpc-bidi’: gRPC, bidirectional streaming - ‘grpc-rere’: gRPC, request-response (experimental) - ‘rest’: HTTP (experimental)

  • max_retries (Optional[int] (default: None)) – The maximum number of times the client will try to connect to the server before giving up in case of a connection error. If set to None, there is no limit to the number of tries.

  • max_wait_time (Optional[float] (default: None)) – The maximum duration before the client stops trying to connect to the server in case of connection error. If set to None, there is no limit to the total time.

Examples

Starting a gRPC client with an insecure server connection:

>>> start_client(
>>>     server_address=localhost:8080,
>>>     client_fn=client_fn,
>>> )

Starting an SSL-enabled gRPC client using system certificates:

>>> def client_fn(cid: str):
>>>     return FlowerClient()
>>>
>>> start_client(
>>>     server_address=localhost:8080,
>>>     client_fn=client_fn,
>>>     insecure=False,
>>> )

Starting an SSL-enabled gRPC client using provided certificates:

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>>
>>> start_client(
>>>     server_address=localhost:8080,
>>>     client_fn=client_fn,
>>>     root_certificates=Path("/crts/root.pem").read_bytes(),
>>> )