how to know if socket is still connected

[nephish at xit.net]

lo there,
i have a simple app that connects to a socket to get info from a server

i looks like this

serverhost = 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx'
serverport = 9520
aeris_sockobj = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
aeris_sockobj.connect((serverhost,serverport))

while 1:
    do this or that with socket,
    send and receive info.
    yadda yadda yadda


works well, but sometimes the server drops the connection.
so, what i need is something that will let me know if the connection
is still ok, if not will reconnect.

what i thought, since it only lets you connect on a certain port one at
a time,
that i could use a try-except to connect every time, if it could not
connect (because it already is) then i would just continue on. But if
it is not connected, it would reconnect.
that is what brings me here. Seems like it would work, but is there a
better way ? this kinda seems like a dirty hack.

any opinions ?

thanks.