Loop to check if a variable has changed in Python - python

I have just learned the basics of Python, and I am trying to make a few projects so that I can increase my knowledge of the programming language.
Since I am rather paranoid, I created a script that uses PycURL to fetch my current IP address every x seconds, for VPN security. Here is my code[EDITED]:
import requests
enterIP = str(input("What is your current IP address?"))
def getIP():
while True:
try:
result = requests.get("http://ipinfo.io/ip")
print(result.text)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print("\nProccess terminated by user")
return result.text
def checkIP():
while True:
if enterIP == result.text:
pass
else:
print("IP has changed!")
getIP()
checkIP()
Now I would like to expand the idea, so that the script asks the user to enter their current IP, saves that octet as a string, then uses a loop to keep running it against the PycURL function to make sure that their IP hasn't changed? The only problem is that I am completely stumped, I cannot come up with a function that would take the output of PycURL and compare it to a string. How could I achieve that?

As #holdenweb explained, you do not need pycurl for such a simple task, but nevertheless, here is a working example:
import pycurl
import time
from StringIO import StringIO
def get_ip():
buffer = StringIO()
c = pycurl.Curl()
c.setopt(pycurl.URL, "http://ipinfo.io/ip")
c.setopt(c.WRITEDATA, buffer)
c.perform()
c.close()
return buffer.getvalue()
def main():
initial = get_ip()
print 'Initial IP: %s' % initial
try:
while True:
current = get_ip()
if current != initial:
print 'IP has changed to: %s' % current
time.sleep(300)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print("\nProccess terminated by user")
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
As you can see I moved the logic of getting the IP to separate function: get_ip and added few missing things, like catching the buffer to a string and returning it. Otherwise it is pretty much the same as the first example in pycurl quickstart
The main function is called below, when the script is accessed directly (not by import).
First off it calls the get_ip to get initial IP and then runs the while loop which checks if the IP has changed and lets you know if so.
EDIT:
Since you changed your question, here is your new code in a working example:
import requests
def getIP():
result = requests.get("http://ipinfo.io/ip")
return result.text
def checkIP():
initial = getIP()
print("Initial IP: {}".format(initial))
while True:
current = getIP()
if initial == current:
pass
else:
print("IP has changed!")
checkIP()
As I mentioned in the comments above, you do not need two loops. One is enough. You don't even need two functions, but better do. One for getting the data and one for the loop. In the later, first get initial value and then run the loop, inside which you check if value has changed or not.

It seems, from reading the pycurl documentation, like you would find it easier to solve this problem using the requests library. Curl is more to do with file transfer, so the library expects you to provide a file-like object into which it writes the contents. This would greatly complicate your logic.
requests allows you to access the text of the server's response directly:
>>> import requests
>>> result = requests.get("http://ipinfo.io/ip")
>>> result.text
'151.231.192.8\n'
As #PeterWood suggested, a function would be more appropriate than a class for this - or if the script is going to run continuously, just a simple loop as the body of the program.

Related

Transform a multiple line url request into a function in Python

I try to download a serie of text files from different websites. I am using urllib.request with Python. I want to expend the list of URL without making the code long.
The working sequence is
import urllib.request
url01 = 'https://web.site.com/this.txt'
url02 = 'https://web.site.com/kind.txt'
url03 = 'https://web.site.com/of.txt'
url04 = 'https://web.site.com/link.txt'
[...]
urllib.request.urlretrieve(url01, "Liste n°01.txt")
urllib.request.urlretrieve(url02, "Liste n°02.txt")
urllib.request.urlretrieve(url03, "Liste n°03.txt")
[...]
The number of file to download is increasing and I want to keep the second part of the code short.
I tried
i = 0
while i<51
i = i +1
urllib.request.urlretrieve( i , "Liste n°0+"i"+.txt")
It doesn't work and I am thinking that a while loop can be use for string but not for request.
So I was thinking of making it a function.
def newfunction(i)
return urllib.request.urlretrieve(url"i", "Liste n°0"+1+".txt")
But it seem that I am missing a big chunk of it.
This request is working but it seem I cannot transform it for long list or URL.
As a general suggestion, I'd recommend the requests module for Python, rather than urllib.
Based on that, some naive code for a possible function:
import requests
def get_file(site, filename):
target = site + "/" + filename
try:
r = requests.get(target, allow_redirects=True)
open(filename, 'wb').write(r.content)
return r.status_code
except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
print("File not downloaded, error: {}".format(e))
You can then call the function, passing in parameters of site and file name:
get_file('https://web.site.com', 'this.txt')
The function will raise an exception, but not stop execution, if it cannot download a file. You could expand exception handling to deal with files not being writable, but this should be a start.
It seems as if you're not casting the variable i to an integer before your concatenating it to the url string. That may be the reason why you're code isn't working. The while-loop/for-loop approach shouldn't effect whether or not the requests get sent out. I recommend using the requests module for making requests as well. Mike's post covers what the function should kind of look like. I also recommend creating a sessions object if you're going to be making a whole lot of requests in a piece of code. The sessions object will keep the underlying TCP connection open while you make your requests, which should reduce latency, CPU usage, and network congestion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_persistent_connection#Advantages). The code would look something like this:
import requests
with requests.Session() as s:
for i in range(10):
s.get(str(i)+'.com') # make request
# write to file here
To cast to a string you would want something like this:
i = 0
while i<51
i = i +1
urllib.request.urlretrieve( i , "Liste n°0" + str(i) + ".txt")

NFQueue/Scapy Man in the Middle

I'm trying to construct a man in the middle attack on a webpage (i.e. HTTP traffic). I'm doing this by using a Linux machine attached to Ethernet and a client attached to the Linux box via its WiFi hotspot.
What I've done so far is use NFQueue from within the IPTables Linux firewall to route all TCP packets on the FORWARD chain to the NFQueue queue, which a Python script is picking up and then processing those rules. I'm able to read the data off of the HTTP response packets, but whenever I try to modify them and pass them back (accept the packets), I'm getting an error regarding the strings:
Exception AttributeError: "'str' object has no attribute 'build_padding'" in 'netfilterqueue.global_callback' ignored
My code is here, which includes things that I've tried that didn't work. Notably, I'm using a third-party extension for scapy called scapy_http that may be interfering with things, and I'm using a webpage that is not being compressed by gzip because that was messing with things as well. The test webpage that I'm using is here.
#scapy
from scapy.all import *
#nfqueue import
from netfilterqueue import NetfilterQueue
#scapy http extension, not really needed
import scapy_http.http
#failed gzip decoding, also tried some other stuff
#import gzip
def print_and_accept(packet):
#convert nfqueue datatype to scapy-compatible
pkt = IP(packet.get_payload())
#is this an HTTP response?
if pkt[TCP].sport == 80:
#legacy trial that doesn't work
#data = packet.get_data()
print('HTTP Packet Found')
#check what's in the payload
stringLoad = str(pkt[TCP].payload)
#deleted because printing stuff out clogs output
#print(stringLoad)
#we only want to modify a specific packet:
if "<title>Acids and Bases: Use of the pKa Table</title>" in stringLoad:
print('Target Found')
#strings kind of don't work, I think this is a me problem
#stringLoad.replace('>Acids and Bases: Use of the pK<sub>a</sub>', 'This page has been modified: a random ')
#pkt[TCP].payload = stringLoad
#https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27293924/change-tcp-payload-with-nfqueue-scapy
payload_before = len(pkt[TCP].payload)
# I suspect this line is a problem: the string assigns,
# but maybe under the hood scapy doesn't like that very much
pkt[TCP].payload = str(pkt[TCP].payload).replace("Discussion", "This page has been modified")
#recalculate length
payload_after = len(pkt[TCP].payload)
payload_dif = payload_after - payload_before
pkt[IP].len = pkt[IP].len + payload_dif
#recalculate checksum
del pkt[TCP].chksum
del pkt[IP].chksum
del pkt.chksum
print('Packet Modified')
#redudant
#print(stringLoad)
#this throws an error (I think)
print(str(pkt[TCP].payload))
#no clue if this works or not yet
#goal here is to reassign modified packet to original parameter
packet.set_payload(str(pkt))
#this was also throwing the error, so tried to move away from it
#print(pkt.show2())
#bunch of legacy code that didn't work
#print(GET_print(pkt))
#print(pkt.show())
#decompressed_data = zlib.decompress(str(pkt[TCP].payload), 16 + zlib.MAX_WBITS)
#print(decompressed_data)
#print(str(gzip.decompress(pkt[TCP].payload)))
# print(pkt.getlayer(Raw).load)
#print('HTTP Contents Shown')
packet.accept()
def GET_print(packet1):
ret = "***************************************GET PACKET****************************************************\n"
ret += "\n".join(packet1.sprintf("{Raw:%Raw.load%}\n").split(r"\r\n"))
ret += "*****************************************************************************************************\n"
return ret
print('Test: Modify a very specific target')
print('Program Starting')
nfqueue = NetfilterQueue()
nfqueue.bind(1, print_and_accept)
try:
print('Packet Interface Starting')
nfqueue.run()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print('\nProgram Ending')
nfqueue.unbind()
Apologies in advance if this is hard to read or badly formatted code; Python isn't a language that I write in often. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Module urllib.request not getting data

I am trying to test this demo program from lynda using Python 3. I am using Pycharm as my IDE. I already added and installed the request package, but when I run the program, it runs cleanly and shows a message "Process finished with exit code 0", but does not show any output from print statement. Where am I going wrong ?
import urllib.request # instead of urllib2 like in Python 2.7
import json
def printResults(data):
# Use the json module to load the string data into a dictionary
theJSON = json.loads(data)
# now we can access the contents of the JSON like any other Python object
if "title" in theJSON["metadata"]:
print(theJSON["metadata"]["title"])
# output the number of events, plus the magnitude and each event name
count = theJSON["metadata"]["count"];
print(str(count) + " events recorded")
# for each event, print the place where it occurred
for i in theJSON["features"]:
print(i["properties"]["place"])
# print the events that only have a magnitude greater than 4
for i in theJSON["features"]:
if i["properties"]["mag"] >= 4.0:
print("%2.1f" % i["properties"]["mag"], i["properties"]["place"])
# print only the events where at least 1 person reported feeling something
print("Events that were felt:")
for i in theJSON["features"]:
feltReports = i["properties"]["felt"]
if feltReports != None:
if feltReports > 0:
print("%2.1f" % i["properties"]["mag"], i["properties"]["place"], " reported " + str(feltReports) + " times")
# Open the URL and read the data
urlData = "http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/summary/2.5_day.geojson"
webUrl = urllib.request.urlopen(urlData)
print(webUrl.getcode())
if webUrl.getcode() == 200:
data = webUrl.read()
data = data.decode("utf-8") # in Python 3.x we need to explicitly decode the response to a string
# print out our customized results
printResults(data)
else:
print("Received an error from server, cannot retrieve results " + str(webUrl.getcode()))
Not sure if you left this out on purpose, but this script isn't actually executing any code beyond the imports and function definition. Assuming you didn't leave it out on purpose, you would need the following at the end of your file.
if __name__ == '__main__':
data = "" # your data
printResults(data)
The check on __name__ equaling "__main__" is just so your code is only executing when the file is explicitly run. To always run your printResults(data) function when the file is accessed (like, say, if its imported into another module) you could just call it at the bottom of your file like so:
data = "" # your data
printResults(data)
I had to restart the IDE after installing the module. I just realized and tried it now with "Run as Admin". Strangely seems to work now.But not sure if it was a temp error, since even without restart, it was able to detect the module and its methods.
Your comments re: having to restart your IDE makes me think that pycharm might not automatically detect newly installed python packages. This SO answer seems to offer a solution.
SO answer

python process communications via pipes: Race condition

So I have two Python3.2 processes that need to communicate with each other. Most of the information that needs to be communicated are standard dictionaries. Named pipes seemed like the way to go so I made a pipe class that can be instantiated in both processes. this class implements a very basic protocol for getting information around.
My problem is that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There seems to be no pattern to this behavior except the place where the code fails.
Here are the bits of the Pipe class that matter. Shout if you want more code:
class Pipe:
"""
there are a bunch of constants set up here. I dont think it would be useful to include them. Just think like this: Pipe.WHATEVER = 'WHATEVER'
"""
def __init__(self,sPath):
"""
create the fifo. if it already exists just associate with it
"""
self.sPath = sPath
if not os.path.exists(sPath):
os.mkfifo(sPath)
self.iFH = os.open(sPath,os.O_RDWR | os.O_NONBLOCK)
self.iFHBlocking = os.open(sPath,os.O_RDWR)
def write(self,dMessage):
"""
write the dict to the fifo
if dMessage is not a dictionary then there will be an exception here. There never is
"""
self.writeln(Pipe.MESSAGE_START)
for k in dMessage:
self.writeln(Pipe.KEY)
self.writeln(k)
self.writeln(Pipe.VALUE)
self.writeln(dMessage[k])
self.writeln(Pipe.MESSAGE_END)
def writeln(self,s):
os.write(self.iFH,bytes('{0} : {1}\n'.format(Pipe.LINE_START,len(s)+1),'utf-8'))
os.write(self.iFH,bytes('{0}\n'.format(s), 'utf-8'))
os.write(self.iFH,bytes(Pipe.LINE_END+'\n','utf-8'))
def readln(self):
"""
look for LINE_START, get line size
read until LINE_END
clean up
return string
"""
iLineStartBaseLength = len(self.LINE_START)+3 #'{0} : '
try:
s = os.read(self.iFH,iLineStartBaseLength).decode('utf-8')
except:
return Pipe.READLINE_FAIL
if Pipe.LINE_START in s:
#get the length of the line
sLineLen = ''
while True:
try:
sCurrent = os.read(self.iFH,1).decode('utf-8')
except:
return Pipe.READLINE_FAIL
if sCurrent == '\n':
break
sLineLen += sCurrent
try:
iLineLen = int(sLineLen.strip(string.punctuation+string.whitespace))
except:
raise Exception('Not a valid line length: "{0}"'.format(sLineLen))
#read the line
sLine = os.read(self.iFHBlocking,iLineLen).decode('utf-8')
#read the line terminator
sTerm = os.read(self.iFH,len(Pipe.LINE_END+'\n')).decode('utf-8')
if sTerm == Pipe.LINE_END+'\n':
return sLine
return Pipe.READLINE_FAIL
else:
return Pipe.READLINE_FAIL
def read(self):
"""
read from the fifo, make a dict
"""
dRet = {}
sKey = ''
sValue = ''
sCurrent = None
def value_flush():
nonlocal dRet, sKey, sValue, sCurrent
if sKey:
dRet[sKey.strip()] = sValue.strip()
sKey = ''
sValue = ''
sCurrent = ''
if self.message_start():
while True:
sLine = self.readln()
if Pipe.MESSAGE_END in sLine:
value_flush()
return dRet
elif Pipe.KEY in sLine:
value_flush()
sCurrent = Pipe.KEY
elif Pipe.VALUE in sLine:
sCurrent = Pipe.VALUE
else:
if sCurrent == Pipe.VALUE:
sValue += sLine
elif sCurrent == Pipe.KEY:
sKey += sLine
else:
return Pipe.NO_MESSAGE
It sometimes fails here (in readln):
try:
iLineLen = int(sLineLen.strip(string.punctuation+string.whitespace))
except:
raise Exception('Not a valid line length: "{0}"'.format(sLineLen))
It doesn't fail anywhere else.
An example error is:
Not a valid line length: "KE 17"
The fact that it's intermittent says to me that it's due to some kind of race condition, I'm just struggling to figure out what it might be. Any ideas?
EDIT added stuff about calling processes
How the Pipe is used is it is instantiated in processA and ProcessB by calling the constructor with the same path. Process A will then intermittently write to the Pipe and processB will try to read from it. At no point do I ever try to get the thing acting as a two way.
Here is a more long winded explanation of the situation. I've been trying to keep the question short but I think it's about time I give up on that. Anyhoo, I have a daemon and a Pyramid process that need to play nice. There are two Pipe instances in use: One that only Pyramid writes to, and one that only the daemon writes to. The stuff Pyramid writes is really short, I have experienced no errors on this pipe. The stuff that the daemon writes is much longer, this is the pipe that's giving me grief. Both pipes are implemented in the same way. Both processes only write dictionaries to their respective Pipes (if this were not the case then there would be an exception in Pipe.write).
The basic algorithm is: Pyramid spawns the daemon, the daemon loads craze object hierarchy of doom and vast ram consumption. Pyramid sends POST requests to the daemon which then does a whole bunch of calculations and sends data to Pyramid so that a human-friendly page can be rendered. the human can then respond to what's in the hierarchy by filling in HTML forms and suchlike thus causing pyramid to send another dictionary to the daemon, and the daemon sending back a dictionary response.
So: only one pipe has exhibited any problems, the problem pipe has a lot more traffic than the other one, and it is a guarentee that only dictionaries are written to either
EDIT as response to question and comment
Before you tell me to take out the try...except stuff read on.
The fact that the exception gets raised at all is what is bothering me. iLineLengh = int(stuff) looks to me like it should always be passed a string that looks like an integer. This is the case only most of the time, not all of it. So if you feel the urge to comment about how it's probably not an integer please please don't.
To paraphrase my question: Spot the race condition and you will be my hero.
EDIT a little example:
process_1.py:
oP = Pipe(some_path)
while 1:
oP.write({'a':'foo','b':'bar','c':'erm...','d':'plop!','e':'etc'})
process_2.py:
oP = Pipe(same_path_as_before)
while 1:
print(oP.read())
After playing around with the code, I suspect the problem is coming from how you are reading the file.
Specifically, lines like this:
os.read(self.iFH, iLineStartBaseLength)
That call doesn't necessarily return iLineStartBaseLength bytes - it might consume "LI" , then return READLINE_FAIL and retry. On the second attempt, it will get the remainder of the line, and somehow end up giving the non-numeric string to the int() call
The unpredictability likely comes from how the fifo is being flushed - if it happens to flush when the complete line is written, all is fine. If it flushes when the line is half-written, weirdness.
At least in the hacked-up version of the script I ended up with, the oP.read() call in process_2.py often got a different dict to the one sent (where the KEY might bleed into the previous VALUE and other strangeness).
I might be mistaken, as I had to make a bunch of changes to get the code running on OS X, and further while experimenting. My modified code here
Not sure exactly how to fix it, but.. with the json module or similar, the protocol/parsing can be greatly simplified - newline separated JSON data is much easier to parse:
import os
import time
import json
import errno
def retry_write(*args, **kwargs):
"""Like os.write, but retries until EAGAIN stops appearing
"""
while True:
try:
return os.write(*args, **kwargs)
except OSError as e:
if e.errno == errno.EAGAIN:
time.sleep(0.5)
else:
raise
class Pipe(object):
"""FIFO based IPC based on newline-separated JSON
"""
ENCODING = 'utf-8'
def __init__(self,sPath):
self.sPath = sPath
if not os.path.exists(sPath):
os.mkfifo(sPath)
self.fd = os.open(sPath,os.O_RDWR | os.O_NONBLOCK)
self.file_blocking = open(sPath, "r", encoding=self.ENCODING)
def write(self, dmsg):
serialised = json.dumps(dmsg) + "\n"
dat = bytes(serialised.encode(self.ENCODING))
# This blocks until data can be read by other process.
# Can just use os.write and ignore EAGAIN if you want
# to drop the data
retry_write(self.fd, dat)
def read(self):
serialised = self.file_blocking.readline()
return json.loads(serialised)
Try getting rid of the try:, except: blocks and seeing what exception is actually being thrown.
So replace your sample with just:
iLineLen = int(sLineLen.strip(string.punctuation+string.whitespace))
I bet it'll now throw a ValueError, and it's because you're trying to cast "KE 17" to an int.
You'll need to strip more than string.whitespace and string.punctuation if you're going to cast the string to an int.

Python: using a regular expression to match one line of HTML

This simple Python method I put together just checks to see if Tomcat is running on one of our servers.
import urllib2
import re
import sys
def tomcat_check():
tomcat_status = urllib2.urlopen('http://10.1.1.20:7880')
results = tomcat_status.read()
pattern = re.compile('<body>Tomcat is running...</body>',re.M|re.DOTALL)
q = pattern.search(results)
if q == []:
notify_us()
else:
print ("Tomcat appears to be running")
sys.exit()
If this line is not found :
<body>Tomcat is running...</body>
It calls :
notify_us()
Which uses SMTP to send an email message to myself and another admin that Tomcat is no longer runnning on the server...
I have not used the re module in Python before...so I am assuming there is a better way to do this... I am also open to a more graceful solution with Beautiful Soup ... but haven't used that either..
Just trying to keep this as simple as possible...
Why use regex here at all? Why not just a simple string search?:
if not '<body>Tomcat is running...</body>' in results:
notify_us()
if not 'Tomcat is running' in results:
notify_us()
There are lots of different methods:
str.find()
if results.find("Tomcat is running...") != -1:
print "Tomcat appears to be running"
else:
notify_us()
Using X in Y
if "Tomcat is running..." in result:
print "Tomcat appears to be running"
else:
notify_us()
Using Regular Expressions
if re.search(r"Tomcat is running\.\.\.", result):
print "Tomcat appears to be running"
else:
notify_us()
Personally, I prefer the membership operator to test if the string is in another string.
Since you appear to be looking for a fixed string (not a regexp) that you have some control over and can be expected to be consistent, str.find() should do just fine. Or what Daniel said.
As you have mentioned, regular expressions aren't suited for parsing XML like structures (at least, for more complex queries). I would do something like that:
from lxml import etree
import urllib2
def tomcat_check(host='127.0.0.1', port=7880):
response = urllib2.urlopen('http://%s:%d' % (host, port))
html = etree.HTML(response.read())
return html.findtext('.//body') == 'Tomcat is running...'
if tomcat_check('10.1.1.20'):
print 'Tomcat is running...'
else:
# notify someone

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