Develop Reference

Obfuscating tool for Python3 code

Is there any existing python code obfuscating tool for Python3?
Please do not try to teach me that Python isn't the right choice if I want to hide/obfuscate my code. Or that correct licenses should protect the code instead of obfuscation...
Update: This question does not duplicate issue How do I protect Python code?: I simply ask if there is a tool to obfuscate Python. Nothing more and nothing less. (If there is none I wonder why I get so much feedback...)

No matter what you do, at some point the Python interpreter is going to be reading in unobfuscated Python byte-code. From that it is dead easy to get back to your source code (minus comments and non-obvious layout). This is why everybody says it's pretty much impossible to obfuscate Python. The fact that it's pretty much impossible to obfuscate Python implies that there are no good tools for doing so. I'm afraid it's just wishful thinking to say "I know this can't be done very effectively, but are there any tools for doing it?"
Probably the best you can do will be to encrypt your code with standard encryption tools, and write a little wrapper program in some other language that just decrypts your Python and runs your program, then deletes the unencrypted code when it's done. If you want to put way too much effort in you could probably do something with the C API and embedding the Python interpreter in a C program to feed your unencrypted Python to the interpreter only in memory, rather than files on disk.
Note that these schemes will still be relatively easy to get around, and don't work at all if what you want is to provide importable Python modules (rather than whole programs). Which is why I wouldn't expect to find anyone's already written a tool for you to do it.

I wouldn't go the obfuscating approach if I were you and rather investigate alternative ways to ship executable binary files instead of (byte)-code.
Tools that are known to me (there are probably a few others):
http://www.ohloh.net/p/py2c (converts Python into C code which you can then compile)
http://www.pyinstaller.org/
http://cx-freeze.sourceforge.net/
http://www.py2exe.org/ (Windows only)
http://svn.pythonmac.org/py2app/py2app/trunk/doc/index.html (Mac only)
I don't know how hack-proof any of those tools are, but I think it's worth taking a look.
Edit: Damnit, missed the Python 3 part. It's a little hard to help because you don't write anything about the product itself (OS, GUI, etc). If it can be also Python 2 code but you have written all your code in Python 3 already, I suggest 3to2.

I'd recommend using pyarmor.
It converts code to binary form. Only drawback would be, you need to obfuscate code for every OS separately.

There is no way to obfuscate Python code in any useful manner, and no reason why you would want to. You seem to want to obfuscate the code to protect it. That is completely pointless, as you can instead ship only the .pyc files, meaning you don't ship the source code at all. Not that shipping only .pyc files will help you, as there are uncompilers for .pyc-files.
If your program is reasonably simple and well-coded, creating executables with cx-freeze, py2exe et al, means that the .pyc files end up inside the executable file, and hence are marginally harder to find, and it's also less obvious that you use Python, so that might be help. But more importantly, it might make installation simpler for your users. They like that.
If you really want to obfuscate your code in a useful way, convert all of it to use Cython, which will create C-files you can compile. This will also speed up the program. Cython is however not fully Python compatible, so you will probably have to make changes.
And I know you don't want to hear this, but I'll say it for the benefit of others:
All of this is of course stupid and misguided. Open source is good for you. Really. You shouldn't protect your code, you should get as many eyes and hands on it as possible.
Trust me on this: Your main worry should be about getting more users, not less pirates. And you get more users by making your software better, not worse. And open source will help in that.

Pyminifier is a Python code minifier, obfuscator, and compressor.
This tool works on Python 3
Update: This project has been discontinued.

The best way to hide your code is to not release it.
Advertise a service - you receive their data then return the processed data. Transmissions can be via the web, email, DHL, pigeon, telephone, graviton pulse, ...

python - good places to check out example prog / code online?

there is a year old, similar question - but in case there have been changes afoot:
i'm an intermediate c++ programmer just starting out on python, post some online tuts etc i can do some basic pythoneering, but was wondering if there are good places i can look online for simple(ish) --pref console based-- code that i can learn from, ideally with some sort of commentary.
anything come to mind?
thanks

The standard library is an excellent place to the start. It's maintained by the core python team and is of high quality with a lot of interesting idioms. I'd recommend the newer modules since they don't have much backward compatibility cruft and are more representative of the language as it is now. The older ones were written for earlier versions of Python and have some restrictions when it comes to API changes etc.
The list of modules in the standard library is described at http://docs.python.org/library/. You can go through it and decide which one you want to look at (area of interest etc.).
Their sources are viewable at the mercurial repo here http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/d7e85ddb1336/Lib (as of today). These are for the mainline 2.6 release. You can also checkout the repo and browse it on your local machine.
You can also start up your interpreter, import a module (say os) and do a print os.__file__ to see where the source file is if you want to look at the code in your local editor.

ActiveState Recipes is a good source for all kinds of Python scripts. But if you want to learn the basics of Python, you might just want to look at the standard library that ships with Python ("lib" directory").

i came across This The other day, Probably you can learn some python basics and have a laugh too!
Anyways, look at the libs as they said above, they are very useful

If you enjoy riddles:
www.pythonchallenge.com
If you're an intermediate C++ programmer, you're already equipped to handle to programming concepts. I like it because it gives me a reason to learn each part of the language, without being mundane 'Hello World' tasks.
However, some of the riddles are pretty tough and/or unrelated to programming. Either way, doing the first few will probably be enough to get your confidence up with Python syntax.

Looking for advice on how to develop applets for Gnome / Ubuntu

I am a linux (mostly ubuntu) user with a reasonable understanding of how the system works (although I am certainly not a linux guru!). In the past I have developed small cross-platform desktop applications in python/GTK and I delivered them to clients as self-contained filetrees, so that the only dependencies were Python itself and GTK.
Now I would like to develop a small applet for ubuntu, that I would like to release under GPL 2 or 3.
In particular these are the new steps I know I must learn in order to achieve my goal (it is very possible there are a few more that I am unaware of, though!):
Integrating with gnome: I want my application to be available as an applet in the taskbar.
Using D-bus: In particular I want my applet to use the new osd-notification framework for ubuntu, but communication with other applets is also a possible feature for a second iteration.
Packaging: I would like to setup a public PPA as soon as the application will reach alpha stage, but I also would like to use dependencies from existing packages in the official repos, rather than include the libraries again in my own package.
Of course official documentation will be my first source of knowledge, but - basing my judgment on the very useful answers that I received on another topic here on SO - I decided to turn to the SO community to collect additional advice like for example:
Are there additional steps to those I outlined before, that I have to learn in order to be able to implement my project?
Based on your own experience, would you advise me to learn those steps in advance (as the knowledge of those will influence my way of coding the core functionality) or would you consider integration with gnome / d-bus and packaging as "higher encapsulating levels" that can be added on top of core functionality afterwards (note: D-bus will be used at first just for pushing data. Input data will be retrieved with a webservice)?
Would you advise me to separate my application in two packages (back-end and front-end) or to keep it together in a single package?,
Do you know of any useful resource that you would advise me to look at, for learning any of the things that I have to?
Are you aware of any common "beginner's mistakes" that I should be aware of?
These questions are not meant to be exhaustive, though: if you feel that I am missing something from the general picture, you are more than welcomed to point me in the right direction!
PS: Should I have failed in explaining my final goal, take a look at project hamster: what I want to achieve is similar in terms of user interface (meaning: the applet should display the status and clicking on it should open the application itself, from which you could both configure the applet and perform various operations).

Well, you list python, so you'll want to have pynotify in your arsenal. It wraps DBus, and gives you a direct api for manipulating the osd-notification system.
>>> import pynotify
>>> pynotify.init("Lil' Applet")
True
>>> note = pynotify.Notification(
... pynotify.get_app_name(),
... "Lil' Applet wants you to know something's up.",
... "/usr/share/icons/Human/48x48/status/dialog-information.png")
>>> note.show()
True
This displays a notification that looks like this:
[ ] **Lil' Applet**
[ICON]
[ ] Lil' Applet wants you to know something's up.

As you already know, your first and best friend will be the code written by others - copy, paste, dissect, understand.
Luckily there are a few projects that do what you intend to achieve.
I can recommend conduit's code as a prime reference how to do things in a clean fashion. I think they also have stuff on dbus. Others to keep an eye on, would be deskbar-applet, hamster (heh), and any other app you remember having feature X. Sometimes it might require some C code deciphering though (like the applet button bit - i suggest you better take it from hamster as i was having some major time getting the thing straight)
Then the "devhelp" app will be of great assistance - it allows you to read and search in man pages fast and easy. Make sure that you also have the -doc packages for all the modules you intend to use.
For user interface i strongly suggest using glade, as that will allow you to change interface later much easier. Where you can't use glade - add and alignment box and add the widget in the box in the code.
There certainly will be quirks and things that you will learn the hard way. Should not be too hard though!
The packaging, especially the autotools will be bit of a struggle, but you will get it right. For how to do debians (and from there to PPA), you can dig in the hamster's repository history. There was once a "debian" folder.
I would suggest to start small - see if you can get a window. Then put a button on it.
You don't have to do it "right" the first time. For first time it will be ok, if something works at all.
As for the separation - i would not bother about it until you get there. Splitting up into two parts and have a core, should not be too hard later. But that all depends on your priorities.
Last thing - getting friends who know the field helps too. And one way to get new friends, is by taking part in other projects, heh.

There are some very good recommendations here already, but let me suggest that you develop your applet not so much "for Ubuntu" as "for Gnome". It doesn't take much extra effort to also make RPM packages for distributions such as Fedora, and Arch Linux packages, to name two examples. There is one major disadvantage though -- to stay compatible with Debian stable you have to stick to ancient versions of GTK and GLib, or at least make any functionality depending on newer versions optional. It's painful, but apparently Debian stable users appreciate it.
I'd also suggest setting up a source code management system somewhere as early as possible. You may not be worried about your disk crashing, but sometimes it saves you a lot of trouble just to be able to revert everything you did since the last commit.
Here's the link to the documentation on the official Gnome Panel Applet library. I don't know if it has Python bindings or not.

When I asked this question two years ago Ubuntu and Gnome were much closer to each other than they are today. At present (end of 2011) gnome adopted the gnome-shell, while Canonical decided to develop their very own UI (unity)...
Part of the tension that brought to the split specifically involved libappindicator, which makes the way I formulated this question (and probably part of the answers) obsolete.
Besides, there is now AskUbuntu on stack exchange, that would probably be a much better forum to ask about ubuntu-specific question.

Windows XP - mute/unmute audio in programmatically in Python

My machine has two audio inputs: a mic in that I use for gaming, and a line in that I use for guitar. When using one it's important that the other be muted to remove hiss/static, so I was hoping to write a small script that would toggle which one was muted (it's fairly inconvenient to click through the tray icon, switch to my input device, mute and unmute).
I thought perhaps I could do this with pywin32, but everything I could find seemed specific to setting the output volume rather than input, and I'm not familiar enough with win32 to even know where to look for better info.
Could anybody point me in the right direction?

Disclaimer: I'm not a windows programming guru by any means...but here's my best guess
Per the pywin32 FAQ:
How do I use the exposed Win32 functions to do xyz?
In general, the trick is to not
consider it a Python/PyWin32 question
at all, but to search for
documentation or examples of your
problem, regardless of the language.
This will generally give you the
information you need to perform the
same operations using these
extensions. The included
documentation will tell you the
arguments and return types of the
functions so you can easily determine
the correct way to "spell" things in
Python.
Sounds like you're looking to control the "endpoint device" volumes (i.e. your sound card / line-in). Here's the API reference in that direction.
Here's a slightly broader look at controlling audio devices in windows if the previous wasn't what you're looking for.
Here's a blog entry from someone who did what you're trying to do in C# (I know you specified python, but you might be able to extract the correct API calls from the code).
Good luck! And if you do get working code, I'm interested to see it.

I had a similar problem and couldn't figure out how to use Windows API's to do what I wanted. I ended up just automating the GUI with AutoIt. I think that will be the fastest and easiest solution (albeit a "hacky" one). As I answered earlier today, you can use AutoIT from within Python.

You are probably better off using ctypes - pywin32 is good if you are using one of the already included APIs, but I think you'll be out of luck with the sound APIs. Together with the example code from the C# link provided by tgray, use ctypes and winmm.dll, or alternatively, use SWIG to wrap winmm.dll. This may well be quicker as you won't have to build C structure mapping types in ctypes for the types such as MIXERCONTROLDETAILS which are used in the API calls.

tgray seems to have pointed you in the right direction, but once you find out the right Win32 APIs to deal with, you have a couple of options:
1) Try using pywin32...but it may or may not wrap the functionality you need (it probably doesn't). So you probably only want to do this if you need to use COM to get at the functionality you need.
2) Use ctypes. It's generally pretty easy to wrap just about any C functionality with ctypes.
3) If the C# example looks like what you need, you should be able to translate it to IronPython with fairly little effort. Might be easier than using the C API. YMMV, of course.

Will python provide enough performance for a proxy?

I want to start writing a http proxy that will modify responses according to some rules/filters I will configure. However, before I start coding it, I want to make sure I'm making the right choice in going with Python. Later, this tool would have to be able to process a lot of requests, so, I would like to know I can count on it later on to be able to perform when "push comes to shove".

As long as the bulk of the processing uses Python's built-in modules it should be fine as far as performance. The biggest strength of Python is its clear syntax and ease of testing/maintainability. If you find that one section of your code is slowing down the process, you can rewrite that section and use it as a C module, while keeping the bulk of your control code in Python.
However if you're looking to make the most optimized Python Code you may want to check out this SO post.

Yes, I think you will find Python to be perfectly adequate for your needs. There's a huge number of web frameworks, WSGI libraries, etc. to choose from, or learn from when building your own.
There's an interesting post on the Python History blog about how Python was supporting high performance websites in 1996.

This will depend on the library you use more than the language itself. The twisted framework is known to scale well.
Here's a proxy server example in python/twisted to get you started.
Bottomline: choose your third party tools wisely and I'm sure you'll be fine.

Python performs pretty well for most tasks, but you'll need to change the way you program if you're used to other languages. See Python is not Java for more info.
If plain old CPython doesn't give the performance you need, you have other options as well.
As has been mentioned, you can extend it in C (using a tool like swig or Pyrex). I also hear good things about PyPy as well, but bear in mind that it uses a restricted subset of Python. Lastly, a lot of people use psyco to speed up performance.