I wanted to know if there was a way I can get my python script located on a shared web hosting provider to read the contents of a folder on my desktop and list out the contents?
Can this be done using tempfiles?
Server-side web scripts have no access to the client other than through requests. If you can somehow break through the browser's protection settings to get JavaScript, Java, or Flash to read the contents of the client then you stand a fighting chance. But doing so will make many people angry and is generally considered a bad idea.
Unless your desktop computer has a public, accessible IP, neither your app running on a shared web hosting provider, nor any other app and host on the internet, can get information from your desktop computer. Does your desktop computer fall within the tiny minority that does have such a public, accessible IP?
If not, and if you're willing to run the obvious risks involved of course, you can try turning the (probably dynamically assigned) IP address that your ISP gives you into a resolvable domain name, by working with such DNS providers as DynDNS -- it can be done for free.
Once you're past the hurdle of public accessibility, you need to run on your computer some server that can respond to properly authenticated requests by supplying the information you desire. For example, you could run a web server such as Apache (which is powerful indeed but perhaps a bit hard for you to set up), or the like -- and a custom app on top of it to check authentication and provide the specific information you want to make available.
If you have no privacy worry (i.e., you don't mind that any hacker in the world can look at that folder's contents), you can skip the authentication, which is the really delicate and potentially fragile part (given that there's really no way for your app, running on a shared web hosting provider, to hold "secrets" very effectively).
If you can clarify each of these issues, then we can help pinpoint the best approach (what to install and how on both your desktop computer, and that shared web hosting provider).
Related
[Never worked with a RPi before, absolute noob on that field]
I want to make a desktop/mobile app to access a program on a RaspberryPi. The only task of the app is to send a command and display the received response on an UI. It's meant only for private use, but it should also work outside my local network. So as long as I have mobile internet on the phone it should be possible to access the program with the app.
Can I achieve this without using any kind of public website? I saw some tutorials that used Flask and other frameworks to do sth similar, but I want the access to be restricted to the app. There shouldn't be any URL I could type in my browser, that gives me access to a login page or sth like that.
If you know the specific term for what I am describing here or even better an article/tutorial that features it, that would be very helpful.
You need two things for that:
Make your Raspi visible to the outside world. That can typically be done by configuring port forwarding in your router. Note that this might impose a certain security risk.
Make sure you have a global DNS name for your internet access. Since the IP of your router may change frequently (depending on your ISP), you need a URL or rather, a DNS entry. There exist public DNS services that can assign a DNS entry to a dynamic IP (typically for a fee). Many routers support a protocol to configure such services.
After that, you can program an app that uses the given DNS entry to talk to your Pi.
So no, without a public URL, this is not possible, at least not over the long term. You might be able to go with the public IP of your router, but then your app may fail from one day to the next.
I am developing an amazon Alexa skill to stream our music from the web.
I would like to have a database of mp3s that is accessible by my app but the mp3s should not be public for download but only for streaming. Thus spotify or soundcloud don't seem to me like good options.
I was thinking to set up a home server where to physically store the mp3s thus having easy access to their urls to pass to the Alexa's AudioPlayer, but I have little experience in setting up servers.
Do you have any alternative workaround suggestions for my issue?
In case the home server might seem a reasonable option to you, where can I start to understand how to do that?
(I code mainly in Python and I know very little of Django)
I'm looking for a bit of web development advice. I'm fairly new to the area but I'm sure there are some gurus out there willing to part with some wisdom.
Objective: I'm interested in controlling a Python application on my computer from my personal web hosted site. I know, this question has been asked several times before but in each case the requirements were a bit different from my own. To reduce the length of this post I'll summarize my objective in a few bullet points:
Personal site is hosted by a web hosting company
Site uses HTML, PHP, MySQL, Python and JavaScript, the majority of everything is coded by me from the ground up
An application that is coded in Python will run on a PC within my home and will communicate with an Arduino board
The app will receive commands from the internet to control actuation via the Arduino, and will transmit sensor data back to the site (such as temperature)
Looking for the communication to be bi-directional, fast and secure
Securing the connection between site and Python app would be most ideal
I'm not looking to connect to the Python application directly, the web server must serve as the 'middle man'
So far I've considered HTTP Post and HTML forms, using sockets (Python app would run as a web server), an IRC bot and reading/writing to a text file stored on the web server.
I was also hoping to have a way to communicate with the Python app without needing to refresh the webpage, perhaps using AJAX or JavaScipt? Maybe with Flash?
Is there something I'm not considering? I feel like I'm missing something. Thanks in advance for the advice!
Just thinking out loud for how I would start out with this. First, regarding the website itself, you can just use what's easiest to you, or to the environment you're in. For example, a basic PHP page will do just fine, but if you can get a site running in Python as well, I'd prefer using the same language all over.
That said, I'm not sure why you would need to use a hosted website? Given that you're already forced to have a externally accessible PC at home for the communication, why not run a webserver on that directly (Apache, Nginx, or even something like CherryPy should do)? That webserver can then communicate with the python process that is running to control your Arduino (by using e.g. Python's xmlrpclib). If you would run things via the hosting company, you would still need some process that can handle external requests securely... something a webserver is quite good at. Just running it yourself gives you all the freedom you want, and simplifies things by lessening the number of components in your solution.
The updates on your site I'd keep quite basic: commands you want to run can be handled in the request handlers of the webserver by just calling the relevant (xmlrpclib) calls. Dynamically updating the page is best done by some AJAX calls I reckon. Based on your story, these updates are easily put in a JSON object, suitable for periodically updating only the relevant segments of your page.
I'm trying to write a script which will monitor packets (using pypcap) and redirect certain URLs/IPs to something I choose. I know I could just edit the hosts file, but that won't work because I'm not an admin.
I'm thinking that CGI might be useful, but this one has really got me confused.
EDIT:
sorry if it sounded malicious or like a MITM attack. The reason I need this is because I have an (old) application which grabs a page from a site, but the domain has changed recently causing it to not function anymore. I didn't write the application, so I can't just change the domain it accesses.
I basically need to accomplish what can be done by editing the hosts file without having access to it.
pypcap needs administrative rights, so this is not an option.
And you don't have access to the pcs internals, to the source code or to the webserver.
There are a few options left:
Modify the host name in the applications files with a hexeditor and disassembler.
Modify the loaded application in memory with Cheat Engine and other memory tools.
Start the application in a virtual environment which can modify os api calls. A modified wine might be able to do this.
Modify the request between the pc and the webserver with a (transparent)proxy / modified router.
If the application supports the usage of proxies, it might be the easiest solution to set up a local squid with a redirector.
For a college project for my course on Introduction to Programming, I decided to make a small software that traces the IP address and puts them nicely on a GUI (PyQt). Not a big deal I know, but still I like the idea.
So I Googled around and found MaxMind's IP and their free offering and the pygeoip, which is an API for the MaxMind GeoIP databases. Pretty cool, eh!
But the downside is that to query their database, I have to download individual databases for country city. This is not good cause I have to make the end user download additional files (in MBs) just to look up an IP address.
So I am wondering, is there another method of doing this? How do I trace IP addresses? Note that I need them down to the city level, if possible. Something like this guy aruljohn.com/track.pl
Thanks!
I would have preferred "pygeoip", because it allows you to develop a complete solution locally. Of course, you will need to keep the database.
If you do not want to keep the database locally, you will have to depend on an external service to query for location of an IP. This will keep your solution small but dependent on this service.
For this check out: ipinfodb.com
http://ipinfodb.com/ip_location_api.php
They provide JSON and XML APIs interface which should be sufficiently easy to build.
Check out more information at : http://ipinfo.info/html/geolocation_2.php
I have even better idea. Why don't you make a very simple web app, which will do the actual look up; and you PyQt client would do HTTP request to that. Or maybe in that case you don't even need a client. Just make a web page to get IP address and show city.