API Reference

While dropafile is not designed as a library, you might want to use single components for building bigger and better webservices. For instance you can use the dropafile.DropAFileApplication as WSGI app in other environments.

dropafile - Drop a file on a webpage.

dropafile.ALLOWED_PWD_CHARS = 'ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ23456789abcdefghjkmnpqrstuvwxyz'

Chars allowed in passwords. We allow plain ASCII chars and numbers, with some entitites removed, that can be easily mixed up: letter l and number one, for instance.

class dropafile.DropAFileApplication(password=None, upload_dir=None)[source]

Drop-A-File application.

A werkzeug based WSGI application providing a basic-auth protected web interface for file uploads.

password is required to access the application’s service. If none is provided, we generate one for you.

upload_dir is the directory, where we store files uploaded by users. If none is given we create a temporary directory on start-up. Please note: the directory is not removed on shutdown.

authenticate()[source]

Send 401 requesting basic auth from client.

Send back 401 response to client. Contains some HTML to display an ‘Unauhorized’ page. Should make browsers ask users for username and password.

check_auth(request)[source]

Check basic auth against local password.

We accept any username, but only the one password. Returns True in case of success, False otherwise.

request must contain basic-auth authorization headers (as set by browsers) to succeed.

handle_uploaded_files(request)[source]

Look for an upload file in request.

If one is found, it is saved to self.upload_dir.

password = None

the password we require (no username neccessary)

upload_dir = None

a path where we store files uploaded by users.

dropafile.create_ssl_cert(path=None, bits=4096, days=2, cn='localhost', country='US', state='', location='')[source]

Create an SSL RSA cert and key in directory path.

Returns a tuple (certificate_path, key_path).

path
A directory, where certificate and key can be stored. If none is given, we create a temporary one.

Default attribute values of the certificate are read from a package-local SSL configuration file openssl.conf.

Some attribute values can be overridden:

bits
number of bits of the key.
days
number of days of validity of the generated certificate.
cn
Common Name. Put the domain under which the app will be served in here.
state and location
will be empty by default.
dropafile.execute_cmd(cmd_list)[source]

Excute the command cmd_list.

Returns stdout and stderr output.

dropafile.get_random_password()[source]

Get a password generated from ALLOWED_PWD_CHARS.

The password entropy should be >= 128 bits. We use SystemRandom(), which should provide enough randomness to work properly.

dropafile.get_ssl_context(cert_path=None, key_path=None)[source]

Get an SSL context to serve HTTP.

If cert_path or key_path are None, we create some. Then we add some modifiers (avail. with Python >= 2.7.9) to disable unsafe ciphers etc.

The returned SSL context can be used with Werkzeug run_simple.

dropafile.get_store_path(directory, filename)[source]

Get a path where we can safely store a file.

The file should be stored in directory under name filename. If filename already exists in directory, we construct new names by appending ‘-<NUM>’ to the original filename, where <NUM> is a number counting up.

dropafile.handle_options(args)[source]

Handle commandline options.

Expects the arguments passed to dropafile as a list of arguments. args is expected to represent sys.argv[1:], i.e. the arguments when called, without the programme name.

Returns parsed options as provided by argparse.

dropafile.run_server(args=None)[source]

Run a werkzeug server, serving a DropAFileApplication.

Called when running dropafile from commandline. Serves a DropAFileApplication instance until aborted.

Options argv are taken from commandline if not specified.

Generates a password and temporary SSL certificate/key on startup unless otherwise requested in options/args.

Changes

0.1.1 (2015-03-30)

  • Turned former dropafile module into a Python package. This is to fix installation behvior where data files are installed in different locations depending on install tool. See diceware bug #1.

    The problem was revealed by conorsch for the diceware package.

0.1 (2015-03-22)

  • Initial release.

dropafile

Drop me a file, securely.

build-status | documentation | sources | issues

dropafile provides an HTTPS-secured webapp where users can drop files.

It is meant as a channel to deliver documents in a not-too-unsecure manner. For instance as a quickly installable workaround if people are not able or willing to use GnuPG or similar, although they have sensible documents to send.

dropafile is written in Python (server parts) and uses the dropzonejs JavaScript library (client parts). The builtin server is based on Werkzeug.

Install

As a user, run:

$ pip install dropafile

then, start the local server:

$ dropafile
Creating temporary self-signed SSL certificate...
Done.
Certificate in: /tmp/tmp1y2bgh/cert.pem
Key in:         /tmp/tmp1y2bgh/cert.key
Password is: H93rqnsrdEXD2ad3rQwdWqZ
 * Running on https://localhost:8443/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)

The server will provide SSL. Users can access dropafile sevice pointing their browsers to the location given. The page is protected by basic auth. Users will have to provide an arbitrary user name and the password displayed on the commandline at startup (which changes with restart).

The –help option will display all available options:

$ dropfile --help
usage: dropafile [-h] [--host HOST] [-p PORT] [-s PASSWORD]

Start dropafile app.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --host HOST           Host we bind to. An IP address or DNS name.
                        `localhost` by default.
  -p PORT, --port PORT  Port we listen at. An integer. 8443 by default.
  -s PASSWORD, --secret PASSWORD
                        Password to access dropafile. If none is given we
                        generate one.

Whenever a user sends a file, the path is displayed on the commandline.

Developer Install

Developers should install a virtualenv first:

$ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2.7 py27  # for Python2.7

See tox.ini for all Python versions supported.

Activate the virtualenv:

$ source py27/bin/activate
(py27) $

Now build the devel environment:

(py27) $ python setup.py dev

You can run tests like this:

(py27) $ py.test

Tests for all supported (and locally available) Python vesions can be run by:

(py27) $ pip install tox  # neccessary only once per virtualenv
(py27) $ tox

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