connect wifi with python or linux terminal

Question

I am trying to connect to wifi through python and linux terminal but in both cases it is not working with me.

For python, I am using this library https://wifi.readthedocs.org/en/latest/scanning.html scanning and saving the scheme is working fine but whenever I type this line of code scheme.activate() and I get no output

Any ideas what is wrong with the library and if you have used it before or not??

I tried also to connect to WiFi networks using the CLI. I Googled and found that I should do these three statements 1- iwlist wlan0 scan // to scan the wireess networks 2- iwconfig wlan0 essid "Mywirelessnetwork" // to associate with the network 3- dhclient wla0 // To get an UP

Whenever I do step 2 and then check iwconfig wlan0 I found that the wireless interface is not associated !!

Any ideas ???

What I am trying to do is to have a library of a way to connect to the wifi preferably through a python function or a library and tested on raspberry PI because I am building some applications that require network connection.

Solution 1

Here is a general approach using python os module and Linux iwlist command for searching through the list of wifi devices and nmcli command in order to connect to a the intended device.

In this code the run function finds the SSID of devices that match with your specified name (which can be a regex pattern or a unique part of the server name) then connects to all the devices that match with your expected criteria, by calling the connection function.

"""
Search for a specific wifi ssid and connect to it.
written by kasramvd.
"""
import os


class Finder:
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.server_name = kwargs['server_name']
        self.password = kwargs['password']
        self.interface_name = kwargs['interface']
        self.main_dict = {}

    def run(self):
        command = """sudo iwlist wlp2s0 scan | grep -ioE 'ssid:"(.*{}.*)'"""
        result = os.popen(command.format(self.server_name))
        result = list(result)

        if "Device or resource busy" in result:
                return None
        else:
            ssid_list = [item.lstrip('SSID:').strip('"\n') for item in result]
            print("Successfully get ssids {}".format(str(ssid_list)))

        for name in ssid_list:
            try:
                result = self.connection(name)
            except Exception as exp:
                print("Couldn't connect to name : {}. {}".format(name, exp))
            else:
                if result:
                    print("Successfully connected to {}".format(name))

    def connection(self, name):
        try:
            os.system("nmcli d wifi connect {} password {} iface {}".format(name,
       self.password,
       self.interface_name))
        except:
            raise
        else:
            return True

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Server_name is a case insensitive string, and/or regex pattern which demonstrates
    # the name of targeted WIFI device or a unique part of it.
    server_name = "example_name"
    password = "your_password"
    interface_name = "your_interface_name" # i. e wlp2s0  
    F = Finder(server_name=server_name,
               password=password,
               interface=interface_name)
    F.run()

Solution 2

At first try to look at these links: http://packages.ubuntu.com/raring/python-wicd https://wifi.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

And if you want to use bash commands via python try this code:

from subprocess import Popen, STDOUT, PIPE
from time import sleep

handle = Popen('netsh wlan connect wifi_name', stdout=PIPE, stdin=PIPE, shell=True,  stderr=STDOUT)

sleep(10)

handle.stdin.write(b'wifi_password\n')
while handle.poll() == None:
    print handle.stdout.readline().strip()  # print the result

But make sure you are running as a super user in Linux but there is no problem in Windows.

Comments

[I.el-sayed]

the wicd library looks promising but I can't find any documentation of how I can use it with python. Do you have any good tutorial or any kind of documentation !! ?? PS: I Googled :)

[hamidfzm]

You can take a look at wicd home page at < wicd.sourceforge.net > and in there you can find any thing about it or simple use help('wicd') in your python shell!

[I.el-sayed]

I checked help('wicd') nothing except the contents of the module and the <wicd.sourceforge.net/moinmoin> is down which is the wiki of wicd

[hamidfzm]

There is no problem in there. Where is your country? Try using VPN to view. I'm looking at it right now.

[I.el-sayed]

I am from Egypt ... I don't think it is a VPN problem ... this is what I got <tinypic.com/r/6zyctz/8> looks like their wiki is not working

[hamidfzm]

You should absolutely use some VPN. It's the wiki page I see: i58.tinypic.com/wul475.png

[I.el-sayed]

dude the wicd homepage is working but if you click on the top right exactly no "wiki" you will get the error page .... you can visit this link too <wicd.sourceforge.net/moinmoin>

[hamidfzm]

Ok, try to take look at last link in the answer.

[Rishabh Agrahari]

If server_name has spaces in the name, then your os.system in connection function will take it as different parameters..so this is a bug in you code.