/Doc/library/netrc.rst

 1
 2:mod:`netrc` --- netrc file processing
 3======================================
 4
 5.. module:: netrc
 6   :synopsis: Loading of .netrc files.
 7.. moduleauthor:: Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
 8.. sectionauthor:: Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
 9
10
11.. versionadded:: 1.5.2
12
13The :class:`netrc` class parses and encapsulates the netrc file format used by
14the Unix :program:`ftp` program and other FTP clients.
15
16
17.. class:: netrc([file])
18
19   A :class:`netrc` instance or subclass instance encapsulates data from  a netrc
20   file.  The initialization argument, if present, specifies the file to parse.  If
21   no argument is given, the file :file:`.netrc` in the user's home directory will
22   be read.  Parse errors will raise :exc:`NetrcParseError` with diagnostic
23   information including the file name, line number, and terminating token.
24
25
26.. exception:: NetrcParseError
27
28   Exception raised by the :class:`netrc` class when syntactical errors are
29   encountered in source text.  Instances of this exception provide three
30   interesting attributes:  :attr:`msg` is a textual explanation of the error,
31   :attr:`filename` is the name of the source file, and :attr:`lineno` gives the
32   line number on which the error was found.
33
34
35.. _netrc-objects:
36
37netrc Objects
38-------------
39
40A :class:`netrc` instance has the following methods:
41
42
43.. method:: netrc.authenticators(host)
44
45   Return a 3-tuple ``(login, account, password)`` of authenticators for *host*.
46   If the netrc file did not contain an entry for the given host, return the tuple
47   associated with the 'default' entry.  If neither matching host nor default entry
48   is available, return ``None``.
49
50
51.. method:: netrc.__repr__()
52
53   Dump the class data as a string in the format of a netrc file. (This discards
54   comments and may reorder the entries.)
55
56Instances of :class:`netrc` have public instance variables:
57
58
59.. attribute:: netrc.hosts
60
61   Dictionary mapping host names to ``(login, account, password)`` tuples.  The
62   'default' entry, if any, is represented as a pseudo-host by that name.
63
64
65.. attribute:: netrc.macros
66
67   Dictionary mapping macro names to string lists.
68
69.. note::
70
71   Passwords are limited to a subset of the ASCII character set. Versions of
72   this module prior to 2.3 were extremely limited.  Starting with 2.3, all
73   ASCII punctuation is allowed in passwords.  However, note that whitespace and
74   non-printable characters are not allowed in passwords.  This is a limitation
75   of the way the .netrc file is parsed and may be removed in the future.
76