SMS/Twitter Control of your server

Well, I thought it was about time to post something, so let me show you this little project I've been tinkering with. It basically allows me to control my server with a cellphone. This can be applied to any computer with python installed and can do really anything (right now I have it search/download bittorrent files).

It basically works by creating a master thread on the server that constantly checks some secured twitter account for directed messages. This basically means that you can send a directed message to some secured user through twitter from your cell phone and when the computer reads this message it will act on it.

The following is the main code: it creates a main thread on the computer listening for new messages. When a new message is found, a new thread is created and the correct command is executed (the commands are defined in the configuration file which will come soon). The benefit to creating new threads is that the task can be halted later by initiating a stop command (the stop commands are hard programmed and are automatically generated for each configuration defined command).

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# Copyright 2008 Michael Gorelick 
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see:
# http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.
from __future__ import division

'''A tool to allow for remote control of a machine with twitter'''

__author__ = 'Michael G '
__version__ = '0.1'

from sys import stdout
import threading, time, twitter, re, ConfigParser, subprocess

######### CONFIG FILE ##############
configfile = 'twitcontrol.conf'

class TwitThread(threading.Thread):
  def __init__(self,actions,twitter,command):
    threading.Thread.__init__(self)
    self._stop = threading.Event()  #Set the hook for self.stop()
    self.actions = actions
    self.twitter = twitter
    self.commandstruct = command
    self.process = None

  def run(self):
    '''Finds what action is linked to the inputed command'''
    command = self.commandstruct['text']
    for name,contents in self.actions.iteritems():
      found = contents['match'].match(command)
      if found:
        self.name = name
        print "%s: %s: Starting"%(time.ctime(),name)
        self.doCommand(found,command,contents)
        return None
      elif command.lower() == "stop %s"%name.lower():
        self.name = "killthread-%s"%name
        for thread in threading.enumerate():
          if thread.name.lower() == name.lower():
            print "%s: Killing %s"%(time.ctime(),name)
            thread.stop()
        return None

  def doCommand(self,match,command,action):
    '''Runs the command given by the config file for the given input'''
    if action["output"] == "start":
      self.message("%s: Started"%self.name)
    print "Running command: %s"%(action["command"]%match.groupdict())
    self.process = subprocess.Popen(action["command"]%match.groupdict(),\
      stdin=None, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
    #We use the following hack because Popen.wait() or Popen.interact() lock
    #the process so we cannot kill it if another thread sends a self.stop()
    while self.process.poll() == None:
      time.sleep(1)
    if action["output"] == "end":
      self.message("%s: Done"%self.name)
    if self.process.returncode != 0:
      err = self.formatstd(self.process.stderr)
      print "%s: %s: Error: %s"%(time.ctime(),self.name,err)
      if action["output"] == "output":
        self.message("%s: Error: %s"%(self.name,err))
    else:
      suc = self.formatstd(self.process.stdout)
      print "%s: %s: Success: %s"%(time.ctime(),self.name,suc)
      if action["output"] == "output":
        self.message("%s: Success: %s"%(self.name,suc))

  def formatstd(self,fd,maxsize=120):
    '''Extracts and formats data from a datastream'''
    return ", ".join([x.strip() for x in fd.readlines()])[:maxsize]

  def message(self,msg):
    '''Sends a tweet to the command sender truncated to 140 characters'''
    self.twitter.PostDirectMessage(self.commandstruct['sender_id'],msg[:140])

  def stop(self):
    '''Stops the current thread and terminates any open processes'''
    print "%s: %s: Thread Killed"%(time.ctime(),self.name)
    self.process.terminate()
    self._stop.set()

  def stopped(self):
    return self._stop.isSet()


class TwitControl:
  def __init__(self,actions,user,passwd,recieveID,timeout=5):
    self.actions = actions
    self.twitter = twitter.Api(username=user,password=passwd)
    self.recieveID = recieveID
    self.timeout = timeout

  def getMessages(self):
    '''Gets all directed messages from twitter from a given user'''
    return [x.AsDict() for x in self.twitter.GetDirectMessages() \
    if x.GetSenderId() == self.recieveID]

  def start(self):
    '''Checks for new messages and commands the threads'''
    commands = self.getMessages()
    numcommands = len(commands)
    while True:
      commands = self.getMessages()
      print ".",; stdout.flush()
      if len(commands) > numcommands:
        for command in commands[0:len(commands)-numcommands]:
          print "%s: MASTER: Found Command: %s"%(time.ctime(),command['text'])
          TwitThread(self.actions,self.twitter,command).start()
        numcommands = len(commands)
      elif len(commands) < numcommands:
        numcommands = len(commands)
      time.sleep(self.timeout)

if __name__ == '__main__':
  configfd = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
  configfd.read(configfile)
  print "Reading config: %s" % configfile

  username  = configfd.get('Connection', 'username')
  password  = configfd.get('Connection', 'password')
  recieveID = configfd.getint('Connection', 'recieveID')
  if configfd.has_option('Connection', 'timeout'):
    timeout = configfd.getint('Connection', 'timeout')
  else:
    timeout = 5

  actions = {}
  for section in configfd.sections():
    if section == 'Connection':
      continue
    action = {}
    action['match']   = re.compile(configfd.get(section,'match'))
    action['command'] = configfd.get(section,'command')
    action['output']  = configfd.get(section,'output')
    actions.update({section:action})
  print "Loaded modules: %s"%", ".join(actions.keys())

  print "Listening to user: %s"%username
  control = TwitControl(actions,username,password,recieveID,timeout)
  control.start()

And the following is a sample from the configuration file:

# Copyright 2008 Michael Gorelick 
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see:
# http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.

[Connection]
username = Secured Username
password = Password of secured username
recieveID = User ID of the command issuer

[reverseSSH]
match = reverse (?P(?:\d{1,3}\.?){4}) (?P\d+)
command = ssh -R %(PORT)s:localhost:22 %(IP)s
output = start

[Talk]
match = say (?P.+)
command = flite -t "%(text)s"
output = None

[Bittorrent]
match = bt (?P.+)
command = transmission-remote -a "`/home/fiber/projects/pyisohunt/pyisohunt.py -n 1 -s seeds -p '%%(url)s' %(search)s`"
output = output

The commands use regex in order to extract keywords. So basically, I can SMS 'd user say hello there' and my computer will initiate the command `flite -t "hello there"` once it receives it! I also have the output of each command regulated by the 'output' parameter on each command. It can either notify me when the command starts, when it ends, or it can send me the output of the command (or, of course, none of the above).

Now, the interesting part is the bittorrent section. Here I send the keywords to another little program I made (really just a bunch of regex and rss tricks... I'll include it at the end). This program returns the URL of the highest seeded match to the keywords from IsoHunt.com. This is sent to transmission and my server starts downloading the torrent! (I use Transmission for bittorrent on my server with the Clutch web UI) So essentially, if a friend recommends a movie (that is in the public domain, of course ;) when I am out, I can tell my server to start downloading it so it will be ready when I am home.

Also, I can set my server to start a reverse-ssh connection to any IP. This is great because I can keep my router locked down but still connect to my server from the outside. Note: normally this sets my server to set up a reverse connection to an intermediary server so that everyone can be behind a firewall, but I'd like to keep the location of this server unknown for now.

Finally, the following is the source for pyisohunt.py. It was a true hack so don't expect clean code!

#!/bin/env python
#
# Copyright 2008 Michael Gorelick 
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see:
# http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.

import feedparser, re, getopt
from sys import argv

class pyisohunt:
  def __init__(self, search,cat):
    self.search = search
    self.category = cat
    self.isohunt = feedparser.parse( \
      "http://isohunt.com/js/rss/%s?iht=%d"%(search.replace(" ","+"),cat))
    self.results = self.parse(self.isohunt.entries)

  def parse(self,entries):
    results = []
    findstats = re.compile(u"Size: (?P[0-9.]+) MB, in (?P[0-9]+) files")
    findhealth = re.compile(u"Seeds: (?P[0-9]+) \ \; \| \ \; Leechers: (?P[0-9]+) \ \; \| \ \; Downloads: (?P[0-9]+)\<")
    fieldtype = {"size":float, "files":int, "seeds":int, "leechers":int, "downloads":int, "title":unicode,"url":str} 
    for item in entries:
      tmp = {}
      tmp['title'] = item.title[:item.title.rfind('[')]
      tmp['url'] = item.enclosures[0].href
      tmp.update(findstats.search(item.summary_detail.value).groupdict())
      tmp.update(findhealth.search(item.summary_detail.value).groupdict())
      results.append(dict([(title,fieldtype[title](value)) for title,value in tmp.iteritems()]))
    return results

  def sort(self,key="seeds"):
    return sorted(self.results,lambda x, y: y[key] - x[key])

if __name__ == "__main__":
  categories = {"all":-1,"video":1,"tv":3,"audio":2,"musicvideo":10,\
                "game":4,"app":5,"pic":6,"anime":7,"comic":8,"book":9,\
                "misc":0,"unclassified":11}
  sortfields = ["size","files","seeds","leechers","downlads"]
  help = """%s [-c category] [-s sort] [-n maxresults] search
  Search through IsoHunt torrents on the commandline.  By Michael G.
  -c  Category name. Can be: """ + ", ".join(categories.keys()) + """
  -s  Sort field.  Can be: """ + ", ".join(sortfields) + """
  -p  Print string (standard python printf notation... try with '-p ""' to see fields)
  -n  Max number of results (Note: sort is applied before results are truncated\n"""

  #Default valus
  category = categories["all"]
  sortfield = "seeds"
  maxresults = None
  printf = """Title: %(title)s
  URL: %(url)s
  Size: %(size)0.2f MB
  Files: %(files)d
  Seeds: %(seeds)d
  Leechers: %(leechers)d
  Downloads: %(downloads)d
  """

  try:
    opts, args = getopt.getopt(argv[1:], "hc:s:n:p:")
  except Exception:
    print "Usage: " + help%argv[0]
    exit(1)
  errors = []
  if args == []:
    errors.append("Must have search terms!")
  else:
    search = " ".join(['"%s"'%x for x in args])
  for o, a in opts:
    if o == "-c":
      try:
        category = categories[a]
      except KeyError:
        errors.append("Invalid category")
    elif o == "-p":
      try:
        printf = str(a)
        test = a%{'files': 1, 'title': "1", 'url':"1",u'downloads': 1, u'leechers': 1, u'seeds': 1, u'size':1}
        del test
      except KeyError, e:
        errors.append("Invalid printf string: Invalid Key: %s"%",".join(e))
      except ValueError:
        errors.append("Invalid print string")
    elif o == "-s":
      if not a in sortfields:
        errors.append("Invalid sort field")
      else:
        sortfield = a
    elif o == "-n":
      try:
        maxresults = int(a)
      except ValueError:
        errors.append("Invalid max number of results (must be integer)")
    elif o == "-h":
      print help%argv[0]
      exit(0)
  if errors != []:
    print "Usage: " + help%argv[0] + "\n".join(errors)
    exit(1)

  results = pyisohunt(search,category)
  for result in results.sort(sortfield)[:maxresults]:
    if printf:
      print printf%result
    else:
      print result

Well, I don't really know what else to say about this... ask questions and I'll be sure to give you more details than you ever wanted!