muxnect 0.1.1

Send input to just about any interactive command-line tool

Send input to just about any interactive command-line tool on the local network.

muxnect is a tool that invokes tmux to create a session and then wraps around its method of sending mouse-events or key-strokes to the terminal through a local web server.

Quick Introduction

A bare-bones method to muxnect any interactive CLI tool:

$ muxnect -w nice_app -c <some_interactive_tool>

Now just nail up some POST requests to http://localhost:6060/muxnect/nice_app:

Let’s try using Python:

>>> import requests
>>> url = 'http://localhost:6060/muxnect/nice_app'
>>> requests.post(url, data={'keys': 'wonderful keystrokes'})
<Response [200]>

That’s it, our web server just sent wonderful keystrokes to <some_interactive_tool>.

Examples

Okay, that probably left you confused.

Here are some cool examples to cover up:

Hello World - Python

Here we’ll print hello world in Python through muxnect.

Let’s call muxnect to launch a Python console where it is supposed to print hello world:

$ muxnect -w hello_world -c python

Now hook up another Python console and using it let’s send a POST request to muxnect’s server:

>>> import requests
>>> url = 'http://localhost:6060/muxnect/hello_world'
>>> keys = 'print("Hello World!")'
# send return key after it is done sending `keys`
>>> requests.post(url, data={'keys':keys, 'enter':'true'})
<Response [200]>
# send EOF (Ctrl+d) to session
>>> requests.post(url, data={'keys':'C-d'})
<Response [200]>

(of course, you can use any good way to make POST requests and not just stay limited to Python requests)

There’s our Hello World! on the Python console we launched through muxnect.

We’re done. Exit the running tmux session in muxnect with Ctrl+d.

Control Media Playback

For a real-world example, let’s try controlling media playback in mpv-player.

You can install mpv from apt if you don’t have it already.

Let’s play some video though mpv using muxnect:

$ muxnect -w playback -c "mpv --loop-file https://github.com/mediaelement/mediaelement-files/raw/master/big_buck_bunny.mp4"

Hold for the video to show up and now then send input to this running instance of mpv:

>>> import requests
>>> url = 'http:'//localhost:6060/muxnect/playback'
# space key pauses the video in mpv by default
>>> requests.post(url, data={'keys':' '})
# kill this tmux session
>>> requests.post(url, data={'kill':'true'})
<Response [200]>

Syntactic Sugar

muxnect also provides a simple API for Python to make POST requests:

>>> import muxnect
>>> url = 'http://localhost:6060/muxnect/cute_cli'
>>> client = muxnect.Client(url, default_data={'enter':'true'})
>>> client.send('type this, press enter and kill session', data={'kill':'true'})

Installation

You must have [tmux](https://github.com/tmux/tmux) installed to use this., You may have to install it from source, if it is not present in your apt repositories.

Install the latest stable release from pypa:

pip install muxnect

Install the latest development version:

git clone https://github.com/ritiek/muxnect
cd muxnect
python setup.py install

Usage

usage: muxnect [-h] -c CMD -w WINDOW_NAME [-d] [-s SESSION_NAME]
                 [-b BIND_ADDRESS] [-p PORT]

Send input to just about any interactive command-line tool

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d, --detach          detach from ongoing session (default: False)
  -s SESSION_NAME, --session-name SESSION_NAME
                        tmux's session name (default: muxnect)
  -b BIND_ADDRESS, --bind-address BIND_ADDRESS
                        address to bind on, local network: 0.0.0.0 (default:
                        127.0.0.1)
  -p PORT, --port PORT  port number to listen on (default: 6060)

required arguments:
  -c CMD, --cmd CMD     interactive command to send input to (default: None)
  -w WINDOW_NAME, --window-name WINDOW_NAME
                        tmux's window name (default: None)

Why muxnect though?

tmux + connect = muxnect :heart:

License