pocli

Python-based command-line client for OwnCloud

Project description

https://gitlab.rzg.mpg.de/khr/poc

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pocli

Released under the MIT License (MIT), see the LICENSE file.

Introduction

The pocli package provides a lightweight OwnCloud command line client for basic file operations such as upload, download, directory creation and listing, and deletion. It is written in Python and built upon the official pyocclient package.

Requirements and installation

pocli was developed and tested with Python 2.7.12 and Python 3.5.2.

As a requirement, pocli needs the official OwnCloud Python module:

pip install --user pyocclient

The pocli package itself can be installed in the standard way from the source distribution:

python setup.py install --user

Alternatively the package including its dependencies can be installed easily via pip:

pip install --user pocli

Make sure to add the installation directory to the PATH environment variable, on a Unix system this is for example “~/.local/bin”. The previous examples pass the “–user” flag in order to work purely in the user’s homedirectory. In case this flag is omitted, system-wide locations are chosen.

Functionality examples (optional arguments are given in parentheses)

The pocli package provides the oc command. It takes positional and named arguments in analogy to e.g. git. The following examples illustrate the basic usage:

basic help

oc --help

command-specific help

oc command --help

list remote files and folders, defaults to “/”

oc ls <remote_folder>

create remote directory “temp”

oc mkdir temp

upload single file to the OwnCloud root directory

oc put file1

upload multiple files to the OwnCloud “temp” directory

oc put --directory=temp file1 file2 file3

download single file from OwnCloud to the current working directory

oc get file1

download multiple files to the local “temp” directory

oc get --directory=temp file1 file2 file3

remove remote file(s)

oc rm file1 file2

check if a connection to the server can be established successfully based on the present configuration

oc check

Under the hood

The connection to an OwnCloud instance requires a valid configuration. The configuration file in JSON format is located at “~/.ocrc” and created at the first invocation of the oc command. The default configuration is for the MPCDF datashare service, however, it can be configured freely to connect to other OwnCloud instances. No credentials are ever stored in “~/.ocrc”.

Credentials and security considerations

Security concerns arise in particular if the OwnCloud password is identical to the password used for other services at the same site.

The environment variable OC_PASSWORD may be set to a valid password, for security reasons using the ocpasswd bash function from ocpasswd.sh in order to prevent the plain text password from showing up in the shell history. Execute the commands source ocpasswd.bash followed by ocpasswd. Support for other shells may follow later. When using OC_PASSWORD, unset it or close the shell as soon as possible after the file transfer operations have been done.

In case the environment variable OC_PASSWORD is not set the oc command asks for the password at each invocation.