Tag Archives: http

Droopy : Very simple HTTP file uploads

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Droopy : Very simple HTTP file uploads

Summary

Droopy is a mini web server which makes allowing file uploads very easy

I just want to upload this file !

I’ve been writing a system which shares processing tasks across two machines.

Part of this involved shipping an image file from one machine to the other; doing some stuff to the file and then; bringing the file back again.

I was looking around for easy ways to move the files and I found droopy .

To quote the author, Pierre  Duqeusne, “Droopy is a mini Web server whose sole purpose is to let others upload files to your computer”. It’s a single python script so as long you’ve got Python installed starting the server is as simple as this

python droopy --message "Upload the bb images here" --picture 0.jpg --dl 8080

And you’re ready to upload files immediately

Image in screendump courtesy of paloetic via flickr

Because of the `–dl` argument used to launch droopy in my example above you also have the option to download files from the same director you’re uploading to.

How I used it

Uploading Files using Requests and Droopy

My solution was written in python so uploading files to the droopy server was very easy using the excellent requests library

def uploadfile(filepath, uploadurl, fileformelementname="upfile"):
    '''
    This will invoke an upload to the webserver
    on the VM
    '''

    files = {fileformelementname : open(filepath,'rb')}
    r = requests.post(uploadurl, files=files)
    return r.status_code

uploadStatus = uploadfile(currentFile.fullpath, UPLOADURL, "upfile")

Download Files using urllib and Droopy

I can’t now remember why but I decided to do the download using urllib instead of Requests

def downloadfile(filename, dloadurl, outputdirectory):
    '''
    Pull the converted file off the droopy server
    '''

    fullurl = urljoin(dloadurl, filename)
    fulloutputpath = os.path.join(outputdirectory, 'divided', filename)

    urllib.urlretrieve(fullurl, fulloutputpath)

downloadfile(currentFile.outputName, DOWNLOADURL, IMGDIR)

Summary

Droopy provides a very useful, very simple web server for both uploading and downloading files. Combined with Python it makes a very useful facility for moving files around under programmtic control.

Versions

All of the above was done on Python 2.7.x.

Crazy little thing called : SimpleHTTPServer

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Crazy little thing called : SimpleHTTPServer

Summary

Python brings you a one line web-server !

Simplest webserver ever !

I was logged onto a tiny VPS I use sometimes and thinking it would be useful to have a web-server to help move a few files off it. The thought of installing a ‘real’ web-server seemed a bit much for what would five minutes of use so I started thinking about Python (of course !).

It turns out that you can fire up a (completely unsecured and rather wild-west) web server like this :

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

When you type that command the current directory becomes the root of a web-resource, accessible via port 8000 – rather than the default port 80 we usually use for HTTP, and any files, and sub-directories, in the current directory can be accessed like this

http://mylittlevps.kubadev.com:8000/thefileIwant.txt

and, for stuff in sub-directories, like this

http://mylittlevps.kubadev.com:8000/foo/bar/anotherfileIwant.txt

Don’t say you weren’t warned

There are of course all sort of circumstances where doing this would be a REALLY BAD IDEA ™ but all the same it’s nice to know it’s there if you need it !