Ubuntu – How to call a dialog for authentication

application-developmentpythonSecurity

I am writing a gui program using wx module in python. In program whenever I am accessing a folder which requires root privilege then it asks password at terminal but I want to display the dialog to user to enter the password and authenticate him. How to call that dialog and authenticate the user in ubuntu?

Best Answer

There are two different Q&As at stackoverflow answering your question: here and here.

Both answers use the command gksudo (already mentioned by @khamer). If you run gksudo command (also without python) it will basically do what sudo does, but with a graphical interface - i.e. ask the user for a password and then run the command as root if the user is in the sudoers file.

To implement the suggested solution from the linked answers in python, you can use something as shown by the following example:

Create a file run.py:

#!/usr/bin/python

import subprocess
subprocess.call(['gksudo','python create.py'])

And a file create.py:

#!/usr/bin/python

# Create test file..
f = file("mytestfile", "w")

Then run python run.py and after you enter your password a file owned by root will be created. If you run python create.py it will be owned by you (the file should not exist before running the script).

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Connect WebKit WebView form to a Python callback

Ways to communicate from an embedded WebKit widget to the controlling Python program

Gtk or Qt:

set window.status from JavaScript; trap the corresponding event in Python
set document.title from JavaScript; trap the corresponding event in Python
redirect the page to a custom URL (say, x-my-app:thing1/thing2/thing3); trap navigation-policy-decision-requested event in Python and look at the URL that's being navigated to, and deal with it if it's your custom URL scheme

Qt only:

use frame.addToJavaScriptWindowObject to add a (specifically designed) Python object to the JavaScript global namespace; call methods on it from JavaScript. (See http://pysnippet.blogspot.com/2010/01/calling-python-from-javascript-in-pyqts.html for an example.)

Methods which theoretically should work but in practice don't, very well

Fire a custom DOM event on an HTML element (which would include the document object) from JavaScript; trap that event in Python by navigating the WebKit DOM from Python and listening for events. This works, but I can't find a way of having Python be able to read custom data from the event, which means that you can't pass information other than the event having fired.

Ways to communicate from Python to JavaScript

use webview.execute_script(js_code). Note that if you're passing variable values in with the JS, it's a good idea to JSON encode them; that way you can worry a bit less about escaping, and JS can read JSON natively

Here's some example Gtk code:

from gi.repository import Gtk,WebKit
import json

w = Gtk.Window()
v = WebKit.WebView()
sw = Gtk.ScrolledWindow()
w.add(sw)
sw.add(v)
w.set_size_request(400,300)
w.connect("destroy", lambda q: Gtk.main_quit())
def window_title_change(v, param):
    if not v.get_title():
        return
    if v.get_title().startswith("msgtopython:::"):
        message = v.get_title().split(":::",1)[1]
        # Now, send a message back to JavaScript
        return_message = "You chose '%s'. How interesting." % message
        v.execute_script("jscallback(%s)" % json.dumps(return_message))
v.connect("notify::title", window_title_change)
v.load_html_string("""<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>A demo</title>
<style>
body { font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; }
h1 { font-size: 1.3em; }
</style>
<body>
<h1>A tiny JavaScript demonstration</h1>
<form>
<p>What's your favourite thing about Jono? <select>
    <option>------choose one------</option>
    <option>his beard</option>
    <option>his infectious sense of humour</option>
    <option>his infectious diseases</option>
    <option>his guitar ability</option>
    <option>his wife</option>
</select></p>
</form>
<p id="out"></p>

<script>
document.querySelector("select").addEventListener("change", function() {
    var chosenOption = this.options[this.selectedIndex].text;
    // Now send that text back to Python by setting the title
    document.title = "msgtopython:::" + chosenOption;
}, false);
function jscallback(msg) {
    document.getElementById("out").innerHTML = msg;
}
</script>

</body>
</html>
""", "file:///")
w.show_all()
Gtk.main()

Install a Recommended Package When User Requests Action

If you're using python, python-aptdaemon-gtk is probably the way to go. For a good example of how to do this, look at /usr/share/doc/python-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets/examples/gtk3-demo.py.gz

You get nice install prompts like:

install prompt

In the case of using C++, you could could use the AptDaemon D-Bus interface, but I don't know of any examples and you wouldn't get the widgets for free.

The D-Bus API of AptDaemon is documented here: http://packages.python.org/aptdaemon/dbus.html

I can't find much in the way of C++ DBus tutorials on the web, so your best bet is probably the documentation and examples in the libdbus-c++-doc Install libdbus-c++-doc package.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Connect WebKit WebView form to a Python callback

Install a Recommended Package When User Requests Action

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