How to copy files to network path or drive using Python

user218976 picture user218976 · Apr 13, 2010 · Viewed 29.2k times · Source

Mine is similar to this question.

How to copy a file from a network share to local disk with variables?

The only difference is my network drive has a password protect with username and password.

I need to copy files to a Samba share using Python and verify it.

If I manually login in then the code works, but without logging in the shutil command does not work.

Answer

Tamás picture Tamás · Apr 13, 2010

I'd try mapping the share to an unused drive letter by calling the NET USE command using os.system (assuming you are on Windows):

os.system(r"NET USE P: \\ComputerName\ShareName %s /USER:%s\%s" % (password, domain_name, user_name))

After you mapped the share to a drive letter, you can use shutil.copyfile to copy the file to the given drive. Finally, you should unmount the share:

os.system(r"NET USE P: /DELETE")

Of course this works only on Windows, and you will have to make sure that the drive letter P is available. You can check the return code of the NET USE command to see whether the mount succeeded; if not, you can try a different drive letter until you succeed.

Since the two NET USE commands come in pair and the second one should always be executed when the first one was executed (even if an exception was raised somewhere in between), you might wrap these two calls in a context manager if you are using Python 2.5 or later:

from contextlib import contextmanager

@contextmanager
def network_share_auth(share, username=None, password=None, drive_letter='P'):
    """Context manager that mounts the given share using the given
    username and password to the given drive letter when entering
    the context and unmounts it when exiting."""
    cmd_parts = ["NET USE %s: %s" % (drive_letter, share)]
    if password:
        cmd_parts.append(password)
    if username:
        cmd_parts.append("/USER:%s" % username)
    os.system(" ".join(cmd_parts))
    try:
        yield
    finally:
        os.system("NET USE %s: /DELETE" % drive_letter)

with network_share_auth(r"\\ComputerName\ShareName", username, password):
     shutil.copyfile("foo.txt", r"P:\foo.txt")