How to copy a file to a remote server in Python using SCP or SSH?

Question

I have a text file on my local machine that is generated by a daily Python script run in cron.

I would like to add a bit of code to have that file sent securely to my server over SSH.

Answer 1

To do this in Python (i.e. not wrapping scp through subprocess.Popen or similar) with the Paramiko library, you would do something like this:

import os
import paramiko

ssh = paramiko.SSHClient() 
ssh.load_host_keys(os.path.expanduser(os.path.join("~", ".ssh", "known_hosts")))
ssh.connect(server, username=username, password=password)
sftp = ssh.open_sftp()
sftp.put(localpath, remotepath)
sftp.close()
ssh.close()

(You would probably want to deal with unknown hosts, errors, creating any directories necessary, and so on).