connect wifi with python or linux terminal

linux, networking, python, raspberry-pi, wifi

Solution

Here is a general approach using python `os` module and Linux `iwlist` command for searching through the list of wifi devices and `nmcli` command in order to connect to a the intended device.

In this code the run function finds the SSID of devices that match with your specified name (which can be a regex pattern or a unique part of the server name) then connects to all the devices that match with your expected criteria, by calling the `connection` function.

"""
Search for a specific wifi ssid and connect to it.
written by Mazdak.
"""
import os


class WifiFinder:
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.server_name = kwargs['server_name']
        self.password = kwargs['password']
        self.interface_name = kwargs['interface']
        self.main_dict = {}

    def run(self):
        command = """sudo iwlist wlp2s0 scan | grep -ioE 'ssid:"(.*{}.*)'"""
        result = os.popen(command.format(self.server_name))
        result = list(result)

        if "Device or resource busy" in result:
                return None
        else:
            ssid_list = [item.lstrip('SSID:').strip('"\n') for item in result]
            print("Successfully get ssids {}".format(str(ssid_list)))

        for name in ssid_list:
            try:
                result = self.connection(name)
            except Exception as exp:
                print("Couldn't connect to name : {}. {}".format(name, exp))
            else:
                if result:
                    print("Successfully connected to {}".format(name))

    def connection(self, name):
        try:
            os.system("nmcli d wifi connect {} password {} iface {}".format(name,
       self.password,
       self.interface_name))
        except:
            raise
        else:
            return True

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Server_name is a case insensitive string, and/or regex pattern which demonstrates
    # the name of targeted WIFI device or a unique part of it.
    server_name = "example_name"
    password = "your_password"
    interface_name = "your_interface_name" # i. e wlp2s0  
    WF = WifiFinder(server_name=server_name,
               password=password,
               interface=interface_name)
    WF.run()

Problem

I am trying to connect to wifi through python and linux terminal but in both cases it is not working with me. For python, I am using this library https://wifi.readthedocs.org/en/latest/scanning.html scanning and saving the scheme is working fine but whenever I type this line of code scheme.activate() and I get no output Any ideas what is wrong with the library and if you have used it before or not?? I tried also to connect to WiFi networks using the CLI. I Googled and found that I should do these three statements 1- iwlist wlan0 scan // to scan the wireess networks 2- iwconfig wlan0 essid "Mywirelessnetwork" // to associate with the network 3- dhclient wla0 // To get an UP Whenever I do step 2 and then check iwconfig wlan0 I found that the wireless interface is not associated !! Any ideas ??? What I am trying to do is to have a library of a way to connect to the wifi preferably through a python function or a library and tested on raspberry PI because I am building some applications that require network connection.

Original source