/CNLabAssignment1-source

Primary LanguageJupyter Notebook

How to use python files ?

The python source code files which provide automation include

  • Q1_ping_automation_draft.py
  • add_column_names.py

Other python / ipython files are my approach to the assignment questions. They provide the code for the content(solutions) of the markdown in this repo.

Q1_ping_automation_draft.py

This file provides code for scrapping data from the website mentioned in the first question of the Assignment - [http://www.spfld.com/ping.html]

First things first

Things to keep in mind while using the file:

  • Install all required libraries beforehand. Either do a pip install or manually install them in the appropriate environment if using Anaconda (recommended).
  • Selenium is the most important package to be installed.
  • Install geckodriver for firefox and export it to PATH.
  • Copy the source code py file to a fresh directory and execute from that directory.

Changes to be made to code

  • host_name should be changed to whatever host you wish to ping.
  • Similarly, packet_size must also be changed if you wish to use other than 64 bytes, which is default.
host_name = "no-reverse-dns-configured.com"
packet_size = str(64)
  • The range in for loop is set to iterate 20 times, as per question.
for x in range (20):
  • Change the file name when writing to .csv file for a host other than the one used previously. This is to provide convenience and better manageability. However, it is not compulsory.
with open(r'data_host2.csv', 'a', newline='') as csvfile:

add_column_names.py

This file provides code for adding the header to the csv files generated from Q1_ping_automation_draft.py

Changes to be made to code

  • Change the file name at both occurences to the file-name.csv which was generated for a particular host from previous code. You can manually check the working directory for the presence of csv files.
with open(r'data_host5.csv',newline='') as f:
    r = csv.reader(f)
    data = [line for line in r]
with open(r'data_host2.csv','w',newline='') as f:

TO DO

  • Put a method/ line of code for header row to csv file generated in Q1_ping_automation_draft.py so that there is no need for add_column_names.py
  • Add time.sleep() in Q1_ping_automation_draft.py so as to fully automate the process for different times of the day.
  • Make a list of all hosts to be pinged so as to remove the pain of manually changing host_name every time a new host has to be pinged. Iterate over that list.
  • Add if...else or try...except clause to handle the condition when packet loss is 100%
  • Write code to automatic change the file-name.csv when the host_name is changed.
  • Check why does webdriver stops sometimes on fewer than 20 iterations.
  • Add geographical location information to the dictionary dict_ping_details by scrapping the website - [https://check-host.net]