How to answer to prompts automatically with python fabric?
Solution 1:
Starting from version 1.9
, Fabric includes a way of managing this properly.
The section about Prompts in the Fabric documentation says:
The prompts dictionary allows users to control interactive prompts. If a key in the dictionary is found in a command’s standard output stream, Fabric will automatically answer with the corresponding dictionary value.
You should be able to make Fabric automatically answer prompts like this:
with settings(prompts={'Do you want to continue [Y/n]? ': 'Y'}):
run('apt-get update')
run('apt-get upgrade')
Solution 2:
I have used simple echo pipes to answer prompts with Fabric.
run('echo "yes\n"| my_command')
Solution 3:
Note: this answer is several years old, and in the mean time fabric has (interestingly similar looking) implementation of this. See the answer by @timothée-jeannin below.
See https://stackoverflow.com/a/10007635/708221
pip install fexpect
from ilogue.fexpect import expect, expecting, run
prompts = []
prompts += expect('What is your name?','John')
prompts += expect('Are you at stackoverflow?','Yes')
with expecting(prompts):
run('my_command')
Fexpect adds answering to prompts to fabric with use of pexpect
Solution 4:
To expand a bit on Timothée's excellent answer, here's the code that Fabric uses when checking the prompts
dictionary.
def _get_prompt_response(self):
"""
Iterate through the request prompts dict and return the response and
original request if we find a match
"""
for tup in env.prompts.iteritems():
if _endswith(self.capture, tup[0]):
return tup
return None, None
Fabric uses .endswith
for its check, so make sure you include trailing spaces in the string you use as a key in the prompts
dictionary.
For example - let's say you are trying to automate the Django test database prompt
Type 'yes' if you would like to try deleting the test database 'test_my_app', or 'no' to cancel:
All we need is enough of the end of the prompt so that it is unique. Include trailing spaces.
django_test_database_prompt = "or 'no' to cancel: "
# won't work without this trailing space ^
with settings(
prompts={django_test_database_prompt : 'yes'}
):
run('%s %s' % (virtualenv_python_path,
test_runner_file_path,
)
)