Question

As a small project I created a small chatroom. The code follows, may I point out that I am new to programming so the structure may not be efficient:

import re, time
user_name = 0
password = 0
chatroom = 0

from users import users
def startup():
      global user_name, password, chatroom
      print "\n" * 100
      user_name = raw_input("Your username: ").upper()
      if users.has_key(str(user_name).lower()) == True:
            password = str(raw_input("Password: "))
            while str(users[user_name.lower()]) != str(password):
                  print "Incorrect password."
                  time.sleep(2)
                  startup()
            else:
                  chatroom = raw_input("Room name: ").lower()
                  chat()
      else:
            print "Invalid username."
            time.sleep(2)
            startup()

def showchat():
      global user_name
      file = open(str(chatroom) + ".txt","r+")
      messages = str(file.read()[-700:])
      file.close
      messages = messages.rstrip('\n')
      print "\n" * 40
      print messages
      print "------ type 'r' to refresh the screen ------"

def writechat():
      global user_name, chatroom
      n = raw_input("________________________________________________________" + "\n" + user_name + ": ")      
      if user_name.lower() == 'admin':
            if n == "clear":
                  file = open(str(chatroom) + ".txt","w")
                  file.write("")
                  file.close
            elif n == "addnewuser":
                  x = "'" + raw_input("new username: ") + "'"
                  y = "'" + raw_input("new password: ") + "'"
                  file = open("users.py","r").read()
                  file = file.replace("'username' : 'password',", x + " : " + y + "," + "'username' : 'password',")
                  open("users.py","w").write(file)
            elif n == "r":
                  chat()
            elif n == "logout":
                  startup()
            else:
                  file = open(str(chatroom) + ".txt","a")
                  file.write(user_name + ": " + str(n) + "\n")
                  file.close()
      else:
            if n == "r":
                  chat()
            elif n == "changepassword":
                  file = open("users.py","r")
                  file.read()
                  oldpass = raw_input("New password: ")
                  users[user_name.lower()] = oldpass
                  print users
                  file.close()
                  file = open("users.py","w")
                  file.write("users = " + str(users))         #here
                  file.close()
            elif n == "logout":
                  startup()
            else:
                  file = open(str(chatroom) + ".txt","a")
                  file.write(user_name + ": " + str(n) + "\n")
                  file.close()

def chat():
      showchat()
      writechat()
      chat()


startup()

This code works perfectly fine in python as long as a chatroom.txt file exists as well as users.py.
The problem occurs once I convert it to .exe, it works fine except that the users.py file does not get written permanently (it does temporarily) when it should, the relevant coding is marked #here.

my setup code is as follows:

from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe, sys, os

sys.argv.append('py2exe')

setup(
    options = {'py2exe' : {
'packages': ['users'],
"bundle_files" : 2,
}},
    console = [{'script': "chatroom.py"}],
    zipfile = None,
)

users.py is simply just a dictionary of (user:password):

users = {
'admin' : '2588619',
'john' : '1234',
'username' : 'password',
}

so how do I convert it to .exe and make it so users.py gets written permanently?

Answer 1

The package created by py2exe is simply an auto-extracting archive that contains a python interpreter and your program. Everytime the .exe is run everything inside gets extracted in a temporary directory and the program is run by the extracted interpreter.
This means that what you’re trying to achieve is simply not possible if you put users.py together with the source code.

You should create a users.py file in some user directory, for example:

users = open(os.path.join(os.path.expanduser('~'), '_MyProgram', 'users.py'))

Obviously you should also make sure that this directory exists, and eventually create it.

This can be done automatically by py2exe passing the data_files parameter.