Question

I’ve been trying to pass my login and password from Python script to the eBay sign-in page. Later I want this script to be run from “Google App Engine”

I was suggested to use “mechanize“. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me:

---

IDLE 1.2.4      
>>> import re
>>> import mechanize
>>> br = mechanize.Browser()
>>> br.open("https://signin.ebay.com")

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#3>", line 1, in <module>
    br.open("https://signin.ebay.com")
  File "build\bdist.win32\egg\mechanize\_mechanize.py", line 203, in open
    return self._mech_open(url, data, timeout=timeout)
  File "build\bdist.win32\egg\mechanize\_mechanize.py", line 255, in _mech_open
    raise response
httperror_seek_wrapper: HTTP Error 403: request disallowed by robots.txt
>>> 

---

Earlier I was trying to use Python and twill – it didn’t work either until one supporter suggested that I download the latest version of mechanize and then perform the following steps:

1. Locate the following folder on my computer: “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\twill\other_packages\_mechanize_dist“

2. Change its name to “_mechanize_dist_backup” (the full path, thus, should be “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\twill\other_packages\_mechanize_dist_backup“)

3. Copy the “mechanize” folder (which is located in “mechanize-0.2.2” – the folder that I had downloaded and unzipped from the “mechanize” official site) and paste it in “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\twill\other_packages” (the full path, thus, being “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\twill\other_packages\mechanize“)

4. Change its name to “_mechanize_dist” (the full path being “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\twill\other_packages_mechanize_dist“)

5. Copy “ClientForm” file from “_mechanize_dist_backup” and paste it in “_mechanize_dist” (in fact, I found there two files named “ClientForm“: one is a python file, another one is a compiled python file – I copied and pasted both of them).

After I had performed all these steps, I tried to log in to my eBay account from the twill shell in Python and it worked!!! I could even log in to my Yahoo mail box in the same way and check my mails!

But now I have a dilemma: I don’t know how I could deploy my script to “Google App Engine“.

Earlier I had been advised that if I want to use third-party libraries in App Engine projects, I simply have to include them with my application when I deploy it – in case with twill, for example, I just need to copy the twill folder into my application’s folder and deploy it.

But now not only do I have this twill folder as a third-party library to be included, but also all these changes performed in “C:\Python25” (in “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\twill\other_packages“, to be precise) while my application folder – the one in which I have my script (“my_script.py” file) – is located on “E” disk.

Can anybody, please, give me some suggestions here?

Answer 1

As for GAE deployment issue, @brilliant, looks like the code you’re dealing is all pure python 2.5 (the only really blocking issue would be if it isn’t — no binary extensions allowed, no code requiring Python 2.6 or better allowed, and that’s just the way it is on GAE at this time).

So, under this assumption, the only issue w/deploying the code on App Engine is having all the code, NOT in site-packages (from which of course GAE’s dev_appserver.py deploys absolutely nothing, nada, zilch), but rather in your GAE project’s directory (I suggest a recursive zip of all the .py files, only — remove all the .pyc files, in particular, before you zip -r it;-).

All in all, it’s just a question of a couple of appropriate shell commands: cp -R then zip -r (probably harder on non-unixy shells, but, hey, even on Windows you can do it with bash from cygwin… in any case, it’s hardly a “development” issue, per se;-).