pycpg Basics

This guide explains the basic concepts of pycpg. Learning these basics can help you gain confidence in writing your own scripts.

pycpg Basics

The examples from this guide are intended as blanket concepts that apply to other areas in pycpg. For example, paging over users and devices works the same way as over departing employees and alerts.

Initialization

To use pycpg, you must initialize the SDK:

import pycpg.sdk

sdk = pycpg.sdk.from_local_account("https://console.us1.crashplan.com", "my_username", "my_password")

If your account uses two-factor authentication, include the time-based one-time password:

sdk = pycpg.sdk.from_local_account("https://console.u1.crashplan.com", "my_username", "my_password", totp="123456")

Alternatively, define a function that returns the time-based one-time password:

def promptForPassword():
    return input("Please input your authentication code: ")

sdk = pycpg.sdk.from_local_account("https://console.us1.crashplan.com", "my_username", "my_password", totp=promptForPassword)

Alternatively, define a function that returns the auth token based on user’s authentication approach

import json
import requests
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth
def jwt_provider():
    res = requests.get(
            'https://console.us1.crashplan.com/api/v3/auth/jwt?useBody=true',
            auth=HTTPBasicAuth('username', 'password')
          )
    res_json = json.loads(res.text)
    return res_json['data']['v3_user_token']

sdk_client = pycpg.sdk.from_jwt_provider("https://console.us1.crashplan.com", jwt_provider)

Paging

pycpg clients often have a method with the name (or name prefix) get_all which handles iterating over pages of response items. Here are some examples:

pycpg.sdk.devices.get_all()
pycpg.sdk.users.get_all()
pycpg.sdk.legalhold.get_all_matters()
pycpg.sdk.orgs.get_all()

These methods each return a python generator. Looping over the pages returned by the generator gives you access to the actual list of items. Use the code snippet below as an example for working with generators and paging in pycpg:

# Prints the userUid and device name for all active devices

pages = sdk.devices.get_all(active=True,include_backup_usage=True)  # pages has 'generator' type
for page in pages:  # page has 'PycpgResponse' type
    devices = page["computers"]
    for device in devices:
        userUid = device["userUid"]
        name = device["name"]
        print(f"{userUid}: {name}")

Each page is a typical pycpg response. The next section covers what you can do with PycpgResponse objects.

PycpgResponse

pycpg clients return PycpgResponse objects which are intentionally similar to requests.Response objects. The PycpgResponse class hides unneeded metadata found on the raw requests.Response.text (which is available as PycpgResponse.raw_text), making it easier to get the most useful parts of the response. Also, the object is subscriptable, meaning you can access it with keys or indices (depending on the JSON type underneath data on CrashPlan API responses):

user = response["users"][0]
item = list_response[0]["itemProperty"]

To see all the keys on a response, observe its .text attribute. By printing the response, you essentially print its text property:

# Prints details about the response from a getting a detection list user.

response = sdk.devices.get_by_guid("test.user@example.com")
print(response)  # JSON as Dictionary - same as print(response.text)
print(response.raw_text)  # Raw API response
print(response.status_code)  # 200
alert_state = response["alertStates"]
# if the response might not contain the property you're looking for,
# check to see if it exists with data.get
alert_state = response.data.get("alertStates")
if alert_state:
    print(alert_state)

Dates

Most dates in pycpg support POSIX timestamps for date parameters. As an example, see :class:sdk.legalhold.get_all_events which is used for querying legal hold events by their event timestamp.

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

import pycpg.sdk
import pycpg.util

sdk = pycpg.sdk.from_local_account("https://console.us1.crashplan.com", "my_username", "my_password")

# Get the epoch date 14 days in the past
event_date = datetime.now(datetime.UTC) - timedelta(days=14)
event_epoch = (event_date - datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0)).total_seconds()

#print all the event types for all events in the past 14 days
hold_events = sdk.legalhold.get_all_events(min_event_date=event_epoch)
for event in hold_events:
    print(['eventType'])

Exceptions

pycpg throws some of its own exceptions when failures occur. pycpg exceptions are found in the pycpg.sdk.exceptions module. Some of the available exceptions are:

PycpgForbiddenError: (403) With your currently signed-in account, you don’t have the necessary permissions to perform the action you were trying to do.
PycpgUnauthorizedError: (401) The username or password is incorrect.
PycpgInternalServerError: (500) Likely an unhandled issue on our servers.

For example, you are making a create_sdk() function and want to print a more user-friendly message when the provided username or password are incorrect:

import keyring
import pycpg.sdk
from pycpg.exceptions import PycpgUnauthorizedError


def create_sdk(username):
    """Tries to initialize SDK. If unauthorized, prints message and exits."""
    try:
        password = keyring.get_password("my_program", username)
        return pycpg.sdk.from_local_account("www.authority.example.com", username, password)
    except PycpgUnauthorizedError:
        print("Invalid username or password.")
        exit(1)