iwlib is a package for interfacing with iwlib, providing an implementation to the wireless tools in Linux.

While very incomplete at the moment, it aims to eventually become a complete implementation, as features become necessary. If you find some functionality missing, feel free to contribute to the project, or create an issue on the bug tracker.

Currently it provides what I consider the bare minimum to become useful - scanning, setting the ESSID of a device, and getting the current configuration back from a device.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html

Installation requires the Python developer tools, and wireless_tools package for compilation. If Python.h and iwlib.h exist on your system, you should be good to go.

$ pip install iwlib

Depending on your linux distro, the package name may change. But this is tested on Ubuntu 17 $ sudo apt-get install libiw-dev

1.5 (1st October 2014) - Added support for Python 3

1.4 (12th June 2014) - Fixed incompatibility with wireless_tools version 30.pre9 - Fixed build error that resulted in iwconfig and iwlist not being built. - Minor cleanups - Feels "snappier"

1.3.1 (2nd April 2013) - Fixed packaging issue involving missing header files.

1.3 (24th March 2013) - Added iwlib.utils module. See documentation for details. - Added iwlib.iwlist module. See documentation for details. - Added function set_essid, to iwlib.iwconfig.

1.2.1 (21st March 2013) - Initial release of code, as it was when I inherited it.

Run following command in a bash shell to see the available wireless interfaces
$ iwconfig

('wlan0' is very common, so that is what we will use for this quick guide)

Now in the python interactive Shell,
>> import iwlib
>> interface = 'wlan0'
>> iwlib.get_iwconfig(interface)
{'BitRate': b'72.2 Mb/s', 'ESSID': b'AP_SSID', 'Access Point': b'AP_MAC', 'stats': {'quality': 45, 'noise': 0, 'updated': 75, 'level': 191}, 'Frequency': b'2.422 GHz', 'Mode': b'Managed'}

The dict's values are byte strings. You can use b'xyz'.decode('utf-8') to decode them into python strings.

Finally, here's the docstring for the function
>> print(iwlib.get_iwconfig.__doc__)
Retrieve the current configuration of an interface.
Arguments:
- device to work on (e.g. eth1, wlan0).