libnmap.process
===============

Purpose of libnmap.process
--------------------------

The purpose of this module is to enable the lib users to launch and control nmap scans. This module will consequently fire the nmap command following the specified parameters provided in the constructor.

It is to note that this module will not perform a full inline parsing of the data. Only specific events are parsed and exploitable via either a callback function defined by the user and provided in the constructor or by running the process in the background and accessing the NmapProcess attributes while the scan is running.

To run an nmap scan, you need to:

- instantiate NmapProcess
- call the run*() methods

Raw results of the scans will be available in the following properties:

- NmapProcess.stdout: string, XML output
- NmapProcess.stderr: string, text error message from nmap process

To instantiate an NmapProcess instance, call the constructor with the appropriate parameters

Processing of events
--------------------

While Nmap is running, some events are processed and parsed. This would enable you to:

- evaluate estimated time to completion and progress in percentage
- find out which task is running and how many nmap tasks have been executed
- know the start time and nmap version

As you may know, depending on the nmap options you specified, nmap will execute several tasks like "DNS Resolve", "Ping Scan", "Connect Scan", "NSE scripts",... This is of course independent from libnmap but the lib is able to parse these tasks and will instantiate a NmapTask object for any task executed. The list of executed task is available via the following properties:

- NmapProcess.tasks: list of NmapTask object (executed nmap tasks)
- NmapProcess.current_task: returns the currently running NmapTask

You will find below the list of attributes you can use when dealing with NmapTask:

- name: task name (check nmap documentation for the complete list)
- etc: unix timestamp of estimated time to completion
- progress: estimated percentage of task completion
- percent: estimated percentage of task completion (same as progress)
- remaining: estimated number of seconds to completion
- status: status of the task ('started' or 'ended')
- starttime: unix timestamp of when the task started
- endtime: unix timestamp of when the task ended, 0 if not completed yet
- extrainfo: extra information stored for specific tasks
- updated: unix timestamp of last data update for this task

Using libnmap.process
---------------------

This modules enables you to launch nmap scans with simples python commands::

    from libnmap.process import NmapProcess
    
    nm = NmapProcess("scanme.nmap.org", options="-sV")
    rc = nm.run()
    
    if nm.rc == 0:
        print nm.stdout
    else:
        print nm.stderr

This module is also able to trigger a callback function provided by the user. This callback will be triggered each time nmap returns data to the lib.
It is to note that the lib forces nmap to return its status (progress and etc) every two seconds. The event callback could then play around with those values while running.

To go a bit further, you can always use the threading capabilities of the NmapProcess class and run the class in the background

.. literalinclude:: ../examples/proc_async.py

The above code will print out the following on standard output::

    (pydev)[dev@bouteille python-nmap-lib]$ python examples/proc_async.py
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 0 DONE: 0%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433951 DONE: 2.45%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433932 DONE: 13.55%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433930 DONE: 25.35%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433931 DONE: 33.40%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433932 DONE: 41.50%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433931 DONE: 52.90%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433931 DONE: 62.55%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433930 DONE: 75.55%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433931 DONE: 81.35%
    Nmap Scan running: ETC: 1369433931 DONE: 99.99%
    rc: 0 output: Nmap done at Sat May 25 00:18:51 2013; 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 22.02 seconds
    (pydev)[dev@bouteille python-nmap-lib]$

Another and last example of a simple use of the NmapProcess class. The code below prints out the scan results a la nmap

.. literalinclude:: ../examples/proc_nmap_like.py

The above code will print out the following on standard output::

    (pydev)[dev@bouteille python-nmap-lib]$ python examples/proc_nmap_like.py
    Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at Sat May 25 00:14:54 2013
    Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
    Host is up.
      PORT     STATE         SERVICE
       22/tcp  open          ssh (product: OpenSSH extrainfo: protocol 2.0 version: 5.3)
       25/tcp  open          smtp (product: Postfix smtpd hostname:  bouteille.localdomain)
       80/tcp  open          http (product: nginx version: 1.0.15)
      111/tcp  open          rpcbind (version: 2-4 extrainfo: rpc #100000)
      631/tcp  open          ipp (product: CUPS version: 1.4)
    Nmap done at Sat May 25 00:15:00 2013; 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 6.25 seconds
    (pydev)[dev@bouteille python-nmap-lib]$

The full `source code <https://github.com/savon-noir/python-nmap-lib>`_ is available on GitHub. Please, do not hesitate to fork it and issue pull requests.

NmapProcess methods
-------------------

.. automodule:: libnmap.process
.. autoclass:: NmapProcess
    :members:

    .. automethod:: __init__

NmapTask methods
-------------------

.. autoclass:: NmapTask
    :members:
