Feeding input to an interactive command line application

Question

I\'d like to feed inputs to a command line interface for Cisco AnyConnect vpncli.exe (v2.3) to automate its (re)connection. It does not take username nor passw

Answer 1

There are at least two ways to read input in a Windows console application.

• ReadConsole: reads input either from keyboard or redirection (documentation).
• ReadConsoleInput: reads only raw keystrokes (documentation).

The vpncli.exe application uses ReadConsoleInput in order to read the password, that's way redirecting the password does not work. You can, though, use WriteConsoleInput. I have a small Python script that does exactly that:

import subprocess
import win32console

ANYCONNECT_BIN = 'c:\\Program Files\\Cisco\\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client\\vpncli.exe'

def write_console_input(text):
  stdin = win32console.GetStdHandle(win32console.STD_INPUT_HANDLE)
  ir = win32console.PyINPUT_RECORDType(win32console.KEY_EVENT)
  ir.KeyDown = True
  for ch in text:
    ir.Char = unicode(ch)
    stdin.WriteConsoleInput([ir])

def main():
  proc = subprocess.Popen([ANYCONNECT_BIN,'connect','VPN'],stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
  proc.stdin.write('%s\n%s\n' % ('GROUP', 'USERNAME'))
  write_console_input('%s\n' % 'PASSWORD')
  ret = proc.wait()
  print ret

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()