pacparser is a library to parse proxy auto-config (PAC) files. Proxy auto-config files are a vastly used proxy configuration method these days. Web browsers can use a PAC file to determine which proxy server to use or whether to go direct for a given URL. PAC files are written in JavaScript and can be programmed to return different proxy methods (e.g. "PROXY proxy1:port; DIRECT") depending upon URL, source IP address, protocol, time of the day etc. PAC files introduce a lot of possibilities. Look at the wikipedia link above to find out more about them.

Needless to say, PAC files are now a widely accepted method for proxy configuration management and companies all over are using them in corporate environment. Almost all popular web browsers support PAC files. The idea behind pacparser is to make it easy to add this PAC file parsing capability to any program (C and python supported right now). It comes as a shared C library and a python module which can be used to make any C or python program PAC scripts intelligent. Some very useful targets could be popular web software like wget, curl and python-urllib.

Please look at the README and other links for more information.

Usage ExamplesUsing it with python:

>>> import pacparser
>>> pacparser.init()
>>> pacparser.parse_pac('examples/wpad.dat')
>>> pacparser.find_proxy('http://www.google.com', 'www.google.com')
'PROXY proxy1.manugarg.com:3128; PROXY proxy2.manugarg.com:3128; DIRECT'
>>> pacparser.find_proxy('http://www2.manugarg.com', 'www2.manugarg.com')
'DIRECT'
>>> pacparser.cleanup()
>>>Using it in C:

manugarg@hobbiton:~$ cat pactest.c
#include

int pacparser_init();
int pacparser_parse_pac(char* pacfile);
char *pacparser_find_proxy(char *url, char *host);
void pacparser_cleanup();

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
char *proxy;
pacparser_init();
pacparser_parse_pac(argv¹);
proxy = pacparser_find_proxy(argv², argv³);
printf("%s\n", proxy);
pacparser_cleanup();
}

manugarg@hobbiton:~$ gcc -o pactest pactest.c -lpacparser
manugarg@hobbiton:~$ ./pactest wpad.dat http://www.google.com www.google.com
PROXY proxy1.manugarg.com:3128; PROXY proxy2.manugarg.com:3128; DIRECT