Introduction¶
Technically the communication with the Fritz!Box works by UPnP using SCPD and SOAP for information transfer which is based on the TR-064 protocol. The TR-064 protocol uses the concepts of services
and actions
. A service is a collection of actions for a given topic like WLAN-connections, registered hosts, phone calls, home-automation tasks and so on.
The documentation about all services and actions is available from the vendor AVM (see Further Reading).
FritzConnection manages the inspection of a given Fritz!Box and can access all available services and corresponding actions. For some services it is required to provide the user-password for the box. The set of available services and actions may vary by router models and the installed Fritz!OS version.
The installation of fritzconnection (using pip) will also install a command line tool for the Fritz!Box API-inspection. The next sections will give an introduction to this command line tool and how to write modules on top of fritzconnection.
Note
To use the TR-064 interface of the Fritz!Box, the settings for Allow access for applications and Transmit status information over UPnP in the Home Network -> Network -> Network Settings menu have to be activated.
Internal defaults¶
To access the router in a local network, fritzconnection use some default values:
FRITZ_IP_ADDRESS = '169.254.1.1'
FRITZ_TCP_PORT = 49000
FRITZ_TLS_PORT = 49443
FRITZ_USERNAME = 'dslf-config' # for Fritz!OS < 7.24
The ip-adress is a fallback-address common to every fritzbox-router, regardless of the individual configuration. In case of more than a single router in the local network (i.e. multiple Fritz!Boxes building a Mesh or connected by LAN building multiple WLAN access-points) the option -i (for the command line) or the keyword-parameter address (module usage) is required to address the router, otherwise it is not defined which device will respond first.
Usernames and passwords¶
For some operations a username and/or a password is required. This can be given on the command line as parameters or, by using a module, as arguments. To not present these information in clear text, username and password can get stored in the environment variables FRITZ_USERNAME
and FRITZ_PASSWORD
. FritzConnection will check for these environment variables first and, if set, will use the corresponding values.
For Fritz!OS < 7.24 the username was optional and a default username gets used in this case. For newer versions an individual username is required. If a username is not provided, fritzconnection will read the username of the last logged in user from the Fritz!Box and will take this username as default.
Command line inspection¶
Installing fritzconnection by pip will also install the command line tool fritzconnection to inspect the Fritz!Box-API. With the option -h this will show a help menu:
$ fritzconnection -h
usage: fritzconnection [-h] [-i [ADDRESS]] [--port [PORT]] [-u [USERNAME]]
[-p [PASSWORD]] [-r] [-s] [-S SERVICEACTIONS]
[-a SERVICEARGUMENTS]
[-A ACTIONARGUMENTS ACTIONARGUMENTS] [-c [COMPLETE]]
[-e [ENCRYPT]]
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-i [ADDRESS], --ip-address [ADDRESS]
Specify ip-address of the FritzBox to connect
to.Default: 169.254.1.1
--port [PORT] Port of the FritzBox to connect to. Default: 49000
-u [USERNAME], --username [USERNAME]
Fritzbox authentication username
-p [PASSWORD], --password [PASSWORD]
Fritzbox authentication password
-r, --reconnect Reconnect and get a new ip
-R, --reboot Reboot the router
-s, --services List all available services
-S SERVICEACTIONS, --serviceactions SERVICEACTIONS
List actions for the given service: <service>
-a SERVICEARGUMENTS, --servicearguments SERVICEARGUMENTS
List arguments for the actions of a specified service:
<service>.
-A ACTIONARGUMENTS ACTIONARGUMENTS, --actionarguments ACTIONARGUMENTS ACTIONARGUMENTS
List arguments for the given action of a specified
service: <service> <action>. Lists also direction and
data type of the arguments.
-c [COMPLETE], --complete [COMPLETE]
List the complete api of the router
-e [ENCRYPT], --encrypt [ENCRYPT]
use secure connection
With the option -s all available services
are listed. If there are multiple fritz-devices in the network, it is undefined which one will respond. In this case the router ip must be given with the -i option. The number of listed services can vary depending on the router model:
$ fritzconnection -s -i 192.168.178.1
fritzconnection v1.8.0
FRITZ!Box 7590 at http://192.168.178.1
FRITZ!OS: 7.29
Servicenames:
any1
WANCommonIFC1
WANDSLLinkC1
WANIPConn1
WANIPv6Firewall1
DeviceInfo1
DeviceConfig1
Layer3Forwarding1
...
X_AVM-DE_OnTel1
X_AVM-DE_Dect1
...
WLANConfiguration1
WLANConfiguration2
WLANConfiguration3
...
WANPPPConnection1
WANIPConnection1
Services starting with X_AVM are not covered by the TR-064 standard but are AVM-specific extensions.
All service-names are ending with a numeric value. In case a service is listed more than once the numeric value allows to select a specific one. Most prominent example is the WLANConfiguration service for accessing the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands as well as the guest-network (given that the router-model provides these services).
Services and actions¶
Every service
has a set of corresponding actions
. The actions are listed by the flag -S with the servicename as parameter.
$ fritzconnection -i 192.168.178.1 -S WANIPConnection1
fritzconnection v1.8.0
FRITZ!Box 7590 at http://192.168.178.1
FRITZ!OS: 7.29
Servicename: WANIPConnection1
Actionnames:
GetInfo
GetConnectionTypeInfo
SetConnectionType
GetStatusInfo
GetNATRSIPStatus
SetConnectionTrigger
ForceTermination
RequestConnection
GetGenericPortMappingEntry
GetSpecificPortMappingEntry
AddPortMapping
DeletePortMapping
GetExternalIPAddress
X_GetDNSServers
GetPortMappingNumberOfEntries
SetRouteProtocolRx
SetIdleDisconnectTime
A list of all available actions with their corresponding arguments
is reported by the flag -a with the servicename as parameter:
$ fritzconnection -i 192.168.178.1 -a WANIPConnection1
This can return a lengthy output. So the arguments for a specific action of a given service can get listed with the option -A and the service- and actionname as arguments. For example the output for the service WANIPConnection1 and the action GetInfo will be:
$ fritzconnection -i 192.168.178.1 -A WANIPConnection1 GetInfo
fritzconnection v1.8.0
FRITZ!Box 7590 at http://192.168.178.1
FRITZ!OS: 7.29
Service: WANIPConnection1
Action: GetInfo
Parameters:
Name direction data type
NewEnable out -> boolean
NewConnectionStatus out -> string
NewPossibleConnectionTypes out -> string
NewConnectionType out -> string
NewName out -> string
NewUptime out -> ui4
NewLastConnectionError out -> string
NewRSIPAvailable out -> boolean
NewNATEnabled out -> boolean
NewExternalIPAddress out -> string
NewDNSServers out -> string
NewMACAddress out -> string
NewConnectionTrigger out -> string
NewRouteProtocolRx out -> string
NewDNSEnabled out -> boolean
NewDNSOverrideAllowed out -> boolean
For every action all arguments are listed with their name, direction and type. (Some arguments for other services may have the direction “in” for sending data to the router.)
The API of a FRITZ!Box depends on the model and the installed FRITZ!OS version. To report the complete API of the router, the option -c can be used:
$ fritzconnection -i 192.168.178.1 -c > api.txt
In the above example the output is redirected to a file, because the output will be really huge.
Module usage¶
FritzConnection works by calling actions on services and can send and receive action-arguments. A simple example is to reconnect the router with the provider to get a new external ip:
from fritzconnection import FritzConnection
fc = FritzConnection()
fc.call_action('WANIPConnection1', 'ForceTermination')
At first an instance of FritzConnection must be created. There can be a short delay doing this, because fritzconnection has to do a lot of communication with the router to get the router-specific API.
The method call_action takes two required arguments: the service- and the action-name as strings. In case that a service or action is unknown (because of a typo or incompatible router model) fritzconnection will raise a FritzServiceError. If the service is known, but not the action, then a FritzActionError gets raised.
Note
A FritzConnection instance can be reused for all further call_action calls without side-effects. Because instantiation is expensive (doing a lot of i/o for API inspection) this can increase performance significantly.
Let’s look at another example using an address 192.168.178.1 and calling an action GetInfo on a service WLANConfiguration that requires a password:
from fritzconnection import FritzConnection
fc = FritzConnection(address='192.168.178.1', password='the_password')
state = fc.call_action('WLANConfiguration1', 'GetInfo')
Calling the service WLANConfiguration1 without giving a password (or providing a wrong one) will raise a FritzConnectionException. Inspecting the API works without a password, but most of the API-calls require a password.
In case that the servicename is given without a numeric extension (i.e ‘1’) fritzconnection adds the extension ‘1’ by default. So WLANConfiguration becomes WLANConfiguration1. The extension is required if there are multiple services with the same name. For backward compatibility servicenames like WLANConfiguration:1 are also accepted.
The return value of call_action is a dictionary with keys corresponding to the Argument name as given in the AVM-documentation. In the above example state will be something like this:
{'NewAllowedCharsPSK': '0123456789ABCDEFabcdef',
'NewAllowedCharsSSID': '0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz '
'!"#$%&\'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^_`{|}~',
'NewBSSID': '98:9B:CB:2B:93:B3',
'NewBasicAuthenticationMode': 'None',
'NewBasicEncryptionModes': 'None',
'NewBeaconType': '11i',
'NewChannel': 6,
'NewEnable': True,
'NewMACAddressControlEnabled': False,
'NewMaxBitRate': 'Auto',
'NewMaxCharsPSK': 64,
'NewMaxCharsSSID': 32,
'NewMinCharsPSK': 64,
'NewMinCharsSSID': 1,
'NewSSID': 'the WLAN name',
'NewStandard': 'n',
'NewStatus': 'Up'}
This information is showing a lot of details about the WLAN configuration. In this example the network is up and operating on channel 6.
To activate or deactivate a network, the action SetEnable can get called. Inspection gives information about the required arguments:
$ fritzconnection -i 192.168.178.1 -A WLANConfiguration1 SetEnable
fritzconnection v1.8.0
FRITZ!Box 7590 at http://192.168.178.1
FRITZ!OS: 7.29
Service: WLANConfiguration1
Action: SetEnable
Parameters:
Name direction data type
NewEnable -> in boolean
Here just one argument is listed for the in-direction. That means that this argument has to be send to the router. FritzConnection takes arguments as keyword-parameters for the call_action-method, where the keyword is set to the argument name (NewEnable in this case) :
from fritzconnection import FritzConnection
fc = FritzConnection(address='192.168.178.1', password='the_password')
fc.call_action('WLANConfiguration1', 'SetEnable', NewEnable=False)
This call will deactivate the network (beware: don’t deactivate a wireless network by not having a backup cable connection). As there are no arguments listed for the out-direction, call_action will return an empty dictionary.
In some cases it can happen, that there is a dash in an argument-name. Then this argument-name is not usable as a keyword-parameter. Therefore the call_action method also accepts a keyword-only argument with the name arguments that must be a dictionary with all input-parameters as key-value pairs (new in 1.0):
arguments = {'NewEnable': False}
fc.call_action('WLANConfiguration1', 'SetEnable', arguments=arguments)
If arguments is given, the values of all further keyword-parameters are ignored; you can use just one way to provide arguments.
Note
Prior to version 1.3 booleans must be given as numeric values 1 and 0.
Example: Writing a module¶
Let’s write a simple module using fritzconnection to report the WLAN status of a router:
from itertools import count
from fritzconnection import FritzConnection
from fritzconnection.core.exceptions import FritzServiceError
def get_wlan_status(fc):
status = []
action = 'GetInfo'
for n in count(1):
service = f'WLANConfiguration{n}'
try:
result = fc.call_action(service, action)
except FritzServiceError:
break
status.append((service, result))
return status
def get_compact_wlan_status(fc):
keys = ('NewSSID', 'NewChannel', 'NewStatus')
return [
(service, {key[3:]: status[key] for key in keys})
for service, status in get_wlan_status(fc)
]
def main(address, password):
fc = FritzConnection(address=address, password=password)
for service, status in get_compact_wlan_status(fc):
print(f'{service}: {status}')
if __name__ == '__main__':
main(address='192.168.178.1', password='the_password')
Depending on the settings this will give an output like this:
WLANConfiguration1: {'SSID': 'the_wlan_name', 'Channel': 6, 'Status': 'Up'}
WLANConfiguration2: {'SSID': 'the_wlan_name', 'Channel': 100, 'Status': 'Up'}
WLANConfiguration3: {'SSID': 'FRITZ!Box Gastzugang', 'Channel': 6, 'Status': 'Disabled'}
The modules in the fritzconnection library (modules in the lib-folder) can be used as code-examples of how to use fritzconnection.
Exceptions¶
fritzconnection can raise several exceptions. For example using a service not provided by a specific router model will raise a FritzServiceError. This and all other errors are defined in fritzconnection.core.exceptions and can get imported from this module (i.e. the FritzServiceError):
from fritzconnection.core.exceptions import FritzServiceError
Exception Hierarchy:
FritzConnectionException
|
|--> ActionError --> FritzActionError
|--> ServiceError --> FritzServiceError
|
|--> FritzResourceError
|
|--> FritzArgumentError
| |
| |--> FritzArgumentValueError
| |
| |--> FritzArgumentStringToShortError
| |--> FritzArgumentStringToLongError
| |--> FritzArgumentCharacterError
|
|--> FritzInternalError
| |
| |--> FritzActionFailedError
| |--> FritzOutOfMemoryError
|
|--> FritzSecurityError
|
|-->|--> FritzLookUpError
| |
KeyError -------+-->|
|
|
|-->|--> FritzArrayIndexError
|
IndexError -------->|
All exceptions are inherited from FritzConnectionException. FritzServiceError and FritzActionError are superseding the older ServiceError and ActionError exceptions, that are still existing for backward compatibility. These exceptions are raised by calling unknown services and actions. All other exceptions are raised according to errors reported from the router. FritzLookUpError and FritzArrayIndexError are conceptually the same as Pythons KeyError or IndexError. Because of this they are also inherited from these Exceptions.
TLS-Encryption¶
fritzconnection supports encrypted communication with Fritz!Box devices by providing the option use_tls (new in 1.2.0):
fc = FritzConnection(address=192.168.178.1, password=<password>, use_tls=True)
The default setting for use_tls is False. For the command line tools encryption is provided by the flags -e or --encrypt. Encryption can be a useful option in a non-private LAN like a company-LAN.
Note
- Using TLS will slow down the communication with the router. Especially getting a new FritzConnection instance will take longer by setting use_tls=True. Hint: reuse instances.
- Since the router uses a self-signed certificate, currently certificate-verification is disabled.
- In case the client communicates with the router by WLAN and WPA is enabled, the communication is already encrypted.
- In case the client communicates by VPN there is also no need to add an additional encryption layer.