Get full computer name from a network drive letter in python

Question

I am using python to populate a table with the file pathways of a number of stored files. However the pathway needs to have the full network drive computer name not just the drive letter, ie

//ComputerName/folder/subfolder/file

not

P:/folder/subfolder/file

I have investigated using the win32api, win32file, and os.path modules but nothing is looking like its able to do it. I need something like win32api.GetComputerName() but with the ability to drop in a known drive letter as an argument and it return the computer name that is mapped to the letter.

So is there anyway in python to look up a drive letter and get back the computer name?

Answer 1

Network drives are mapped using the Windows Networking API that's exported by mpr.dll (multiple provider router). You can create a network drive via WNetAddConnection2. To get the remote path that's associated with a local device, call WNetGetConnection. You can do this using ctypes as follows:

import ctypes
from ctypes import wintypes

mpr = ctypes.WinDLL('mpr')

ERROR_SUCCESS   = 0x0000
ERROR_MORE_DATA = 0x00EA

wintypes.LPDWORD = ctypes.POINTER(wintypes.DWORD)
mpr.WNetGetConnectionW.restype = wintypes.DWORD
mpr.WNetGetConnectionW.argtypes = (wintypes.LPCWSTR,
                                   wintypes.LPWSTR,
                                   wintypes.LPDWORD)

def get_connection(local_name):
    length = (wintypes.DWORD * 1)()
    result = mpr.WNetGetConnectionW(local_name, None, length)
    if result != ERROR_MORE_DATA:
        raise ctypes.WinError(result)
    remote_name = (wintypes.WCHAR * length[0])()
    result = mpr.WNetGetConnectionW(local_name, remote_name, length)
    if result != ERROR_SUCCESS:
        raise ctypes.WinError(result)
    return remote_name.value

For example:

>>> subprocess.call(r'net use Y: \\live.sysinternals.com\tools')
The command completed successfully.
0
>>> print(get_connection('Y:'))
\\live.sysinternals.com\tools