Python: finding uid/gid for a given username/groupname (for os.chown)

Question

What's a good way to find the uid/gid for a given username or groupname using Python? I need to set file ownership with os.chown and need the integer ids instead of the alphabetic.

[Quick note]: getpwnam works great but is not available on windows, so here's some code that creates stubs to allow you to run the same code on windows and unix.

try:     from pwd import getpwnam except:     getpwnam = lambda x: (0,0,0)     os.chown = lambda x, y, z: True     os.chmod = lambda x, y: True     os.fchown = os.chown     os.fchmod = os.chmod 

Answer 1

Use the pwd and grp modules:

from pwd import getpwnam    print getpwnam('someuser')[2] # or print getpwnam('someuser').pw_uid print grp.getgrnam('somegroup')[2]