SSHEx

Simple SSH helpers for Elixir.

Library to unify helpers already used on several applications. It uses low level Erlang ssh library.

The only purpose of these helpers is to avoid repetitive patterns seen when working with SSH from Elixir. It doesn't mean to hide anything from the venerable code underneath. If there's an ugly crash from :ssh, it will raise freely.

Use

Just add {:sshex, "1.1.0"} to your deps on mix.exs.

Then assuming :ssh application is already started (hence it is listed on deps), you should acquire an SSH connection using :ssh.connect/4 like this:

    {:ok, conn} = :ssh.connect('123.123.123.123', 22,
                    [ {:user,'myuser'}, {:silently_accept_hosts, true} ], 5000)

Then you can use the acquired conn with the cmd!/4 helper like this:

    SSHEx.cmd! conn, 'mkdir -p /path/to/newdir'
    res = SSHEx.cmd! conn, 'ls /some/path'

This is meant to run commands which you don't care about the return code. cmd!/4 will return the output of the command only. If you want to check the status code too, you can use run/4 like this:

    {:ok, _, 0} = SSHEx.run conn, 'rm -fr /something/to/delete'
    {:ok, res, 0} = SSHEx.run conn, 'ls /some/path'

You can pass the option :separate_streams to get separated stdout and stderr. Like this:

    {:ok, stdout, stderr, 2} = SSHEx.run conn, 'ls /nonexisting/path',
                                     5000, 5000, [separate_streams: true]

You will be reusing the same SSH connection all over.

Alternative keys

To use alternative keys you should save them somewhere on disk and then set the :user_dir option for :ssh.connect/4. See ssh library docs for more options.

TODOs

• Put every optional parameter under a unique Keyword list
• Add testing using meck
• Add tunnelling helpers *

Changelog

1.1

• Add support for separate stdout/stderr responses.

1.0

• Initial release