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I'm developing a backup daemon that will run silently in the background. The daemon relies on the duplicity backup software, which when backing up requires an encryption key. I cannot ask for the password through the console because obviously, the daemon has no access to such.

How could I easily create a prompt that asks the user to type in a password, and returns it to the application (through a Python variable)? I'm using Python 2.7 .

import Tkinter, tkSimpleDialog
tkSimpleDialog.askstring("Password", "Enter password:", show='*')
For Python 3.3:
import tkinter
tkinter.simpledialog.askstring("Password", "Enter password:", show='*')
For Python 3.6+:
import tkinter as tk
import tkinter.simpledialog
tk.Tk().withdraw()
tkinter.simpledialog.askstring("Password", "Enter password:", show='*')
                For Python 3.3: import tkinter tkinter.simpledialog.askstring("Password", "Enter password:", show='*')
– ryry1985
                Feb 6, 2017 at 18:14
                Seems only to work, if you initialize Tk() first, without it fails with 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'winfo_viewable'. At least in Python 3.6
– Andreas H.
                Aug 14, 2018 at 14:25
    pwdbox.pack(side = 'top')
    pwdbox.bind('<Return>', onpwdentry)
    Button(root, command=onokclick, text = 'OK').pack(side = 'top')
    root.mainloop()
    return password
                Doesn't work for me. I fixed an issue with root being referenced before defined. Now I can get the dialog to show, but when I type the password 1) the characters show, instead of black dots and 2) when I hit return nothing is returned from getpwd. Also, I get an error when I click OK - onpwdentry() takes exactly 1 argument  Thanks for the quick response.
– liamzebedee
                Mar 30, 2013 at 23:55
                Ok, that last edit should fix your problems. For 1) I set the "show" property of the Entry widget to '*', so it'll show asterisks instead of letters. 2) was an incredibly stupid error on my part: I had the subfunction returning the password, when I obviously wanted the main function returning it. mainloop() is blocking, so the password won't be returned until the window is destroyed by onokclick() or onpwdentry()
– pycoder112358
                Mar 31, 2013 at 0:12
                Thanks, just fixed the last bug, which was modifying the password outside its scope, which meant that the method was still returning  "". Added a nonlocal hack for Python 2.x (using dict), and it successfully works!
– liamzebedee
                Mar 31, 2013 at 0:16
                Glad to help! Sorry about all the errors the first two edits; I don't seem to be thinking too well tonight.
– pycoder112358
                Mar 31, 2013 at 0:18
Because not everyone wants to use TK, here's a script using PyQt:
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QInputDialog, QLineEdit
import sys
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
qd = QInputDialog()
qd.setTextEchoMode(QLineEdit.Password)
qd.show()
app.exec()
And, because you wouldn't usually just ask a user for a password just for the heck of it:
#!/bin/env python3
#passwordPrompt.py
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QInputDialog
import sys, time
def succFunc():
  sys.stdout.write(qd.textValue())
  sys.stdout.flush()
  exit(0)
def failFunc():
  exit(1)
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
qd = QInputDialog()
#QLineEdit.Password
qd.setTextEchoMode(2)
qd.rejected.connect(failFunc)
qd.accepted.connect(succFunc)
qd.show()
app.exec()
And the corresponding bash function:
#!/bin/bash
passwordPrompt.py | tee
    pwdbox.pack(side = 'top')
    pwdbox.bind('<Return>', onpwdentry)
    Button(root, command=onokclick, text = 'OK').pack(side = 'top')
    root.mainloop()
    return PASSWORD
Expanding on Diego's answer with some minimal housekeeping (without this I was getting crashes galore trying to use his beautifully brief example):
import Tkinter, tkSimpleDialog 
root = Tkinter.Tk() # dialog needs a root window, or will create an "ugly" one for you
root.withdraw() # hide the root window
password = tkSimpleDialog.askstring("Password", "Enter password:", show='*', parent=root)
root.destroy() # clean up after yourself!
This will work well from a program that is otherwise just a terminal / console application.
                For me this is the best solution since I'm having a console application. But how to open the dialog window on the main screen, when having multiple screens on Linux? The solution from @pycoder112358 opens the dialog on the main screen.
– eztam
                Nov 11, 2016 at 11:43
        
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