Read a file from server with SSH using Python

Here's an extension to @Matt Good's answer, using fabric:

from fabric.connection import Connection

with Connection(host, user) as c, c.sftp() as sftp,   \
         sftp.open('remote_filename') as file:
    for line in file:
        process(line)

---

old Fabric 1 answer:

from contextlib     import closing
from fabric.network import connect

with closing(connect(user, host, port)) as ssh, \
     closing(ssh.open_sftp()) as sftp, \
     closing(sftp.open('remote_filename')) as file:
    for line in file:
        process(line)

#!/usr/bin/env python
import paramiko
import select
client = paramiko.SSHClient()
client.load_system_host_keys()
client.connect('yourhost.com')
transport = client.get_transport()
channel = transport.open_session()
channel.exec_command("cat /path/to/your/file")
while True:
  rl, wl, xl = select.select([channel],[],[],0.0)
  if len(rl) > 0:
      # Must be stdout
      print channel.recv(1024)

Paramiko's SFTPClient class allows you to get a file-like object to read data from a remote file in a Pythonic way.

Assuming you have an open SSHClient:

sftp_client = ssh_client.open_sftp()
remote_file = sftp_client.open('remote_filename')
try:
    for line in remote_file:
        # process line
finally:
    remote_file.close()