Build A Website Blocker With Python - Task Automation Tutorial

Learn how to create a website blocker that automates the site blocking for us and helps us to be more productive.

#more

In this Python Tutorial we create a website blocker that automates the site blocking for us and helps us to be more productive. This can be helpful if you have a new year's resolution to consume less social media.

The code is also available on GitHub.

The Script¶

This is the code. Modify the end_time and set the time until you want all your sites blocked. Also define all the websites you want to have blocked in the sites_to_block list. Windows users must also update the correct path to the hosts file (see the commented out path). Then you have 3 options how to use it:

• Trigger script manually every now and then
• Setup a Cron job
• Leave the scipt running in the background with a while True loop

How does it work?¶

The approach is very simple. We only modify the hosts file and define a mapping from the blocked domain name to our 127.0.0.1 IP address. This way, all requests to the domain are redirected to our localhost. Usually there is no server running on localhost, so we will see a "Site can't be reached message". Before you play around with this code and modify the file, you might want to create a backup copy of your hosts file.

from datetime import datetime

end_time = datetime(2021, 1, 1, 20) # y, m, d, h, min

sites_to_block = ['www.facebook.com', 'facebook.com']

hosts_path = '/etc/hosts'
#r"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts"

redirect = "127.0.0.1"

def block_websites():
    if datetime.now() < end_time: 
        print("Block sites")
        with open(hosts_path, 'r+') as hostfile:
            hosts_content = hostfile.read()
            for site in  sites_to_block:
                if site not in hosts_content:
                   hostfile.write(redirect + ' ' + site + '\n')
    else:
        print('Unblock sites')
        with open(hosts_path, 'r+') as hostfile:
            lines = hostfile.readlines()
            hostfile.seek(0)
            for line in lines:
                if not any(site in line for site in sites_to_block):
                    hostfile.write(line)
            hostfile.truncate()


# sudo python main.py
if __name__ == '__main__':
    block_websites()