How to build website blocker in Python
Tags: python, webdev, productivity, projects
Published: 2020-10-01 16:34:05

Hi guys

Many of us struggle to focus nowadays, easily distracted by Social media and some sites on the internet which dramatically affecting our productivity.

In this tutorial, you will learn and build your own website blocker to block certain selected sites that distract you during working hours.

### Requirements

We are going to use the **time** and **Datetime** Module only which comes by default with the Python Standard Library therefore you don’t need to install anything.

**How do we block sites?**

Every operating system has a host file and it’s on this file where we are going to add a list of websites we want to block by redirecting them to 127.0.0.1 (localhost).

We will add website URLs to the host file and mapping them to the localhost thus preventing you from accessing the real site during working hours.

Instead of adding *www.facebook.com* we are going to add *127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com*, therefore whenever a user tries to access the website during working hours will be directed to the localhost.

Therefore we need to add those sites to the host files during working hours and removing them immediately when it’s going home time.

```python
if working_time:
  add mapped websites url to host file 
else:
  remove the website files from the host file 
```

#### Location of host file

**Host file** that we need to edit is stored on different path depending on the Operating system you’re using

**For those in Linux**

```bash
Linux_host = "/etc/hosts"
```

For those in window

```bash
Window_host = r"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts"
```

### Building our Website Blocker

Importing modules & pre-configuring

```python
import time
from datetime import datetime as dt
​
sites_to_block = [
    'www.facebook.com',  'facebook.com',  
    'www.youtube.com', 'youtube.com',
    'www.gmail.com', 'gmail.com'
]
​
Linux_host = '/etc/hosts'
Window_host = r"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts"
redirect = "127.0.0.1"
```


We then required to add the sites to be blocked during working hours and remove them when it is not, I  have made a simple function  just to do that as shown in the source code below 

**Note**
If your own Window change the *default_hoster* to *Window_host*

```python
import time
from datetime import datetime as dt
​
sites_to_block = [
    'www.facebook.com',  'facebook.com',  
    'www.youtube.com', 'youtube.com',
    'www.gmail.com', 'gmail.com'
]
​
Linux_host = '/etc/hosts'
MacOs_host = '/private/etc/hosts'
Window_host = r"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts"
default_hoster = Linux_host
redirect = "127.0.0.1"
​
def block_websites(start_hour , end_hour):
    while True:
        if dt(dt.now().year, dt.now().month, dt.now().day,start_hour)< dt.now() < dt(dt.now().year, dt.now().month, dt.now().day,end_hour): 
            print("Do the work ....")
            with open(default_hoster, 'r+') as hostfile:
                hosts = hostfile.read()
                for site in  sites_to_block:
                    if site not in hosts:
                       hostfile.write(redirect+' '+site+'\n')
        else:
            with open(default_hoster, 'r+') as hostfile:
                hosts = hostfile.readlines()
                hostfile.seek(0)
                for host in hosts:
                    if not any(site in host for site in sites_to_block):
                        hostfile.write(host)
                hostfile.truncate()
            print('Good Time')
        time.sleep(3)
​
if __name__ == '__main__':
    block_websites(9, 18)
```

The function receives two-parameter, One is the starting time on which for testing I set as 9 am and the ending time for a job which I initially set 18 but you can twist it whatever you want.

When you run the above code, It will do as we have said, you can try accessing sites you listed in *sites_to_block* it will redirect you to the localhost.

If you find it interesting, Don't be shy share it with your fellow tech nerds so as more can learn this trick

The [Original Article](https://kalebujordan.dev/how-to-build-a-website-blocker-using-python/) can be found on [kalebujordan.dev](https://kalebujordan.dev/how-to-build-a-website-blocker-using-python/)

{% github https://github.com/Kalebu/Website-blocker-python %}