MAC Address lookup using Python ( and an API )

Overview

As a network engineer, I sometimes have to verify what type of device is connected on a port or what is being registered on a firewall via ARP. Having a MAC address handy can be useful for many reasons but in my case, having one is great for network troubleshooting.

I'm going to walk you through my Python script that sends a MAC address to an API and the response will be the vendor of that address. So let's create the script so we don't have to open a browser and search for it on the web.🧑‍💻

What's a MAC address?

MAC addresses are registered with the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). The prefix of a MAC address is a number that uniquely identifies a vendor, manufacturer, or other organization.

Wikipedia:

A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. MAC addresses are primarily assigned by device manufacturers, and are therefore often referred to as the burned-in address, or as an Ethernet hardware address, hardware address, or physical address.

So if you have a device that connects to the internet, the networking interface card is registered with IEEE.

Here is a list of the vendors.
http://standards-oui.ieee.org/oui/oui.txt

Requirements

Python 3

Requests - A Python library

An API - Macvendors.com - This API is free and requires no sign up.

Let’s code!

Let’s start by importing our libraries.

import sys

from requests import get

Now let’s create a class because object oriented programming is cool. 😎

class Macpyoui:
    def __init__(self, api):
        self.api = api


site = "https://api.macvendors.com/"
data = Macpyoui(site)
macaddress = input("Please enter the MAC address: ")

Let’s break down the class and see what we did:

Created a class called Macpyoui. This is going to allow us to call our information.

Created a method __init__ and added the arguments self and api.

Assigned self.api as api.

You will also see that I added some variables.

site - This is the website that we will be sending the MAC address.

data - Here we create a variable called data and assign the argument site to the class Macpyoui. This will allow me to call it back in a function.

macaddress - We create a variable here called macaddress and we ask the person running the script what the MAC address is with the input function and we add the string inside it asking about the MAC address.

Now let's define our function:

def searchmac():
    macsend = data.api + macaddress
    vendorsearch = get(macsend).text
    if "Not Found" in vendorsearch:
        print("MAC address not found.")
    elif len(sys.argv) == 1:
        print("No MAC address entered.")
    else:
        print(vendorsearch)

Breaking down the function.

def searchmac():

Here we create our function searchmac

macsend = data.api + macaddress

Then we create a variable called macsend.

We assign data.api + macaddress.

In the assignment we use data.api which is asking for the website.

The data in data.api is the class Macpyoui being called and the .api is asking for the website in the class. As for macaddress, this is what the user provides and we combine then with the +. So written out it would look like https://api.macvendors.com/ + mac address

vendorsearch = get(macsend).text

Here we assign vendorsearch to use the get request and send the MAC address under the argument macsend. We make sure to convert it into simple text with .text at the end.

if "Not Found" in vendorsearch:
        print("MAC address not found.")
    elif len(sys.argv) == 1:
        print("No MAC address entered.")
    else:
        print(vendorsearch)

For the last part of the function we do a few if statements to see what information is entered.

if "Not Found" in vendorsearch:
        print("MAC address not found.")

If the API responds with Not Found, we print out MAC address not found.

elif len(sys.argv) == 1:
        print("No MAC address entered.")

-If the user enters no MAC address, we print out No MAC address entered.

else:
        print(vendorsearch)

If there is a response from the website that is not one of the first two if statements, it prints the response.

Finally, let's add our main method at the bottom. This makes us a 10x coder.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    searchmac()

That's it! We don't need much to run our simple check.

Let’s test it out!

Successful search

~ ❯ python3 macpy.py                                                                                                                                   
Please enter the MAC address: F4BD9E
Cisco Systems, Inc

Unsuccessful Search

~ ❯ python3 macpy.py
Please enter the MAC address:
MAC address not found.

Missing entry

~ ❯ python3 macpy.py                                                                                                                                   
Please enter the MAC address:
No MAC address entered

Here is the full code:

import sys

from requests import get

__version__ = "1.0"


class Macpyoui:
    def __init__(self, api):
        self.api = api


site = "https://api.macvendors.com/"
data = Macpyoui(site)
macaddress = input("Please enter the MAC address: ")


def searchmac():
    macsend = data.api + macaddress
    vendorsearch = get(macsend).text
    if "Not Found" in vendorsearch:
        print("MAC address not found.")
    elif len(sys.argv) == 1:
        print("No MAC address entered.")
    else:
        print(vendorsearch)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    searchmac()