# BEGINNING OF SCRIPT
if not os.geteuid() == 0:
    sys.exit('Script must be run as root')

# Parse command-line arguments
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Sends VPN configuration file to users')

parser.add_argument('userinput', help='<username|mailaddress>')
parser.add_argument('mailaddress', nargs='?', help='<Destination mail address - default is the user's request email address>')
args = parser.parse_args()

[...]

is_mail = re.compile('^.+?\@.+')
if is_mail.match(args.userinput):
    #print args.userinput + " is an email address"
    url = "http://vpnapi.charite.de/vpn/user/detailsbyemail/" + args.userinput
else:
    #print args.userinput + " is a username"
    url = "http://vpnapi.charite.de/vpn/user/details/" + args.userinput

#response = urllib.urlopen(url);
response = urllib.urlopen(url, proxies={});
data = json.loads(response.read())

username = data.get('username')
active = data.get('vpnActive')

if args.mailaddress:
    if is_mail.match(args.mailaddress):
        #print args.mailaddress + " is an email address"
        email = args.mailaddress
    else:
        print args.mailaddress + " is an email address!"
        sys.exit(1)
else:
    email = data.get('mail')

if not username:
    print "Username does not exist"
    sys.exit(1)

if not active:
    print "User is not active"
    sys.exit(1)

if not email:
    print "Email is blank"
    sys.exit(1)

# Encode email address if not blank!
email = email.encode('ascii','ignore')

#print username, email