how to make cloudant pick a .pac file?

In my python (2.7) application I make use of a Cloudant database as follows:

from cloudant.client import Cloudant

client = Cloudant('XXX', 'YYY', account='ZZZ')
client.connect()
my_db = client['my_database']
for doc in my_db: print doc

The environment in which this application runs makes use of proxy.pac which can not be bypassed. How could I make the connection to Cloudant .pac aware or how could I let Cloudant automatically look for proxy.pac?

I've found the python package PyPac (https://pypac.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) but do not have the slightest idea how I should use this in the Cloudant context.

Thanks for your ideas and help in advance.

Since PyPAC 0.6.0, you can use the pac_context_for_url context manager:

from pypac import pac_context_for_url


with pac_context_for_url('https://acct.cloudant.com'):
    # Do your Cloudant stuff

Original answer:

This should work as expected:

import os

import pypac


# PyPAC will auto-discover the current PAC settings
pac = pypac.get_pac()

# Find the proxy for Cloudant (I use this domain but anything else would work too)
proxies = pac.find_proxy_for_url('https://acct.cloudant.com', 'cloudant.com')

# It will return something like: 'PROXY 4.5.6.7:8080; PROXY 7.8.9.10:8080'
# Here we take the 1st one:
proxy = 'http://{}/'.format(proxies.split()[1].rstrip(';'))

# Set proxy envars
os.environ['HTTP_PROXY'] = os.environ['HTTPS_PROXY'] = proxy

# And now try Cloudant stuff