Caesar Cipher Function in Python

Question

I'm trying to create a simple Caesar Cipher function in Python that shifts letters based on input from the user and creates a final, new string at the end. The only problem is that the final cipher text shows only the last shifted character, not an entire string with all the shifted characters.

Here's my code:

plainText = raw_input("What is your plaintext? ")
shift = int(raw_input("What is your shift? "))

def caesar(plainText, shift): 

    for ch in plainText:
        if ch.isalpha():
            stayInAlphabet = ord(ch) + shift 
            if stayInAlphabet > ord('z'):
                stayInAlphabet -= 26
            finalLetter = chr(stayInAlphabet)
        cipherText = ""
        cipherText += finalLetter

    print "Your ciphertext is: ", cipherText

    return cipherText

caesar(plainText, shift)

Answer 1

Here, a more functional way: (if you use shift i to encode, then use -i to decode)

def ceasar(story, shift):
  return ''.join([ # concentrate list to string
            (lambda c, is_upper: c.upper() if is_upper else c) # if original char is upper case than convert result to upper case too
                (
                  ("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"*2)[ord(char.lower()) - ord('a') + shift % 26], # rotate char, this is extra easy since Python accepts list indexs below 0
                  char.isupper()
                )
            if char.isalpha() else char # if not in alphabet then don't change it
            for char in story 
        ])

Answer 2

>>> def rotate(txt, key):
...   def cipher(i, low=range(97,123), upper=range(65,91)):
...     if i in low or i in upper:
...       s = 65 if i in upper else 97
...       i = (i - s + key) % 26 + s
...     return chr(i)
...   return ''.join([cipher(ord(s)) for s in txt])

# test
>>> rotate('abc', 2)
'cde'
>>> rotate('xyz', 2)
'zab'
>>> rotate('ab', 26)
'ab'
>>> rotate('Hello, World!', 7)
'Olssv, Dvysk!'

Answer 3

Using some ascii number tricks:

# See http://ascii.cl/
upper = {ascii:chr(ascii) for ascii in range(65,91)}
lower = {ascii:chr(ascii) for ascii in range(97,123)}
digit = {ascii:chr(ascii) for ascii in range(48,58)}


def ceasar(s, k):
    for c in s:
        o = ord(c)
        # Do not change symbols and digits
        if (o not in upper and o not in lower) or o in digit:
            yield o
        else:
            # If it's in the upper case and
            # that the rotation is within the uppercase
            if o in upper and o + k % 26 in upper:
                yield o + k % 26
            # If it's in the lower case and
            # that the rotation is within the lowercase
            elif o in lower and o + k % 26 in lower:
                yield o + k % 26
            # Otherwise move back 26 spaces after rotation.
            else: # alphabet.
                yield o + k % 26 -26

x = (''.join(map(chr, ceasar(s, k))))
print (x)

Answer 4

from string import ascii_lowercase as alphabet

class CaesarCypher:
    alpha_len = len(alphabet)
    min_guess_rate = 0.2

Encryption and decryption is a same stuff. when you want to decrypt for example with shift 10 that means that you can encrypt it with shift 26 - 10. In this case cycle will repeat at if you going to shift whole alphabet it will be the same. Also here i've proceed upper case and non chars

    def __call__(self, text, offset, encrypt=True):
        if not encrypt:
            offset = self.alpha_len - offset
        result = []
        for letter in text:
            if not letter.isalpha():
                result.append(letter)
                continue
            letter_to_process = letter.lower()
            processed_letter = self._encrypt_letter(letter_to_process, offset)
            if letter.isupper():
                processed_letter = processed_letter.upper()
            result.append(processed_letter)
        return ''.join(result)

all encryption goes here at most.

    def _encrypt_letter(self, letter, offset=0):
        position = (alphabet.find(letter) + offset) % self.alpha_len
        return alphabet[position]

this part is for broot force and guess throug dictionary frequency.

    @staticmethod
    def __how_many_do_i_know(text):
        clean_words = filter(lambda x: x.isalpha(), text.split())
        clean_words = ['\'{}\''.format(x) for x in clean_words]
        cursor = conn.cursor()
        query = 'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM mydictionary WHERE word IN ({})'.format(",".join(clean_words))
        cursor.execute(query)
        response = cursor.fetchone()[0]
        return response / len(clean_words)

    def guess_encode(self, text):
        options = [self(text, offset, encrypt=False) for offset in range(self.alpha_len)]
        best_option = [self.__how_many_do_i_know(option) for option in options]
        best_key, guess_rate = max(enumerate(best_option), key=lambda x: x[-1])
        guess_text = options[best_key]
        return best_key, guess_rate, guess_text

Answer 5

Batteries included

while 1:
    phrase = raw_input("Could you please give me a phrase to encrypt?\n")
    if phrase == "" : break
    print "Here it is your phrase, encrypted:"
    print phrase.encode("rot_13")
print "Have a nice afternoon!"

https://docs.python.org/2/library/codecs.html#python-specific-encodings

Python 3 update

The fine docs say

[Now the rot_13] codec provides a text transform: a str to str mapping. It is not supported by str.encode() (which only produces bytes output).

Or, in other words, you have to import encode from the codecs module and use it with the string to be encoded as its first argument

from codecs import decode
...
    print(encode(phrase, 'rot13'))