Civis API Python Client

Introduction

The Civis API Python client is a Python package that helps analysts and developers interact with the Civis Platform. The package includes a set of tools around common workflows as well as a convenient interface to make requests directly to the Civis API. See the full documentation for more details.

Installation

Get a Civis API key (instructions)
Add a CIVIS_API_KEY environment variable.
You can add the following to .bash_profile for bash
```
export CIVIS_API_KEY="alphaNumericApiK3y"
```
Source your .bash_profile
Install the package
```
pip install civis
```
Optionally, install pandas, pubnub, and requests-toolbelt to enable some functionality in civis-python
```
pip install pandas
pip install pubnub
pip install requests-toolbelt
```
Installation of pandas will allow some functions to return DataFrame outputs. Installation of pubnub will improve performance in all functions which wait for a Civis Platform job to complete. Installation of requests-toolbelt will allow streaming file uploads to Civis via civis.io.file_to_civis.

Usage

civis-python includes a number of wrappers around the Civis API for common workflows.

import civis
df = civis.io.read_civis(table="my_schema.my_table",
                         database="database",
                         use_pandas=True)

The Civis API may also be directly accessed via the APIClient class.

import civis
client = civis.APIClient()
database = client.databases.list()

See the full documentation for a more complete user guide.

Retries

The API client will automatically retry for certain API error responses.

If the error is one of [413, 429, 503] and the API client is told how long it needs to wait before it's safe to retry (this is always the case with 429s, which are rate limit errors), then the client will wait the specified amount of time before retrying the request.

If the error is one of [429, 502, 503, 504] and the request is not a patch* or post* method, then the API client will retry the request several times, with a delay, to see if it will succeed.

Build Documentation Locally

To build the API documentation locally

cd docs
make html

Then open docs/build/html/index.html.

Note that this will use your API key in the CIVIS_API_KEY environment variable so it will generate documentation for all the endpoints that you have access to.

Contributing

See CONTIBUTING.md for information about contributing to this project.

License

BSD-3

See LICENSE.md for details.

wlattner / civis-python