IBM Cloudant Python SDK is a client library that interacts with the IBM Cloudant APIs.
Disclaimer: This library is still a 0.x release. We do consider this library production-ready and capable, but there are still some limitations we’re working to resolve, and refinements we want to deliver. We are working really hard to minimise the disruption from now until the 1.0 release, but there may still be some changes that impact applications using this SDK. For now, be sure to pin versions to avoid surprises.
Table of Contents
The IBM Cloudant Python SDK allows developers to programmatically
interact with IBM Cloudant
with the help of the ibmcloudant package.
The purpose of this Python SDK is to wrap most of the HTTP request APIs provided by Cloudant and supply other functions to ease the usage of Cloudant. This SDK should make life easier for programmers to do what’s really important to them: developing software.
Reasons why you should consider using Cloudant Python SDK in your project:
- Supported by IBM Cloudant.
- Server compatibility with:
- IBM Cloudant.
- Apache CouchDB 3.x for data operations.
- Includes all the most popular and latest supported endpoints for applications.
- Handles the authentication.
- Familiar user experience with IBM Cloud SDKs.
- Flexibility to use either built-in models or byte-based requests and responses for documents.
- Built-in Changes feed follower
- Built-in Pagination (beta)
- Instances of the client are unconditionally thread-safe.
To install, use pip or easy_install:
pip install --upgrade "ibmcloudant>=0.10.5"or
easy_install --upgrade "ibmcloudant>=0.10.5"For fundamental SDK usage information and config options, please see the common IBM Cloud SDK documentation.
This library requires configuration with a service URL and [Cloudant service credentials][service-credentials] to authenticate with your account.
There are several ways to set these authentication properties:
- As environment variables
- The programmatic approach
- With an external credentials file
The following section describes the different authentication types and provides environment variable examples. Examples for other configuration methods are available by following the provided links.
Consult the authentication document for comprehensive details of all the available authentication methods and how to configure them with environment settings or programmatically.
Quick start for Cloudant with an IAM API key:
CLOUDANT_URL=https://~replaceWithYourUniqueHost~.cloudantnosqldb.appdomain.cloud # use your own Cloudant public or private URL # use your own Cloudant public or private URL
CLOUDANT_APIKEY=a1b2c3d4e5f6f1g4h7j3k6l9m2p5q8s1t4v7x0z3 # use your own IAM API keyQuick start for Apache CouchDB with a username/password session:
CLOUDANT_AUTH_TYPE=COUCHDB_SESSION
CLOUDANT_URL=http://~replaceWithYourUniqueHost~.example:5984 # use your CouchDB URL
CLOUDANT_USERNAME=username # replace with your username
CLOUDANT_PASSWORD=password # replace with your passwordThe SDK supports a generalized retry feature that can automatically retry on common errors.
The automatic retries section has details on how to enable the retries with default values and customize the retries programmatically or with external configuration.
No request timeout is defined, but a 2.5m read and a 60s connect timeout are set by default. Be sure to set a request timeout appropriate to your application usage and environment. The request timeout section contains details on how to change the value.
Note: System settings may take precedence over configured timeout values.
Quick start example to list all databases (assumes environment variable authentication):
# section: code
from ibmcloudant.cloudant_v1 import CloudantV1
service = CloudantV1.new_instance()
response = service.get_all_dbs().get_result()
print(response)More tutorial examples for creating a database and document create, read, update and delete operations.
For a complete list of code examples, see the examples directory.
For sample code on handling errors, see Cloudant API docs.
For endpoints that read or write document content it is possible to bypass usage of the built-in object with byte streams.
Depending on the specific SDK operation it may be possible to:
- accept a user-provided byte stream to send to the server as a request body
- return a byte stream of the server response body to the user
Request byte stream can be supplied for arguments that accept the BinaryIO type.
For these cases you can pass this byte stream directly to the HTTP request body.
Response byte stream is supported in functions with the suffix of _as_stream.
The returned byte stream allows the response body to be consumed
without triggering JSON unmarshalling that is typically performed by the SDK.
The update document section contains examples for both request and response byte stream cases.
The API reference contains further examples of using byte streams. They are titled "Example request as stream" and are initially collapsed. Expand them to see examples of:
-
Byte requests:
-
Byte responses:
This SDK supports two possible formats to define an HTTP request. One approach uses only model classes and the other only dictionaries.
Example using model class structure
from ibmcloudant.cloudant_v1 import DesignDocument, CloudantV1, DesignDocumentOptions, SearchIndexDefinition
client = CloudantV1.new_instance()
price_index = SearchIndexDefinition(
index='function (doc) { index("price", doc.price); }'
)
design_document_options = DesignDocumentOptions(
partitioned=True
)
partitioned_design_doc = DesignDocument(
indexes={'findByPrice': price_index},
options=design_document_options
)
response = client.put_design_document(
db='products',
design_document=partitioned_design_doc,
ddoc='appliances'
).get_result()
print(response)Same example using dictionary structure
from ibmcloudant.cloudant_v1 import CloudantV1
client = CloudantV1.new_instance()
price_index = {
'index': 'function (doc) { index("price", doc.price); }'
}
partitioned_design_doc = {
'indexes': {'findByPrice': price_index},
'options': {'partitioned': True},
}
response = client.put_design_document(
db='products',
design_document=partitioned_design_doc,
ddoc='appliances'
).get_result()
print(response)Since model classes and dicts are different data structures, they cannot be combined.
This solution will be invalid
from ibmcloudant.cloudant_v1 import CloudantV1, DesignDocument
client = CloudantV1.new_instance()
price_index = {
'index': 'function (doc) { index("price", doc.price); }'
}
partitioned_design_doc = DesignDocument(
indexes={'findByPrice': price_index},
options={'partitioned': True}
)
response = client.put_design_document(
db='products',
design_document=partitioned_design_doc,
ddoc='appliances'
).get_result()
print(response)- Cloudant Python SDK feature docs
- Cloudant API docs: API reference including usage examples for Cloudant Python SDK API.
- Pydoc: Cloudant Python SDK API Documentation.
- Cloudant docs: The official documentation page for Cloudant.
- Cloudant blog: Many useful articles about how to optimize Cloudant for common problems.
If you are having difficulties using this SDK or have a question about the IBM Cloud services, ask a question on Stack Overflow.
If you encounter an issue with the project, you are welcome to submit a bug report.
Before you submit a bug report, search for similar issues and review the KNOWN_ISSUES file to verify that your issue hasn't been reported yet.
Please consult the security policy before opening security related issues.
This SDK follows semantic versioning with respect to the definition of user facing APIs. This means under some circumstances breaking changes may occur within a major or minor version of the SDK related to changes in supported language platforms.
The SDK is supported on the available LTS releases of the language platform. The LTS language versions are listed in the prerequisites:
Incompatible changes from new language versions are not added to the SDK until they are available in the minimum supported language version.
When language LTS versions move out of support the following will happen:
- Existing SDK releases will continue to run on obsolete language versions, but will no longer be supported.
- The minimum language version supported by the SDK will be updated to the next available LTS.
- New language features may be added in subsequent SDK releases that will cause breaking changes if the new releases of the SDK are used with older, now unsupported, language levels.
Find more open source projects on the IBM GitHub page.
For more information, see CONTRIBUTING.
This SDK is released under the Apache 2.0 license. To read the full text of the license, see LICENSE.