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.
Please see the full documentation for more details.
In order to make requests to the Civis API,
you will need a Civis Platform API key that is unique to you.
Instructions for creating a new key are found
here.
API keys have a set expiration date and new keys will need to be created at
least every 30 days. The API client will look for a CIVIS_API_KEY
environmental variable to access your API key, so after creating a new API key,
follow the steps below for your operating system to set up your environment.
Add the following to
.bash_profile
(or.bashrc
for Linux) for bash:export CIVIS_API_KEY="alphaNumericApiK3y"
Source your
.bash_profile
(or restart your terminal).
- Navigate to "Settings" -> type "environment" in search bar -> "Edit environment variables for your account". This can also be found in "System Properties" -> "Advanced" -> "Environment Variables...".
- In the user variables section, if
CIVIS_API_KEY
already exists in the list of environment variables, click on it and press "Edit...". Otherwise, click "New..". - Enter CIVIS_API_KEY as the "Variable name".
- Enter your API key as the "Variable value". Your API key should look like a long string of letters and numbers.
After creating an API key and setting the CIVIS_API_KEY
environmental
variable, install the Python package civis
with the recommended method via pip
:
pip install civis
Alternatively, if you are interested in the latest functionality not yet released through pip
,
you may clone the code from GitHub and build from source:
git clone https://github.com/civisanalytics/civis-python.git
cd civis-python
python setup.py install
You can test your installation by running
import civis
client = civis.APIClient()
print(client.users.list_me()['username'])
If civis
was installed correctly, this will print your Civis
Platform username.
The client has a soft dependency on pandas
to support features such as
data type parsing. If you are using the io
namespace to read or write
data from Civis, it is highly recommended that you install pandas
and
set use_pandas=True
in functions that accept that parameter. To install
pandas
:
pip install pandas
Machine learning features in the ml
namespace have a soft dependency on
scikit-learn
and pandas
. Install scikit-learn
to
export your trained models from the Civis Platform or to
provide your own custom models. Use pandas
to download model predictions
from the Civis Platform. The civis.ml
code
optionally uses the feather
format to transfer data from your local computer to Civis
Platform. Install these dependencies with
pip install scikit-learn
pip install pandas
pip install feather-format
Some CivisML models have open-source dependencies in
addition to scikit-learn
, which you may need if you want to
download the model object. These dependencies are
civisml-extensions
, glmnet
, and muffnn
. Install these
dependencies with
pip install civisml-extensions
pip install glmnet
pip install muffnn
Python 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6
civis
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.
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.
To install dependencies for building the documentation:
pip install Sphinx pip install sphinx_rtd_theme pip install numpydoc
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.
See CONTRIBUTING.md
for information about contributing to this project.
BSD-3
See LICENSE.md
for details.