Anchorbrowser Python API library

The Anchorbrowser Python library provides convenient access to the Anchorbrowser REST API from any Python 3.10+ application. The library includes type definitions for all request params and response fields, and offers both synchronous and asynchronous clients powered by httpx.

The SDK is generated directly from the public OpenAPI specification — every documented endpoint is available as a typed method.

Upgrading from v0.X.X ? See MIGRATION.md for every breaking change and its v1 equivalent.

Documentation

The REST API documentation can be found on docs.anchorbrowser.io, including a full SDK reference with a Python example for every operation.

Installation

# install from PyPI
pip install anchorbrowser

Usage

import os
from anchorbrowser import Anchorbrowser

client = Anchorbrowser(
    api_key=os.environ.get("ANCHORBROWSER_API_KEY"),  # This is the default and can be omitted
)

session = client.sessions.create_session(
    session={"recording": {"active": False}},
)
print(session.data)

While you can provide an api_key keyword argument, we recommend using python-dotenv to add ANCHORBROWSER_API_KEY="Your API Key" to your .env file so that your API Key is not stored in source control.

Every resource is an attribute on the client with one method per API operation:

Run an AI agent task

client.agent.task(...) creates a session (or reuses one via session_id=...), runs a natural-language task in it server-side (through the perform-web-task API, like the TypeScript SDK's agentTask), and waits for the result — with no HTTP timeout and no retries, since agent tasks can run for many minutes:

result = client.agent.task("go to example.com and return the page title")
print(result.data.result)

client.agent.browser_task(...) starts the task but returns immediately with the session id, a concurrent.futures.Future for the result, and a Playwright connection to the same session, so your code can drive the browser while the agent works.

Drive the browser with Playwright

client.browser connects Playwright to an Anchor cloud browser session over CDP:

with client.browser.create() as browser:
    page = browser.contexts[0].pages[0]
    page.goto("https://example.com")
    print(page.title())

Use client.browser.connect(session_id) to attach to an existing session instead.

Async usage

Simply import AsyncAnchorbrowser instead of Anchorbrowser and use await with each API call:

import os
import asyncio
from anchorbrowser import AsyncAnchorbrowser

client = AsyncAnchorbrowser(
    api_key=os.environ.get("ANCHORBROWSER_API_KEY"),  # This is the default and can be omitted
)


async def main() -> None:
    session = await client.sessions.create_session(
        session={"recording": {"active": False}},
    )
    print(session.data)


asyncio.run(main())

Functionality between the synchronous and asynchronous clients is otherwise identical.

With aiohttp

By default, the async client uses httpx for HTTP requests. However, for improved concurrency performance you may also use aiohttp as the HTTP backend.

You can enable this by installing aiohttp:

# install from PyPI
pip install anchorbrowser[aiohttp]

Then you can enable it by instantiating the client with http_client=DefaultAioHttpClient():

import os
import asyncio
from anchorbrowser import DefaultAioHttpClient
from anchorbrowser import AsyncAnchorbrowser


async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncAnchorbrowser(
        api_key=os.environ.get("ANCHORBROWSER_API_KEY"),  # This is the default and can be omitted
        http_client=DefaultAioHttpClient(),
    ) as client:
        session = await client.sessions.create_session(
            session={"recording": {"active": False}},
        )
        print(session.data)


asyncio.run(main())

Using types

Nested request parameters are TypedDicts (importable from anchorbrowser.types.params). Responses are Pydantic models (importable from anchorbrowser.types.models) which also provide helper methods for things like:

• Serializing back into JSON, model.to_json()
• Converting to a dictionary, model.to_dict()

Typed requests and responses provide autocomplete and documentation within your editor. If you would like to see type errors in VS Code to help catch bugs earlier, set python.analysis.typeCheckingMode to basic.

Nested params

Nested parameters are dictionaries, typed using TypedDict, for example:

from anchorbrowser import Anchorbrowser

client = Anchorbrowser()

session = client.sessions.create_session(
    session={
        "proxy": {"active": True, "type": "anchor_residential", "country_code": "us"},
    },
)
print(session.data)

File uploads

Request parameters that correspond to file uploads can be passed as bytes, or a PathLike instance or a tuple of (filename, contents, media type).

from pathlib import Path
from anchorbrowser import Anchorbrowser

client = Anchorbrowser()

client.sessions.upload_file(
    session_id="182bd5e5-6e1a-4fe4-a799-aa6d9a6ab26e",
    file=Path("/path/to/file"),
)

The async client uses the exact same interface. If you pass a PathLike instance, the file contents will be read asynchronously automatically.

Handling errors

When the library is unable to connect to the API (for example, due to network connection problems or a timeout), a subclass of anchorbrowser.APIConnectionError is raised.

When the API returns a non-success status code (that is, 4xx or 5xx response), a subclass of anchorbrowser.APIStatusError is raised, containing status_code and response properties.

All errors inherit from anchorbrowser.APIError.

import anchorbrowser
from anchorbrowser import Anchorbrowser

client = Anchorbrowser()

try:
    client.sessions.create_session(
        session={"recording": {"active": False}},
    )
except anchorbrowser.APIConnectionError as e:
    print("The server could not be reached")
    print(e.__cause__)  # an underlying Exception, likely raised within httpx.
except anchorbrowser.RateLimitError as e:
    print("A 429 status code was received; we should back off a bit.")
except anchorbrowser.APIStatusError as e:
    print("Another non-200-range status code was received")
    print(e.status_code)
    print(e.response)

Error codes are as follows:

Retries

Certain errors are automatically retried 2 times by default, with a short exponential backoff. Connection errors (for example, due to a network connectivity problem), 408 Request Timeout, 409 Conflict, 429 Rate Limit, and >=500 Internal errors are all retried by default.

You can use the max_retries option to configure or disable retry settings:

from anchorbrowser import Anchorbrowser

# Configure the default for all requests:
client = Anchorbrowser(
    # default is 2
    max_retries=0,
)

# Or, configure per-request:
client.with_options(max_retries=5).sessions.create_session(
    session={"recording": {"active": False}},
)

Timeouts

By default requests time out after 1 minute. You can configure this with a timeout option, which accepts a float or an httpx.Timeout object:

from anchorbrowser import Anchorbrowser

# Configure the default for all requests:
client = Anchorbrowser(
    # 20 seconds (default is 1 minute)
    timeout=20.0,
)

# More granular control:
client = Anchorbrowser(
    timeout=httpx.Timeout(60.0, read=5.0, write=10.0, connect=2.0),
)

# Override per-request:
client.with_options(timeout=5.0).sessions.create_session(
    session={"recording": {"active": False}},
)

On timeout, an APITimeoutError is thrown.

Note that requests that time out are retried twice by default.

Advanced

Logging

We use the standard library logging module.

You can enable logging by setting the environment variable ANCHORBROWSER_LOG to info.

$ export ANCHORBROWSER_LOG=info

Or to debug for more verbose logging.

How to tell whether None means null or missing

In an API response, a field may be explicitly null, or missing entirely; in either case, its value is None in this library. You can differentiate the two cases with .model_fields_set:

if response.my_field is None:
  if 'my_field' not in response.model_fields_set:
    print('Got json like {}, without a "my_field" key present at all.')
  else:
    print('Got json like {"my_field": null}.')

Making custom/undocumented requests

This library is typed for convenient access to the documented API.

If you need to access undocumented endpoints, params, or response properties, the library can still be used.

Undocumented endpoints

To make requests to undocumented endpoints, you can make requests using client.get, client.post, and other http verbs. Options on the client will be respected (such as retries) when making this request. This is also the way to access raw response data (e.g. headers) for a documented endpoint:

import httpx

response = client.post(
    "/foo",
    cast_to=httpx.Response,
    body={"my_param": True},
)

print(response.headers.get("x-foo"))

Undocumented request params

If you want to explicitly send an extra param, you can do so with the extra_query, extra_body, and extra_headers request options.

Undocumented response properties

To access undocumented response properties, you can access the extra fields like response.unknown_prop. You can also get all the extra fields on the Pydantic model as a dict with response.model_extra.

Configuring the HTTP client

You can directly override the httpx client to customize it for your use case, including:

• Support for proxies
• Custom transports
• Additional advanced functionality

import httpx
from anchorbrowser import Anchorbrowser, DefaultHttpxClient

client = Anchorbrowser(
    # Or use the `ANCHORBROWSER_BASE_URL` env var
    base_url="http://my.test.server.example.com:8083",
    http_client=DefaultHttpxClient(
        proxy="http://my.test.proxy.example.com",
        transport=httpx.HTTPTransport(local_address="0.0.0.0"),
    ),
)

You can also customize the client on a per-request basis by using with_options():

client.with_options(http_client=DefaultHttpxClient(...))

Managing HTTP resources

By default the library closes underlying HTTP connections whenever the client is garbage collected. You can manually close the client using the .close() method if desired, or with a context manager that closes when exiting.

from anchorbrowser import Anchorbrowser

with Anchorbrowser() as client:
  # make requests here
  ...

# HTTP client is now closed

Versioning

This package generally follows SemVer conventions, though certain backwards-incompatible changes may be released as minor versions:

1. Changes that only affect static types, without breaking runtime behavior.
2. Changes to library internals which are technically public but not intended or documented for external use. (Please open a GitHub issue to let us know if you are relying on such internals.)
3. Changes that we do not expect to impact the vast majority of users in practice.

We take backwards-compatibility seriously and work hard to ensure you can rely on a smooth upgrade experience.

We are keen for your feedback; please open an issue with questions, bugs, or suggestions.

Determining the installed version

If you've upgraded to the latest version but aren't seeing any new features you were expecting then your python environment is likely still using an older version.

You can determine the version that is being used at runtime with:

import anchorbrowser
print(anchorbrowser.__version__)

Requirements

Python 3.10 or higher.

Contributing

See the contributing documentation.