keyring 0.5

Store and access your passwords safely.

Table of Contents

• What is Python keyring lib?

• Installation Instructions

  • easy_install or pip

  • Source installation

• Configure your keyring lib

  • Customize your keyring by config file

    • Config file path

    • Config file content

  • Write your own keyring backend

  • Set the keyring in runtime

• Integrate the keyring lib with your application

  • API interface

  • Example

• Get involved

• Credits

• CHANGES

• 0.5

• 0.4

• 0.3

• 0.2

What is Python keyring lib?

The Python keyring lib provides a easy way to access the system keyring service from python. It can be used in any application that needs safe password storage.

The keyring services supported by the Python keyring lib:

• OSXKeychain: supports the Keychain service in Mac OS X.

• KDEKWallet: supports the KDE’s Kwallet service.

• GnomeKeyring: for Gnome environment.

Besides these native password storing services provided by operating systems. Python keyring lib also provides following build-in keyrings.

• Win32CryptoKeyring: for Windows 2k+.

• CryptedFileKeyring: a command line interface keyring base on PyCrypto.

• UncryptedFileKeyring: a keyring which leaves passwords directly in file.

Installation Instructions

easy_install or pip

Run easy_install or pip:

$ easy_install keyring
$ pip install keyring

Source installation

Download the source tarball, and uncompress it, then run the install command:

$ wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/k/keyring/keyring-0.3.tar.gz
$ tar -xzvf keyring-0.3.tar.gz
$ cd keyring-0.3
$ python setup.py install

Configure your keyring lib

The python keyring lib contains implementations for several backends, including OSX Keychain, Gnome Keyring, KDE Kwallet and etc. The lib will automatically choose the keyring that is most suitable for your current environment. You can also specify the keyring you like to be used in the config file or by calling the set_keyring() function.

Customize your keyring by config file

This section is about how to change your option in the config file.

Config file path

The configuration of the lib is stored in a file named “keyringrc.cfg”. The file can be stored in either of following two paths.

1. The working directory of the python

2. The home directory for current user

The lib will first look for the config file in the working directory. If no config file exists or the config file is not write properly, the lib will look up in the home folder.

Config file content

To specify a keyring backend, you need tell the lib the module name of the backend, such as keyring.backend.OSXKeychain. If the backend is not shipped with the lib, in another word, is made by you own, you need also tell the lib the path of your own backend module. The module name should be written after the default-keyring option, while the module path belongs the keyring-path option.

Here’s a sample config file(The full demo can be accessed in the demo/keyring.py):

[backend]
default-keyring=simplekeyring.SimpleKeyring
keyring-path=/home/kang/pyworkspace/python-keyring-lib/demo/

Write your own keyring backend

The interface for the backend is defined by keyring.backend.KeyringBackend. By extending this base class and implementing the three functions supported(), get_password() and set_password(), you can easily create your own backend for keyring lib.

The usage of the three functions:

• supported(self) : Return if this backend is supported in current environment. The returned value can be 0, 1 , or -1. 0 means suitable; 1 means recommended and -1 means this backend is not available for current environment.

• get_password(self, service, username) : Return the stored password for the username of the service.

• set_password(self, service, username, password) : Store the password for username of the service in the backend.

For an instance, there’s the source code of the demo mentioned above. It’s a simple keyring which stores the password directly in memory.

"""
simplekeyring.py

A simple keyring class for the keyring_demo.py

Created by Kang Zhang on 2009-07-12
"""
from keyring.backend import KeyringBackend

class SimpleKeyring(KeyringBackend):
    """Simple Keyring is a keyring which can store only one
    password in memory.
    """
    def __init__(self):
        self.password = ''

    def supported(self):
        return 0

    def get_password(self, service, username):
        return self.password

    def set_password(self, service, username, password):
        self.password = password
        return 0

Set the keyring in runtime

Besides setting the backend through the config file, you can also set the backend to use by calling the api set_keyring(). The backend you passed in will be used to store the password in your application.

Here’s a code snippet from the keyringdemo.py. It shows the usage of set_keyring()

# define a new keyring class which extends the KeyringBackend
import keyring.backend
class TestKeyring(keyring.backend.KeyringBackend):
    """A test keyring which always outputs same password
    """
    def supported(self): return 0
    def set_password(self, servicename, username, password): return 0
    def get_password(self, servicename, username):
        return "password from TestKeyring"

# set the keyring for keyring lib
import keyring
keyring.set_keyring(TestKeyring())

# invoke the keyring lib
try:
    keyring.set_password("demo-service", "tarek", "passexample")
    print "password stored sucessfully"
except keyring.backend.PasswordError:
    print "failed to store password"
print "password", keyring.get_password("demo-service", "tarek")

Integrate the keyring lib with your application

API interface

The keyring lib has two functions:

• get_password(service, username) : Returns the password stored in keyring. If the password does not exist, it will return None.

• set_password(service, username, password) : Store the password in the keyring.

Example

Here’s an example of using keyring for application authorization. It can be found in the demo folder of the repository. Note that the faked auth function only returns true when the password equals to the username.

"""
auth_demo.py

Created by Kang Zhang 2009-08-14
"""

import keyring
import getpass
import ConfigParser

def auth(username, password):
    """A faked authorization function.
    """
    return username == password

def main():
    """This scrip demos how to use keyring facilite the authorization. The
    username is stored in a config named 'auth_demo.cfg'
    """
    # config file init
    config_file = 'auth_demo.cfg'
    config = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser({
                'username':'',
                })
    config.read(config_file)
    if not config.has_section('auth_demo_login'):
        config.add_section('auth_demo_login')

    username = config.get('auth_demo_login','username')
    password = None
    if username != '':
        password = keyring.get_password('auth_demo_login', username)

    if password == None or not auth(username, password):

        while 1:
            username = raw_input("Username:\n")
            password = getpass.getpass("Password:\n")

            if auth(username, password):
                break
            else:
                print "Authorization failed."

        # store the username
        config.set('auth_demo_login', 'username', username)
        config.write(open(config_file, 'w'))

        # store the password
        keyring.set_password('auth_demo_login', username, password)

    # the stuff that needs authorization here
    print "Authorization successful."

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Get involved

Python keyring lib is an open community project and highly welcomes new contributors.

• Repository: http://bitbucket.org/kang/python-keyring-lib/

• Bug Tracker: http://bitbucket.org/kang/python-keyring-lib/issues/

• Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/python-keyring

Credits

The project was based on Tarek Ziade’s idea in this post. Kang Zhang initially carried it out as a Google Summer of Code project, and Tarek mentored Kang on this project.

See CONTRIBUTORS.txt for a complete list of contributors.

CHANGES

0.5

• Now using the existing Gnome and KDE python libs instead of custom C++ code.

• Using the getpass module instead of custom code

0.4

• Fixed the setup script (some subdirs were not included in the release.)

0.3

• Fixed keyring.core when the user doesn’t have a cfg, or is not properly configured.

• Fixed escaping issues for usernames with non-ascii characters

0.2

• Add support for Python 2.4+ http://bitbucket.org/kang/python-keyring-lib/issue/2

• Fix the bug in KDE Kwallet extension compiling http://bitbucket.org/kang/python-keyring-lib/issue/3