---
author: ''
category: ''
date: 2009/12/21 14:39
description: ''
link: ''
priority: ''
slug: BB858
tags: open source, programming, pyqt, python, qt
title: python-keyring is seriously nice
type: text
updated: 2009/12/21 14:39
url_type: ''
---
Many programs require passwords from the user.

It's nice when a program can remember the password you give it.

It's nicer when it stores said password safely. However, it's not trivial to do that if you care for cross-platform support.

Or at least it wasn't until Kang Zhang wrote `python keyring <http://home.python-keyring.org/>`_, a module that abstracts the password storage mechanisms for KDE, GNOME, OSX and windows (and adds a couple of file-based backends just in case).

So, how does it work?

Install it in the usual way. If it's not packaged for your distro/operating system, just use easy_install::

       easy_install keyring

You could also get it from mercurial::

       hg clone http://bitbucket.org/kang/python-keyring-lib/

The API is simplicity itself. This is how you save a secret:

.. code-block:: python
 
    import keyring
    keyring.set_password('keyring_demo','username','thisisabadpassword')

You may get this dialog (or some analog on other platforms):

.. raw:: html

   <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ralsina/4204030972/" title="keyring1 by ralsina_2000, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2666/4204030972_5e8764dd83_o.png" width="489" height="137" alt="keyring1"></a>

And here's the proof that it was saved correctly (this is KDE's password manager):

.. raw:: html

   <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ralsina/4203288755/" title="keyring2 by ralsina_2000, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4038/4203288755_38352aff96_o.png" width="425" height="315" alt="keyring2"></a>

And how do you get the secret back?

.. code-block:: python

    import keyring
    print keyring.get_password('keyring_demo','username')

This is how it runs::

    $ python load.py
    thisisabadpassword

As you can see, the API is as easy as it could possible get. It even chose the KWallet backend automatically because I am in KDE!

Python-keyring is a module that fixes a big problem, so a big thank you to Kang Zhang and Tarek Ziadé (who had the idea)