How do I search for an available Python package using pip?
Question:
I would like to be able to search for an available Python package using pip (on the terminal). I would like a functionality similar to apt-cache in Ubuntu. More specifically, I would like to
- be able to search for packages given a term (similar to
apt-cache search [package-name]), and
- list all available packages.
Answers:
To search for a package, issue the command
pip search [package-name]
-
To search use pip search QUERY
Use pip help and pip help COMMAND to learn about all available commands and their options.
-
You can find a complete list of packages here:
An index with simpler markup for easier automatic consumption can be found here:
To see a list of all available packages try running
pip search *
Pip search can solve your problem if you don’t want to use it too often. But after regular use I found it hard to read, slow to use and it didn’t show infos I sometimes needed (upload time, license, size, etc) so I ended up writing an alternative which I think turned out pretty nice.
It is called yip and it is like pip search on steroids. It supports regex search, colorized output and a menu system which makes installing from search result super easy. If you want to know more or see a screencap check it out on GitHub.
As of Dec 2020, pip search will not work (more).
The current feasible solution is to search online, on: https://pypi.org/ (reference also provided by previous comments).
If anyone hitting the following error:
xmlrpc.client.Fault: <Fault -32500: "RuntimeError: PyPI's XMLRPC API has been temporarily
disabled due to unmanageable load and will be deprecated in the near future.
See https://status.python.org/ for more information.">
as stated in #5216:
As an update: XMLRPC search does still remain disabled.
because:
As noted in #5216 (comment), a group of servers are hitting the pip search entry point, to an extent that PyPI cannot sustain that load with the current architecture of how pip search works.
Update: As a CLI alternative to pip, that uses PyPI registry, one can use poetry:
$ poetry search <package>
As of December the 14th, 2020, the pip search functionality has been disabled :
$ pip search cast
ERROR: XMLRPC request failed [code: -32500]
RuntimeError: PyPI's XMLRPC API is currently disabled due to unmanageable load and will be deprecated in the near future. See https://status.python.org/ for more information.
Alternatives
Here’s a little tool called pip_search I’ve just found that does a simple search but it does the job.
This is pip_search v0.0.6 output:
$ pip_search pulsemixer
---------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name Description
pulsemixer pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio
pulsectl-asyncio Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse
pulsectl Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse)
---------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE
pip_search has been updated, each folder is a clickable (CTRL+click) URL for each project, now it looks like this:
$ pip_search pulsemixer
https://pypi.org/search/?q=pulsemixer
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Package ┃ Version ┃ Released ┃ Description ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ pulsemixer │ 1.5.1 │ Apr 11, 2020 │ pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio │
│ pulsectl-asyncio │ 0.1.7 │ Jun 13, 2021 │ Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse │
│ pulsectl │ 21.5.18 │ May 22, 2021 │ Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse) │
└─────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
To install it, just type:
pip install pip_search
There’s also another tool that I’ve just tried called pypisearch.
To install it, just type: pip install pypisearch
And it works like this:
$ python -m pypisearch pulsemixer
pulsemixer (1.5.1) [installed 1.5.0] pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio
pulsectl-asyncio (0.1.5) Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse
pulsectl (21.3.4) Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse)
Use: pip show <package_name>
After Dec 2020, search doesn’t work. But index does.
pip index versions <package_name>
Note: pip index is currently an experimental command. It may be removed/changed in a future release without prior warning.
EDIT: (You can also use pip index -vv versions <package> to get verbose output.)
Just simply install a non-existing version of the package that you want to search. By this way, you can find not only the stable releases, but also the alpha, beta versions like 1.2.3a2.
pip install [package]==666.666.666
I would like to be able to search for an available Python package using pip (on the terminal). I would like a functionality similar to apt-cache in Ubuntu. More specifically, I would like to
- be able to search for packages given a term (similar to
apt-cache search [package-name]), and - list all available packages.
To search for a package, issue the command
pip search [package-name]
-
To search use
pip search QUERYUse
pip helpandpip help COMMANDto learn about all available commands and their options. -
You can find a complete list of packages here:
An index with simpler markup for easier automatic consumption can be found here:
To see a list of all available packages try running
pip search *
Pip search can solve your problem if you don’t want to use it too often. But after regular use I found it hard to read, slow to use and it didn’t show infos I sometimes needed (upload time, license, size, etc) so I ended up writing an alternative which I think turned out pretty nice.
It is called yip and it is like pip search on steroids. It supports regex search, colorized output and a menu system which makes installing from search result super easy. If you want to know more or see a screencap check it out on GitHub.
As of Dec 2020, pip search will not work (more).
The current feasible solution is to search online, on: https://pypi.org/ (reference also provided by previous comments).
If anyone hitting the following error:
xmlrpc.client.Fault: <Fault -32500: "RuntimeError: PyPI's XMLRPC API has been temporarily
disabled due to unmanageable load and will be deprecated in the near future.
See https://status.python.org/ for more information.">
as stated in #5216:
As an update: XMLRPC search does still remain disabled.
because:
As noted in #5216 (comment), a group of servers are hitting the pip search entry point, to an extent that PyPI cannot sustain that load with the current architecture of how pip search works.
Update: As a CLI alternative to pip, that uses PyPI registry, one can use poetry:
$ poetry search <package>
As of December the 14th, 2020, the pip search functionality has been disabled :
$ pip search cast
ERROR: XMLRPC request failed [code: -32500]
RuntimeError: PyPI's XMLRPC API is currently disabled due to unmanageable load and will be deprecated in the near future. See https://status.python.org/ for more information.
Alternatives
Here’s a little tool called pip_search I’ve just found that does a simple search but it does the job.
This is pip_search v0.0.6 output:
$ pip_search pulsemixer
---------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name Description
pulsemixer pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio
pulsectl-asyncio Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse
pulsectl Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse)
---------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE
pip_search has been updated, each folder is a clickable (CTRL+click) URL for each project, now it looks like this:
$ pip_search pulsemixer
https://pypi.org/search/?q=pulsemixer
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Package ┃ Version ┃ Released ┃ Description ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ pulsemixer │ 1.5.1 │ Apr 11, 2020 │ pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio │
│ pulsectl-asyncio │ 0.1.7 │ Jun 13, 2021 │ Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse │
│ pulsectl │ 21.5.18 │ May 22, 2021 │ Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse) │
└─────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
To install it, just type:
pip install pip_search
There’s also another tool that I’ve just tried called pypisearch.
To install it, just type: pip install pypisearch
And it works like this:
$ python -m pypisearch pulsemixer
pulsemixer (1.5.1) [installed 1.5.0] pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio
pulsectl-asyncio (0.1.5) Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse
pulsectl (21.3.4) Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse)
Use: pip show <package_name>
After Dec 2020, search doesn’t work. But index does.
pip index versions <package_name>
Note: pip index is currently an experimental command. It may be removed/changed in a future release without prior warning.
EDIT: (You can also use pip index -vv versions <package> to get verbose output.)
Just simply install a non-existing version of the package that you want to search. By this way, you can find not only the stable releases, but also the alpha, beta versions like 1.2.3a2.
pip install [package]==666.666.666