I have been introducing the Python Keyring library in this previous post. At that time I was looking for a sponsor and thanks to Piotr Ożarowski, python-keyring is now available in Sid.
What for ?
- You can access the keyring you use on your system (Gnome-keyring, KWallet) to store your app’s passwords.
- It’s a unified access to keyrings that the Python Keyring library provides, meaning you can easely write your own backend for your keyring software.
- You can create your own keyring, crypted on a file, still with the same library.
- Keyrings are cool and this library provides a great way to play with them, from your Python applications.
- When mature, the Keyring library will be integrated in the official Python module getpass, which means you’re not learning yet-another-soon-unmaintained library.
How ?
The source package provides three binary packages :
- python-keyring : the Keyring library without the support of both Gnome-keyring and KWallet.
- python-keyring-gnome : the support for Gnome-keyring.
- python-keyring-kwallet : the support for KWallet.
If you use passwords in your Python apps, it’s worth to give python-keyring a try.
The latest versions of kwallet and gnome-keyring, which should soon be in Debian, share a common D-Bus interface (org.freedesktop.Secrets) to access the keyring.
Which makes this effort a bit pointless…
Hi Np237,
You can have a look at the Keyring webpage to have a full list of Keyring possibilities (e.g the OSXKeychain backend, Win32CryptoKeyring). Backends for Gnome-keyring and KWallet are not the only features the Keyring library offer.
One of the major features of this API is you can create your own keyring or write your own keyring backends, meaning you just have to develop a backend to integrate any keyring you want in this API.
It doesn’t seem pointless to me, especially if this library merges with an official Python module like getpass in the future, offering the developers in the standard library a unified way to access/create any keyring.