How do I search for an available Python package using pip?
PythonPipPython Problem Overview
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.
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
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 [tag:poetry]:
$ poetry search <package>
Solution 2 - Python
To search for a package, issue the command
pip search [package-name]
Solution 3 - Python
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)
Solution 4 - Python
-
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:
Solution 5 - Python
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.
Solution 6 - Python
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.
Solution 7 - Python
To see a list of all available packages try running
pip search *
Solution 8 - Python
Use: pip show