Installation Guide

Note

Generally, the python client works with Python 2.x and Python 3.x. But it is only tested against 2.7, 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7. Feel free to report any bugs you encounter in any other version.

Install the package

You can install the latest stable clarifai using pip (which is the canonical way to install Python packages). To install using pip, run:

pip install clarifai --upgrade

You can also install directly from Github (though we recommend the previous approach):

pip install git+git://github.com/Clarifai/clarifai-python.git

Configuration

Generate your Clarifai API key [on the API keys page](https://clarifai.com/developer/account/keys). The client uses it for authentication.

You can use three methods to pass the API key to your client (if you use more than one, the first in the following precedence order will be used):

  1. Pass it to the ClarifaiApp constructor through the api_key parameter.

  2. Set it as the CLARIFAI_API_KEY environment variable.

  3. Place it in the .clarifai/config file using the following command (see exceptions for Windows below):

    $ ./scripts/clarifai config
    CLARIFAI_API_KEY: []: ************************************YQEd
    

Windows Users

For Windows users, running ./scripts/clarifai config may fail when you try to configure the runtime environment. This is because Windows uses the file extension to determine executables and by default, file clarifai without file extension is non-executable. In order to run the command, you may want to launch it with the python interpreter.

C:\Python27\python.exe Scripts\clarifai config
CLARIFAI_API_KEY: []: ************************************YQEd

AWS Lambda Users

For AWS Lambda users, in order to use the library correctly, you are recommended to set an environmental variable CLARIFAI_API_KEY in the lambda function configuration, or “hardcode” the api_key parameter to the ClarifaiApp constructor.