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I want to use the Python package keyring to avoid exposing passwords in my Python scripts. According to what I’ve read, all you need to do is pip install keyring and then start storing and retrieving credentials. I’ve done this on both my Mac laptop (Big Sur) and a CentOS 7 box. On my Mac, pip list shows that version 23.1.0 of keyring is installed, and the command line utility is available. However, when I try to set a password using the command line or in python using keyring.set_password(…) I get the following error:

File "/lib/python3.7/site-packages/keyring/backends/macOS/init.py", line 38, in set_password
api.set_generic_password(self.keychain, service, username, password)
NameError: name ‘api’ is not defined

Line 12 of the init.py is a simple import of the api module:

    from . import api

and then line 38, where the error is reported, tries to set the password:

    api.set_generic_password(self.keychain, service, username, password)

Why am I getting this error? I read somewhere that you shouldn’t install keyring in a venv with pip but I’m not certain why not. Any help is appreciated.

3

Answers


  1. Try installing the six package by typing this in the command prompt/terminal:

    pip install six
    

    Somehow, the keyring package isn’t installed properly on MacOS. See here.

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  2. Run this command:

    $ /usr/local/lib/python3.7 -c "import keyring.backends._OS_X_API"

    That should produce the underlying exception that’s causing the module to be missing.

    EDIT:

    Try adding this

    if sys.platform == 'darwin':    # It's a solution for Mac
        import keyring.backends.OS_X
        keyring.set_keyring(keyring.backends.OS_X.Keyring())
    else:   # It's a solution for Windows
        import keyring.backends.Windows
        keyring.set_keyring(keyring.backends.Windows.WinVaultKeyring())
    
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  3. Error was introduced with version keyring==23.1.0 (Aug 15, 2021)

    Once I downgraded to keyring==23.0.1 (March 25, 2021), the problem went away.

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