Entry points¶

Theentry_points() function returns a collection of entry points.Entry points are represented byEntryPoint instances;eachEntryPoint has a.name,.group, and.value attributes anda.load() method to resolve the value. There are also.module,.attr, and.extras attributes for getting the components of the.value attribute.

Query all entry points:

>>>eps=entry_points()

Theentry_points() function returns anEntryPoints object,a sequence of allEntryPoint objects withnames andgroupsattributes for convenience:

>>>sorted(eps.groups)['console_scripts', 'distutils.commands', 'distutils.setup_keywords', 'egg_info.writers', 'setuptools.installation']

EntryPoints has aselect method to select entry pointsmatching specific properties. Select entry points in theconsole_scripts group:

>>>scripts=eps.select(group='console_scripts')

Equivalently, sinceentry_points passes keyword argumentsthrough to select:

>>>scripts=entry_points(group='console_scripts')

Pick out a specific script named “wheel” (found in the wheel project):

>>>'wheel'inscripts.namesTrue>>>wheel=scripts['wheel']

Equivalently, query for that entry point during selection:

>>>(wheel,)=entry_points(group='console_scripts',name='wheel')>>>(wheel,)=entry_points().select(group='console_scripts',name='wheel')

Inspect the resolved entry point:

>>>wheelEntryPoint(name='wheel', value='wheel.cli:main', group='console_scripts')>>>wheel.module'wheel.cli'>>>wheel.attr'main'>>>wheel.extras[]>>>main=wheel.load()>>>main<function main at 0x103528488>

Thegroup andname are arbitrary values defined by the package authorand usually a client will wish to resolve all entry points for a particulargroup. Readthe setuptools docsfor more information on entry points, their definition, and usage.

Compatibility Note

The “selectable” entry points were introduced inimportlib_metadata3.6 and Python 3.10. Prior to those changes,entry_points acceptedno parameters and always returned a dictionary of entry points, keyedby group. For compatibility, if no parameters are passed to entry_points,aSelectableGroups object is returned, implementing that dictinterface. In the future, callingentry_points with no parameterswill return anEntryPoints object. Users should rely on the selectioninterface to retrieve entry points by group.

Distribution metadata¶

Every distribution includes some metadata, which you can extract using themetadata() function:

>>>wheel_metadata=metadata('wheel')

The keys of the returned data structure, aPackageMetadata,name the metadata keywords, andthe values are returned unparsed from the distribution metadata:

>>>wheel_metadata['Requires-Python']'>=2.7, !=3.0.*, !=3.1.*, !=3.2.*, !=3.3.*'

PackageMetadata also presents ajson attribute that returnsall the metadata in a JSON-compatible form perPEP 566:

>>>wheel_metadata.json['requires_python']'>=2.7, !=3.0.*, !=3.1.*, !=3.2.*, !=3.3.*'

Distribution versions¶

Theversion() function is the quickest way to get a distribution’s versionnumber, as a string:

>>>version('wheel')'0.32.3'

Distribution files¶

You can also get the full set of files contained within a distribution. Thefiles() function takes a distribution package name and returns all of thefiles installed by this distribution. Each file object returned is aPackagePath, apathlib.PurePath derived object with additionaldist,size, andhash properties as indicated by the metadata. For example:

>>>util=[pforpinfiles('wheel')if'util.py'instr(p)][0]>>>utilPackagePath('wheel/util.py')>>>util.size859>>>util.dist<importlib.metadata._hooks.PathDistribution object at 0x101e0cef0>>>>util.hash<FileHash mode: sha256 value: bYkw5oMccfazVCoYQwKkkemoVyMAFoR34mmKBx8R1NI>

Once you have the file, you can also read its contents:

>>>print(util.read_text())import base64import sys...def as_bytes(s):    if isinstance(s, text_type):        return s.encode('utf-8')    return s

You can also use thelocate method to get a the absolute path to thefile:

>>>util.locate()PosixPath('/home/gustav/example/lib/site-packages/wheel/util.py')

In the case where the metadata file listing files(RECORD or SOURCES.txt) is missing,files() willreturnNone. The caller may wish to wrap calls tofiles() inalways_iterableor otherwise guard against this condition if the targetdistribution is not known to have the metadata present.

Distribution requirements¶

To get the full set of requirements for a distribution, use therequires()function:

>>>requires('wheel')["pytest (>=3.0.0) ; extra == 'test'", "pytest-cov ; extra == 'test'"]

Package distributions¶

A convenience method to resolve the distribution ordistributions (in the case of a namespace package) for top-levelPython packages or modules:

>>>packages_distributions(){'importlib_metadata': ['importlib-metadata'], 'yaml': ['PyYAML'], 'jaraco': ['jaraco.classes', 'jaraco.functools'], ...}