How to install steem-python on Ubuntu 16.04 and get steempy working

Ubuntu 16.04 is very popular Linux distro and probably most of fresh Linux users use it. The problem with running steem-python on Ubuntu 16.04 is that the Ubuntu comes with Python 3.5 and steem-python requires Python 3.6.

What is steem-python?

It's a swiss army knife for Steem Python developers ;-) Accordingly to GitHub description,

steem-python is the official STEEM library for Python. It comes with a BIP38 encrypted wallet and a practical CLI utility called steempy

Install Python 3.6

We'll install Python 3.6 from PPA repositories, let's add new APT source,

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/python-3.6
OK

 
if you get error about missing add-apt-repository command, please install software-properties-common package: apt-get install software-properties-common

Now you can update APT database and install Python3.6, pip and required libssl-dev packages,

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install python3.6 python3.6-dev libssl-dev
...
...
Get:6 http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonathonf/python-3.6/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages [4,492 B]
Get:7 http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonathonf/python-3.6/ubuntu xenial/main Translation-en [2,028 B]
Fetched 24.6 kB in 0s (43.1 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
...
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libssl-dev python3.6 python3.6-dev
...

 
PIP for Python 3.6 doesn't exist in PPA, but we'll install it manually,

$ wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
$ sudo python3.6 get-pip.py

Install steem-python

$ sudo pip3.6 install -U steem
...
...
Successfully installed scrypt-0.8.0 steem-0.18.103 toml-0.9.3 toolz-0.8.2 ujson-1.35 voluptuous-0.10.5 w3lib-1.18.0

 
steem-python has been installed :) but there is one more issue to fix, steempy (CLI) won't work due to toml package issue...

$ steempy
...
...
Original exception was:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/steempy", line 7, in <module>
    steem.cli.legacy()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/steem/cli.py", line 83, in legacy
    version=pkg_resources.require("steem")[0].version
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 984, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 875, in resolve
    raise VersionConflict(dist, req).with_context(dependent_req)
pkg_resources.ContextualVersionConflict: (toml 0.9.3 (/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages), Requirement.parse('toml==0.9.3.1'), {'steem'})

 
This is known problem and easy to fix, the steem-python requires toml==0.9.3.1 but unfortunately the creator of toml messed up the package versions, and 0.9.3.1 version is recognized as 0.9.3... let's fix it,

$ grep toml /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/steem-0.18.103-py3.6.egg-info/requires.txt
toml==0.9.3.1

 
All what you need to do is change the line in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/steem-0.18.103-py3.6.egg-info/requires.txt file,

from

toml==0.9.3.1

 
to

toml==0.9.3

 
when it's done you can run steempy,

$ steempy
usage: steempy [-h] [--node NODE] [--no-broadcast] [--no-wallet] [--unsigned]
               [--expires EXPIRES] [--verbose VERBOSE] [--version]
               {set,config,info,changewalletpassphrase,addkey,parsewif,delkey,getkey,listkeys,listaccounts,upvote,downvote,transfer,powerup,powerdown,powerdownroute,convert,balance,interest,permissions,allow,disallow,newaccount,importaccount,updatememokey,approvewitness,disapprovewitness,sign,broadcast,orderbook,buy,sell,cancel,resteem,follow,unfollow,setprofile,delprofile,witnessupdate,witnesscreate}

 
it works! let's do one more check,

$ steempy info

Yeah, looks good. Now we can check the steem-python module itself,

$ python3.6
Python 3.6.3 (default, Oct  6 2017, 08:44:35)
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> import steem
>>> s = steem.Steem()
>>> s.get_account('jamzed')

{'id': 103323, 'name': 'jamzed', 'owner': {'weight_threshold': 1, 'account_auths': [], 'key_auths': [['STM7ss8gKeorUBd2GQ6GbgUWukevnGTWbA7UDbYAPvMDcpecKN9Ni', 1]]}, 'active': {'weight_threshold': 1, 'account_auths': [], 'key_auths': [['STM7WXHqMkvi9Lcsq7Mun2SWchjF1uC33dNGiN9HShAQqDN8JpoGH', 1]]}, 'posting': {'weight_threshold': 1, 'account_auths': [['busy.app', 1], ['utopian.app', 1]], 'key_auths': [['STM6v4Fo2uVrziELGyqmS2yd7q1eJzfhJKMqN3KmrHN8sMwTnzzz5', 1]]}, 'memo_key': 'STM6kGHddusAbGnBE4D1w8RWhNezE2mvcftggKjLWZsD63ejVQDt3', 'json_metadata': '{"profile":{"name":"Patryk Kuźmicz","about":"[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo Click","location":"Kraków","website":"https://patryk.kuzmi.cz","profile_image":"https://i.imgur.com/NohuYO1.png"}}', 'proxy': '', 'last_owner_update': '2017-11-23T11:38:33', 'last_account_update': '2017-11-23T11:38:33', 'created': '2016-10-06T14:16:48', 'mined': False, 'owner_challenged': False, 'active_challenged': False, 'last_owner_proved': '1970-01-01T00:00:00', 'last_active_proved': '1970-01-01T00:00:00', 'recovery_account': 'steem', 'last_account_recovery': '1970-01-01T00:00:00', 'reset_account': 'null', 'comment_count': 0, 'lifetime_vote_count': 0, 'post_count': 69, 'can_vote': True, 'voting_power': 9250, 'last_vote_time': '2017-11-26T20:17:15', 'balance': '0.000 STEEM', 'savings_balance': '0.000 STEEM', 'sbd_balance': '0.171 SBD', 'sbd_seconds': '25606731', 'sbd_seconds_last_update': '2017-11-26T19:41:51', 'sbd_last_interest_payment': '2017-10-31T11:22:33', 'savings_sbd_balance': '0.000 SBD', 'savings_sbd_seconds': '0', 'savings_sbd_seconds_last_update': '1970-01-01T00:00:00', 'savings_sbd_last_interest_payment': '1970-01-01T00:00:00', 'savings_withdraw_requests': 0, 'reward_sbd_balance': '0.000 SBD', 'reward_steem_balance': '0.000 STEEM', 'reward_vesting_balance': '6.158415 VESTS', 'reward_vesting_steem': '0.003 STEEM', 'vesting_shares': '328049.905307 VESTS', 'delegated_vesting_shares': '0.000000 VESTS', 'received_vesting_shares': '0.000000 VESTS', 'vesting_withdraw_rate': '0.000000 VESTS', 'next_vesting_withdrawal': '1969-12-31T23:59:59', 'withdrawn': 0, 'to_withdraw': 0, 'withdraw_routes': 0, 'curation_rewards': 753, 'posting_rewards': 44017, 'proxied_vsf_votes': ['34134838232', 0, 0, 0], 'witnesses_voted_for': 22, 'average_bandwidth': '38261968148', 'lifetime_bandwidth': '348501000000', 'last_bandwidth_update': '2017-11-26T22:55:24', 'average_market_bandwidth': 1498648363, 'lifetime_market_bandwidth': '11610000000', 'last_market_bandwidth_update': '2017-11-26T19:41:03', 'last_post': '2017-11-26T15:35:27', 'last_root_post': '2017-11-22T12:35:57', 'vesting_balance': '0.000 STEEM', 'reputation': '337626802057', 'transfer_history': [], 'market_history': [], 'post_history': [], 'vote_history': [], 'other_history': [], 'witness_votes': ['aggroed', 'arcange', 'ausbitbank', 'busy.witness', 'clayop', 'complexring', 'drakos', 'furion', 'good-karma', 'gtg', 'jamzed', 'jesta', 'klye', 'lukestokes.mhth', 'moorkedi', 'netuoso', 'pfunk', 'pharesim', 'riverhead', 'someguy123', 'themarkymark', 'timcliff'], 'tags_usage': [], 'guest_bloggers': []}

 
Enjoy and build something big! ;-)

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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