Developer Preview — This documentation covers the AWS SDK for Python, which is in Developer Preview and intended for evaluation and testing only. Do not use it for production workloads. For production applications, use the AWS SDK for Python (Boto3). To understand the differences between the two SDKs, see Choosing the right AWS SDK for Python.
Prerequisites and installation
To start building with the AWS SDK for Python, you need an AWS account, a supported Python version, and the SDK's service client packages. The following steps help you verify your environment, create an isolated workspace, and install only the packages that your application requires.
Before you begin:
Create an AWS account if you don't have one. For instructions, see Sign up for AWS in the AWS Account Management User Guide.
Install Python 3.12 or later. The installation commands in this guide use pip, the package installer included with most Python installations. To install Python, see Download Python
.
Confirm that Python and pip are available:
python --version python -m pip --version
Create a virtual environment to keep this project's packages separate from other Python projects:
python -m venv .venv
Activate the virtual environment on macOS or Linux:
source .venv/bin/activate
On Windows, activate it with the following command instead:
.venv\Scripts\activate
Then update pip:
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
The preceding steps are the standard setup for most SDK projects. The packages that you install next are specific to the examples in this chapter.
The SDK publishes a separate package for each AWS service client. Install the Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Transcribe client packages:
python -m pip install aws-sdk-dynamodb aws-sdk-transcribe-streaming
This command installs both clients as individual packages.
Alternatively, install the same clients as optional dependencies of the aws-sdk-python meta-package:
python -m pip install "aws-sdk-python[dynamodb,transcribe_streaming]"
The meta-package installs only the service clients that you select as extras; without extras, it installs no clients. It coordinates client versions through its MAJOR.MINOR version, so it installs compatible client versions together.
Use the meta-package when your application depends on several clients. Install individual client packages when your application uses only one or two services and you want the smallest dependency set.
The preceding commands install the latest package versions. To control which version is installed, add a version specifier to the package name. Version specifiers work for both individual client packages and the meta-package:
# Install version 0.11.0 specifically python -m pip install "aws-sdk-dynamodb==0.11.0" "aws-sdk-transcribe-streaming==0.11.0" # individual client packages python -m pip install "aws-sdk-python[dynamodb,transcribe_streaming]==0.11.0" # meta-package # Install the latest version that is at least 0.11.0 python -m pip install "aws-sdk-dynamodb>=0.11.0" "aws-sdk-transcribe-streaming>=0.11.0" # individual client packages python -m pip install "aws-sdk-python[dynamodb,transcribe_streaming]>=0.11.0" # meta-package # Install the latest version that is at most 0.11.0 python -m pip install "aws-sdk-dynamodb<=0.11.0" "aws-sdk-transcribe-streaming<=0.11.0" # individual client packages python -m pip install "aws-sdk-python[dynamodb,transcribe_streaming]<=0.11.0" # meta-package # Install the latest version that is compatible with 0.11.0 (>=0.11.0, <0.12.0) python -m pip install "aws-sdk-dynamodb~=0.11.0" "aws-sdk-transcribe-streaming~=0.11.0" # individual client packages python -m pip install "aws-sdk-python[dynamodb,transcribe_streaming]~=0.11.0" # meta-package
