Get started with launchpadlib

launchpadlib is a Python SDK that lets you interact with Launchpad directly from the command line, treating its HTTP resources like native Python objects. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to install the library, explore and inspect Launchpad objects, and manage subscriptions—so you can easily turn notifications on or off as needed.

Prerequisites

  • You have a Launchpad account. If you don’t have one, you can create one at https://launchpad.net/+login.

  • You have Python 3 installed on your system. You can check this by running python3 --version in your terminal.

Install launchpadlib

  1. Create and activate a new virtual environment, and install launchpadlib:

    python3 -m venv launchpadlib-tutorial-env
source launchpadlib-tutorial-env/bin/activate
pip install 'launchpadlib[keyring]'

  2. Open a new Python shell and set up your connection to Launchpad:

    from launchpadlib.launchpad import Launchpad
lp = Launchpad.login_with('tutorial', 'production', version="devel")

Know your user

  1. Access your user information:

    lp.me

    This is your user object. It contains all the information about you that Launchpad has. Running this, you should see:

    <person at https://api.launchpad.net/devel/~your-username>

  2. Access your user attributes. You can see your username and display name with:

    lp.me.name
lp.me.display_name

    Explore other attributes:

    lp.me.lp_attributes

    This lists all the attributes of your user object. Example output:

    ['self_link', 'web_link', 'resource_type_link', 'http_etag', 'account_status', 'account_status_history', 'date_created', 'description', 'display_name', 'hide_email_addresses', 'homepage_content', 'id', 'is_probationary', 'is_team', 'is_ubuntu_coc_signer', 'is_valid', 'karma', 'mailing_list_auto_subscribe_policy', 'name', 'private', 'time_zone', 'visibility']

  3. Update an attribute of your user object, for example, your user description:

    me = lp.me
print(me.description)
me.description = "On a mission to explore Launchpad API!"
me.lp_save()
print(me.description)

    The lp_save() method will update your object on Launchpad.

Explore the tutorial project

  1. Load the tutorial project:

    project = lp.load("launchpadlib-tutorial")

  2. List all questions within a project by using the searchQuestions() method on the project object:

    questions = project.searchQuestions(sort="oldest first")

    The result is a collection of question objects.

    You can iterate over the collection to access individual question attributes, such as the question ID and title:

    for question in questions:
   print(f"Question {question.id}: {question.title}")

  3. Retrieve a specific question object using its ID:

    question = lp.questions.getByID(question_id=824116)
question.title

    Note

    You can also directly access a specific question.

    question = questions[0]

Interact with project questions

  1. Subscribing to updates for a question means you’ll receive notifications via email:

    question.subscribe(person=lp.me)

    subscribe is an operation. You can list all operations of an object by using the lp_operations attribute, for example:

    question.lp_operations

    For questions, the following operations are available:

    ['reject', 'subscribe', 'unsubscribe', 'setCommentVisibility']

  2. To view the question in the browser, you can get the link via the API:

    question.web_link

  3. While in the browser, you can post a comment to the question. This will trigger an email notification.

  4. List all the comments in a question, and access the latest comment:

    comments = question.messages
print(f"There are {comments.total_size} comments in this question.")
print(list(comments))
latest_comment = comments[comments.total_size-1]
print(f"Comment by {latest_comment.owner.name}: {latest_comment.content}")

    The question.messages is a collection that contains all comments referring to that question. You can list all collections of an object by using the lp_collections attribute, for example:

    question.lp_collections

    For questions specifically, there is only one collection accessible:

    ['messages']

  5. Check who asked the question and where the question was asked:

    print(f"Asked by {question.owner.name} ({question.owner.web_link})")
print(f"Asked in {question.target.name} ({question.target.web_link})")

    question.owner and question.target are both entries of a question - they refer to other objects related to the question.

    You can list all entries of an object by using the lp_entries attribute:

    question.lp_entries

    For questions, you should see the following entries:

    ['answer', 'answerer', 'assignee', 'language', 'owner', 'target']

  6. Unsubscribe from the question so that you don’t receive any more email notifications.

    question.unsubscribe(person=lp.me)

API reference

This tutorial only shows a small subset of Launchpad’s API endpoints.

You can find the full API reference at https://api.launchpad.net/devel.html.

Further information

You can get more information about this topic in Work with launchpadlib.

This tutorial uses Python. SDKs for the Launchpad API are also available in Golang and Rust.