Specifiers¶

A core requirement of dealing with dependencies is the ability to specify what versions of a dependency are acceptable for you. PEP 440 defines the standard specifier scheme which has been implemented by this module.

Usage¶

>>> from packaging.specifiers import SpecifierSet
>>> from packaging.version import Version
>>> spec1 = SpecifierSet("~=1.0")
>>> spec1
<SpecifierSet('~=1.0')>
>>> spec2 = SpecifierSet(">=1.0")
>>> spec2
<SpecifierSet('>=1.0')>
>>> # We can combine specifiers
>>> combined_spec = spec1 & spec2
>>> combined_spec
<SpecifierSet('>=1.0,~=1.0')>
>>> # We can also implicitly combine a string specifier
>>> combined_spec &= "!=1.1"
>>> combined_spec
<SpecifierSet('!=1.1,>=1.0,~=1.0')>
>>> # Create a few versions to check for contains.
>>> v1 = Version("1.0a5")
>>> v2 = Version("1.0")
>>> # We can check a version object to see if it falls within a specifier
>>> v1 in combined_spec
False
>>> v2 in combined_spec
True
>>> # We can even do the same with a string based version
>>> "1.4" in combined_spec
True
>>> # Finally we can filter a list of versions to get only those which are
>>> # contained within our specifier.
>>> list(combined_spec.filter([v1, v2, "1.4"]))
[<Version('1.0')>, '1.4']

Reference¶

class packaging.specifiers.SpecifierSet(specifiers, prereleases=None)[source]¶

This class abstracts handling specifying the dependencies of a project. It can be passed a single specifier (>=3.0), a comma-separated list of specifiers (>=3.0,!=3.1), or no specifier at all. Each individual specifier will be attempted to be parsed as a PEP 440 specifier (Specifier) or as a legacy, setuptools style specifier (deprecated LegacySpecifier). You may combine SpecifierSet instances using the & operator (SpecifierSet(">2") & SpecifierSet("<4")).

Both the membership tests and the combination support using raw strings in place of already instantiated objects.

Parameters

specifiers (str) – The string representation of a specifier or a comma-separated list of specifiers which will be parsed and normalized before use.
prereleases (bool) – This tells the SpecifierSet if it should accept prerelease versions if applicable or not. The default of None will autodetect it from the given specifiers.

Raises

InvalidSpecifier – If the given specifiers are not parseable than this exception will be raised.

prereleases¶: A boolean value indicating whether this SpecifierSet represents a specifier that includes a pre-release versions. This can be set to either True or False to explicitly enable or disable prereleases or it can be set to None (the default) to enable autodetection.

__contains__(version)[source]¶

This is the more Pythonic version of contains(), but does not allow you to override the prereleases argument. If you need that, use contains().

See contains().

contains(version, prereleases=None)[source]¶

Determines if version, which can be either a version string, a Version, or a deprecated LegacyVersion object, is contained within this set of specifiers.

This will either match or not match prereleases based on the prereleases parameter. When prereleases is set to None (the default) it will use the Specifier().prereleases attribute to determine if to allow them. Otherwise it will use the boolean value of the passed in value to determine if to allow them or not.

__len__()[source]¶: Returns the number of specifiers in this specifier set.

__iter__()[source]¶: Returns an iterator over all the underlying Specifier (or deprecated LegacySpecifier) instances in this specifier set.

filter(iterable, prereleases=None)[source]¶

Takes an iterable that can contain version strings, Version, and deprecated LegacyVersion instances and will then filter it, returning an iterable that contains only items which match the rules of this specifier object.

This method is smarter than just filter(Specifier().contains, [...]) because it implements the rule from PEP 440 where a prerelease item SHOULD be accepted if no other versions match the given specifier.

The prereleases parameter functions similarly to that of the same parameter in contains. If the value is None (the default) then it will intelligently decide if to allow prereleases based on the specifier, the Specifier().prereleases value, and the PEP 440 rules. Otherwise it will act as a boolean which will enable or disable all prerelease versions from being included.

class packaging.specifiers.Specifier(specifier, prereleases=None)[source]¶

This class abstracts the handling of a single PEP 440 compatible specifier. It is generally not required to instantiate this manually, preferring instead to work with SpecifierSet.

Parameters

specifier (str) – The string representation of a specifier which will be parsed and normalized before use.
prereleases (bool) – This tells the specifier if it should accept prerelease versions if applicable or not. The default of None will autodetect it from the given specifiers.

Raises

InvalidSpecifier – If the specifier does not conform to PEP 440 in any way then this exception will be raised.

operator¶: The string value of the operator part of this specifier.

version¶: The string version of the version part of this specifier.

prereleases¶: See SpecifierSet.prereleases.

__contains__(version)¶: See SpecifierSet.__contains__().

contains(version, prereleases=None)¶: See SpecifierSet.contains().

filter(iterable, prereleases=None)¶: See SpecifierSet.filter().

class packaging.specifiers.LegacySpecifier(specifier, prereleases=None)[source]¶

Deprecated since version 20.5: Use Specifier instead.

This class abstracts the handling of a single legacy, setuptools style specifier. It is generally not required to instantiate this manually, preferring instead to work with SpecifierSet.

Parameters

specifier (str) – The string representation of a specifier which will be parsed and normalized before use.
prereleases (bool) – This tells the specifier if it should accept prerelease versions if applicable or not. The default of None will autodetect it from the given specifiers.

Raises

InvalidSpecifier – If the specifier is not parseable then this will be raised.

operator¶: The string value of the operator part of this specifier.

version¶: The string version of the version part of this specifier.

prereleases¶: See SpecifierSet.prereleases.

__contains__(version)¶: See SpecifierSet.__contains__().

contains(version, prereleases=None)¶: See SpecifierSet.contains().

filter(iterable, prereleases=None)¶: See SpecifierSet.filter().

exception packaging.specifiers.InvalidSpecifier[source]¶: Raised when attempting to create a Specifier with a specifier string that does not conform to PEP 440.