API clients / Python

Customize your Python client

This is documentation for v3 of the Python API clients, which is not the latest version. To see the documentation for the latest version, see Python v4.

To change individual requests made with an API client, pass individual Request options. To change all requests, create a custom configuration. This lets you change timeouts, add HTTP headers, and so on.

Use a custom host

You can change the default hosts to which the API client connects:

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from algoliasearch.configs import Config
from algoliasearch.http.hosts import Host, HostsCollection
from algoliasearch.search_client import SearchClient

class CustomConfig(Config):
    def build_hosts(self):
        # type: () -> HostsCollection

        return HostsCollection(
            [Host("yourdomain.com")]
        )

config = CustomConfig("YourApplicationID", "YourApiKey")
client = SearchClient.create_with_config(config)

Changing the hosts can be useful if you want to proxy the search requests through another server, for example, to process the request or response, or to perform custom analytics.

If you use this API client with Google AppEngine, the client uses the urlfetch module instead of the request module. Be aware of urlfetch’s limits. SSL certificates aren’t verified for calls to domains other than algolia.net due to the lack of Server Name Indication (SNI) support in urlfetch. To run unit tests on the AppEngine stub, define the APPENGINE_RUNTIME environment variable.

Add HTTP headers to every request

Adding HTTP headers to your requests lets you set parameters such as a user identifier or an IP address. This can be useful for analytics, geographical search, or applying API key rate limits.

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config = SearchConfig('YourApplicationID', 'YourWriteAPIKey')
config.headers['NAME-OF-HEADER'] = 'value-of-header'

client = SearchClient.create_with_config(config)

You can add these headers to your requests:

Header Use case
X-Algolia-UserToken Use API key rate limits
X-Algolia-UserToken The Analytics API uses the value of this header to distinguish between users. It takes priority over any value in X-Forwarded-For. Use the X-Algolia-UserToken header to forward the user’s identity without relying on IP addresses.
X-Forwarded-For Use for analytics in backend implementations. If your server sends the user’s IP address with every search, analytics can distinguish between users. Otherwise, the analytics uses the server’s IP address and considers all your users as a single user.
X-Forwarded-For Use for geolocation, when you perform searches from your backend. This ensures that the geolocation for a search uses your user’s IP address and not that of your server.
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index = client.init_index('indexName')

request_options = {
    'X-Algolia-UserToken': 'user123'
}

res = index.search('query string', request_options)

Make sure to use the same user token for your events (Insights API) and search requests (Search API).

  • If you send the authenticatedUserToken with your events, send the same value with your search requests.
  • If you send the userToken with your events, send the same value with your search requests.

Change timeouts for all requests

Network connections and DNS resolution can be slow. That’s why the API clients come with default timeouts.

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config = SearchConfig('YourApplicationID', 'YourWriteAPIKey')
config.connect_timeout = 2 # connection timeout in seconds
config.read_timeout = 5 # read timeout in seconds
config.write_timeout =  30 # write timeout in seconds

client = SearchClient.create_with_config(config)

Don’t change the default timeouts without a good reason.

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index = client.init_index('indexName')

request_options = {
  # Set the readTimeout to 20 seconds
  "readTimeout": 20,
}

res = index.search('query string', request_options)
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