PyO3

Rust bindings for Python, including tools for creating native Python extension modules. Running and interacting with Python code from a Rust binary is also supported.

User Guide: stable | main
API Documentation: stable | main

Usage

PyO3 supports the following software versions:

Python 3.7 and up (CPython and PyPy)
Rust 1.48 and up

You can use PyO3 to write a native Python module in Rust, or to embed Python in a Rust binary. The following sections explain each of these in turn.

Using Rust from Python

PyO3 can be used to generate a native Python module. The easiest way to try this out for the first time is to use maturin. maturin is a tool for building and publishing Rust-based Python packages with minimal configuration. The following steps install maturin, use it to generate and build a new Python package, and then launch Python to import and execute a function from the package.

First, follow the commands below to create a new directory containing a new Python virtualenv, and install maturin into the virtualenv using Python's package manager, pip:

# (replace string_sum with the desired package name)
$ mkdir string_sum
$ cd string_sum
$ python -m venv .env
$ source .env/bin/activate
$ pip install maturin

Still inside this string_sum directory, now run maturin init. This will generate the new package source. When given the choice of bindings to use, select pyo3 bindings:

$ maturin init
✔ 🤷 What kind of bindings to use? · pyo3
  ✨ Done! New project created string_sum

The most important files generated by this command are Cargo.toml and lib.rs, which will look roughly like the following:

Cargo.toml

[package]
name = "string_sum"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2018"

[lib]
# The name of the native library. This is the name which will be used in Python to import the
# library (i.e. `import string_sum`). If you change this, you must also change the name of the
# `#[pymodule]` in `src/lib.rs`.
name = "string_sum"
# "cdylib" is necessary to produce a shared library for Python to import from.
#
# Downstream Rust code (including code in `bin/`, `examples/`, and `tests/`) will not be able
# to `use string_sum;` unless the "rlib" or "lib" crate type is also included, e.g.:
# crate-type = ["cdylib", "rlib"]
crate-type = ["cdylib"]

[dependencies]
pyo3 = { version = "0.16.6", features = ["extension-module"] }

src/lib.rs

use pyo3::prelude::*;

/// Formats the sum of two numbers as string.
#[pyfunction]
fn sum_as_string(a: usize, b: usize) -> PyResult<String> {
    Ok((a + b).to_string())
}

/// A Python module implemented in Rust. The name of this function must match
/// the `lib.name` setting in the `Cargo.toml`, else Python will not be able to
/// import the module.
#[pymodule]
fn string_sum(_py: Python<'_>, m: &PyModule) -> PyResult<()> {
    m.add_function(wrap_pyfunction!(sum_as_string, m)?)?;
    Ok(())
}

Finally, run maturin develop. This will build the package and install it into the Python virtualenv previously created and activated. The package is then ready to be used from python:

$ maturin develop
# lots of progress output as maturin runs the compilation...
$ python
>>> import string_sum
>>> string_sum.sum_as_string(5, 20)
'25'

To make changes to the package, just edit the Rust source code and then re-run maturin develop to recompile.

To run this all as a single copy-and-paste, use the bash script below (replace string_sum in the first command with the desired package name):

mkdir string_sum && cd "$_"
python -m venv .env
source .env/bin/activate
pip install maturin
maturin init --bindings pyo3
maturin develop

As well as with maturin, it is possible to build using setuptools-rust or manually. Both offer more flexibility than maturin but require more configuration to get started.

Using Python from Rust

To embed Python into a Rust binary, you need to ensure that your Python installation contains a shared library. The following steps demonstrate how to ensure this (for Ubuntu), and then give some example code which runs an embedded Python interpreter.

To install the Python shared library on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install python3-dev

Start a new project with cargo new and add pyo3 to the Cargo.toml like this:

[dependencies.pyo3]
version = "0.16.6"
features = ["auto-initialize"]

Example program displaying the value of sys.version and the current user name:

use pyo3::prelude::*;
use pyo3::types::IntoPyDict;

fn main() -> PyResult<()> {
    Python::with_gil(|py| {
        let sys = py.import("sys")?;
        let version: String = sys.getattr("version")?.extract()?;

        let locals = [("os", py.import("os")?)].into_py_dict(py);
        let code = "os.getenv('USER') or os.getenv('USERNAME') or 'Unknown'";
        let user: String = py.eval(code, None, Some(&locals))?.extract()?;

        println!("Hello {}, I'm Python {}", user, version);
        Ok(())
    })
}

The guide has a section with lots of examples about this topic.

Tools and libraries

maturin Build and publish crates with pyo3, rust-cpython or cffi bindings as well as rust binaries as python packages
setuptools-rust Setuptools plugin for Rust support.
pyo3-built Simple macro to expose metadata obtained with the built crate as a PyDict
rust-numpy Rust binding of NumPy C-API
dict-derive Derive FromPyObject to automatically transform Python dicts into Rust structs
pyo3-log Bridge from Rust to Python logging
pythonize Serde serializer for converting Rust objects to JSON-compatible Python objects
pyo3-asyncio Utilities for working with Python's Asyncio library and async functions
rustimport Directly import Rust files or crates from Python, without manual compilation step. Provides pyo3 integration by default and generates pyo3 binding code automatically.

Examples

hyperjson A hyper-fast Python module for reading/writing JSON data using Rust's serde-json
html-py-ever Using html5ever through kuchiki to speed up html parsing and css-selecting.
point-process High level API for pointprocesses as a Python library
autopy A simple, cross-platform GUI automation library for Python and Rust.
- Contains an example of building wheels on TravisCI and appveyor using cibuildwheel
orjson Fast Python JSON library
inline-python Inline Python code directly in your Rust code
Rogue-Gym Customizable rogue-like game for AI experiments
- Contains an example of building wheels on Azure Pipelines
fastuuid Python bindings to Rust's UUID library
wasmer-python Python library to run WebAssembly binaries
mocpy Astronomical Python library offering data structures for describing any arbitrary coverage regions on the unit sphere
tokenizers Python bindings to the Hugging Face tokenizers (NLP) written in Rust
pyre Fast Python HTTP server written in Rust
jsonschema-rs Fast JSON Schema validation library
css-inline CSS inlining for Python implemented in Rust
cryptography Python cryptography library with some functionality in Rust
polaroid Hyper Fast and safe image manipulation library for Python written in Rust
ormsgpack Fast Python msgpack library
bed-reader Read and write the PLINK BED format, simply and efficiently
- Shows Rayon/ndarray::parallel (including capturing errors, controlling thread num), Python types to Rust generics, Github Actions
pyheck Fast case conversion library, built by wrapping heck
- Quite easy to follow as there's not much code.

Articles and other media

Nine Rules for Writing Python Extensions in Rust - Dec 31, 2021
Calling Rust from Python using PyO3 - Nov 18, 2021
davidhewitt's 2021 talk at Rust Manchester meetup - Aug 19, 2021
Incrementally porting a small Python project to Rust - Apr 29, 2021
Vortexa - Integrating Rust into Python - Apr 12, 2021
Writing and publishing a Python module in Rust - Aug 2, 2020

Contributing

Everyone is welcomed to contribute to PyO3! There are many ways to support the project, such as:

help PyO3 users with issues on GitHub and Gitter
improve documentation
write features and bugfixes
publish blogs and examples of how to use PyO3

Our contributing notes and architecture guide have more resources if you wish to volunteer time for PyO3 and are searching where to start.

If you don't have time to contribute yourself but still wish to support the project's future success, some of our maintainers have GitHub sponsorship pages:

davidhewitt

License

PyO3 is licensed under the Apache-2.0 license. Python is licensed under the Python License.

pyo3 0.16.6