Some tips from a frustrating day getting Steem Python to work on my Windows PC
The good news is that I finally got it to work, so now I can start experimenting with making cool things. Unfortunately it took a lot longer than I had planned! Here are some tips to help you save time if you want to do the same thing:
First up, careful about working through tutorials now well out of date.
Not to be confused with what is now called piston, the official python steem library is this:
https://github.com/steemit/steem-python
With documentation: http://steem.readthedocs.io/en/latest/steem.html
Take 1: Compiling in Windows
If you want to pip install it from a Windows PC, it's not exactly easy.
I'd read a recent post that suggested installing Visual Studio Community to get it to work on windows (https://steemit.com/tutorials/@cryptoriddler/installing-steem-python-under-windows-10).
Download link: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/.
With all the various options this ended up a 5.5gb+ install for me. Even after all of this I kept getting asked for a 'vcvarsall.bat' file. From https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/pythonengineering/2016/04/11/unable-to-find-vcvarsall-bat/:
When you see “unable to find vcvarsall.bat”, it means you’re installing a package that has an extension module, but only the source code. “vcvarsall.bat” is part of the compiler in Visual Studio that is necessary to compile the module.
I went back, made sure I installed the 'Python development workload' option but it just couldn't get it to work.
Take 2: The Wheel
You can download a wheel file, available here https://pypi.python.org/pypi/steem which should let you use the steem-python without having to compile it yourself.
Then I installed wheel with:
python -m pip install wheel
Then I followed the instructions from the top answer here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27885397/how-do-i-install-a-python-package-with-a-whl-file
Tip: Do not change the filename of the wheel file, it's important
Finally, some code to try out once you get this working
This is a good example of some code to test everything works correctly:
https://steemit.com/python-steem/@felixxx/python-steem-example-your-curation-highscore
You can rewrite the line:
steem = Steem(node="wss://node.steem.ws") #temporary fix (usually: wss://this.piston.rocks )
to
steem = Steem()
You'll probably get an error about winrandom, one fix has been written by @cryptoriddler here: https://steemit.com/tutorials/@cryptoriddler/installing-steem-python-under-windows-10
This all worked for me in the end. Hurray!
Image Source: Pixabay under CC0 Public Domain licence
Did you have issues w piston or just preferred the official version? I messed around w piston a little, seems super easy to use.
Thought I'd stick with the official version - perhaps if I was doing it again I'd try that one!
is it better piston than the official one?
Definitely frustrating! I used Anaconda with a Python 3.5 environment and manually had to modify the pycrypto package to get it working (which you mentioned). I actually mentioned this in my last article about voting with custom weights.
Thanks for sharing!
I cant for the life of me get this working. Also downloaded the anaconda install but any attemt at installing the libraries has been riddled with errors.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by digimad from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
How is this project going? Just started looking into Windows based python steem bot development myself. Very confusing so far.