Manual:Pywikibot/Installation
This page will help you get started with Pywikibot, either on your own computer, on Tool Labs, or using Pywikibot As Web Service (PAWS).
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PAWS
 Pywikibot As Web Service is the easiest way to get started with Pywikibot. No installation is necessary, and you use a web interface to submit commands. |
On your own computer
 This page will get you started installing and running Pywikibot on your own computers. There are four main steps to this process:
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On Tool Labs
 If you want to run a bot on a Wikimedia wiki, consider using Tool Labs. Tool Labs provides you with a stable hosting infrastructure that allows you to run bots continuously or on a schedule. |
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| Pywikibot |
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Contents
Install Python[edit]
Download and install Python from http://www.python.org/downloads/.
If you already have Python installed, check if your version is recent enough by running python --version in a console. If you have Python 2.7.2 or higher installed, or Python 3.3 or higher, your version of Python is recent enough.
Downloading Pywikibot[edit]
Download Pywikibot 2.0rc5: .tar.gz, .zip.
Alternatively, nightly downloads are available at https://tools.wmflabs.org/pywikibot/.
Unpack this file, for example in /home/username/pywikibot or c:\users\username\pywikibot.
Updating[edit]
Stable releases are released every three months or so, and are available at the same location. Before installing it, backup your configuration files and scripts (user-config.py, any family file, or custom script that you might have created, and any current dump XML file you're using for a wiki). Unpack the new version over the old version, overwriting all files.
Configuring Pywikibot[edit]
Open a terminal and change directory (cd) to where you unpacked pywikibot.
- Unix-like (Linux/BSD/Solaris): Start 'Terminal' (typically under 'System Tools' in the menu), and run:
$ cd /home/username/pywikibot
$ python pwb.py login
- Windows: Start 'Command Prompt' (typically under 'Accessories » System Tools' or 'System'), and run:
> cd "c:\users\username\pywikibot"
> python pwb.py login
Of course substituting the location where you unpacked pywikibot. Follow the prompts to configure pywikibot.
After this create somewhere file with text like '("en", "wikipedia", "User", "password")', open user-config.py in Pywikibot folder and insert in this file 'password_file = "path_to_password_file"' line.
Use on third-party wikis[edit]
Pywikibot is pre-configured for a large number of wikis, but possibly not for the one you want to work on. See Manual:Pywikibot/Use on third-party wikis for how to configure Pywikibot for your wiki.
More configuration options[edit]
Pywikibot provides a wide range of configuration options to change the behavior of your bot. You can change these settings in the file 'user-config.py'. See config2.py for a list of all parameters you can use.
Running a script[edit]
Pywikibot comes packaged with a large number of scripts in the scripts directory. You can run all of these using
python pwb.py [name of the script]
A list of all scripts is available at Manual:Pywikibot/Scripts.
Dependencies[edit]
Most scripts work do not require any additional packages, but a few of them will not work without. These are listed in requirements.txt.
To install dependencies, use pip, which is already installed if you have a recent version of Python. Run the following commands to install packages:
pip install package-name
Or the following command to install all of the recommended packages:
pip install -r requirements.txt
