MaxMind DB Python Module

Description

This is a Python module for reading MaxMind DB files. The module includes both a pure Python reader and an optional C extension.

MaxMind DB is a binary file format that stores data indexed by IP address subnets (IPv4 or IPv6).

Installation

To install maxminddb, type:

$ pip install maxminddb

If you are not able to install from PyPI, you may also use pip from the source directory:

$ python -m pip install .

The installer will attempt to build the C extension. If this fails, the module will fall-back to the pure Python implementation.

Usage

To use this module, you must first download or create a MaxMind DB file. We provide free GeoLite2 databases. These files must be decompressed with gunzip.

After you have obtained a database and imported the module, call open_database with a path, or file descriptor (in the case of Mode.FD), to the database as the first argument. Optionally, you may pass a mode as the second argument. The modes are available from maxminddb.Mode. Valid modes are:

• Mode.MMAP_EXT - use the C extension with memory map.
• Mode.MMAP - read from memory map. Pure Python.
• Mode.FILE - read database as standard file. Pure Python.
• Mode.MEMORY - load database into memory. Pure Python.
• Mode.FD - load database into memory from a file descriptor. Pure Python.
• Mode.AUTO - try Mode.MMAP_EXT, Mode.MMAP, Mode.FILE in that order. Default.

NOTE: When using Mode.FD, it is the caller's responsibility to be sure that the file descriptor gets closed properly. The caller may close the file descriptor immediately after the Reader object is created.

The open_database function returns a Reader object. To look up an IP address, use the get method on this object. The method will return the corresponding values for the IP address from the database (e.g., a dictionary for GeoIP2/GeoLite2 databases). If the database does not contain a record for that IP address, the method will return None.

If you wish to also retrieve the prefix length for the record, use the get_with_prefix_len method. This returns a tuple containing the record followed by the network prefix length associated with the record.

You may also iterate over the whole database. The Reader class implements the __iter__ method that returns an iterator. This iterator yields a tuple containing the network and the record.

Example

>>> import maxminddb
>>>
>>> with maxminddb.open_database('GeoLite2-City.mmdb') as reader:
>>>
>>>     reader.get('152.216.7.110')
{'country': ... }
>>>
>>>     reader.get_with_prefix_len('152.216.7.110')
({'country': ... }, 24)
>>>
>>>     for network, record in reader:
>>>         ...

Exceptions

The module will return an InvalidDatabaseError if the database is corrupt or otherwise invalid. A ValueError will be thrown if you look up an invalid IP address or an IPv6 address in an IPv4 database.

Thread Safety

Both the C extension and pure Python implementations are safe for concurrent reads and support Python 3.13+ free-threading. The C extension provides free-threading support on platforms with pthread support (such as Linux and macOS) and Windows. On other platforms, the extension will use GIL-based protection. Calling close() while reads are in progress may cause exceptions in those threads.

Requirements

This code requires Python 3.10+. Older versions are not supported. The C extension requires CPython.

Versioning

The MaxMind DB Python module uses Semantic Versioning.

Support

Please report all issues with this code using the GitHub issue tracker

If you are having an issue with a MaxMind service that is not specific to this API, please contact MaxMind support for assistance.