praw.ini Files

PRAW comes with a praw.ini file in the package directory, and looks for user defined praw.ini files in a few other locations:

  1. In the current working directory at the time Reddit is initialized.
  2. In the launching user’s config directory. This directory, if available, is detected in order as one of the following:
    1. In the directory specified by the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable on operating systems that define such an environment variable (some modern Linux distributions).
    2. In the directory specified by $HOME/.config if the HOME environment variable is defined (Linux and Mac OS systems).
    3. In the directory specified by the APPDATA environment variable (Windows).

Format of praw.ini

praw.ini uses the INI file format, which can contain multiple groups of settings separated into sections. PRAW refers to each section as a site. The default site, DEFAULT, is provided in the package’s praw.ini file. This site defines the default settings for interaction with Reddit. The contents of the package’s praw.ini file are:

[DEFAULT]
# A boolean to indicate whether or not to check for package updates.
check_for_updates=True

# Object to kind mappings
comment_kind=t1
message_kind=t4
redditor_kind=t2
submission_kind=t3
subreddit_kind=t5
trophy_kind=t6

# The URL prefix for OAuth-related requests.
oauth_url=https://oauth.reddit.com

# The URL prefix for regular requests.
reddit_url=https://www.reddit.com

# The URL prefix for short URLs.
short_url=https://redd.it

Warning

Avoid modifying the package’s praw.ini file. Prefer instead to override its values in your own praw.ini file. You can even override settings of the DEFAULT site in user defined praw.ini files.

Defining Additional Sites

In addition to the DEFAULT site, additional sites can be configured in user defined praw.ini files. All sites inherit settings from the DEFAULT site and can override whichever settings desired.

Defining additional sites is a convenient way to store OAuth credentials for various accounts, or distinct OAuth applications. For example if you have three separate bots, you might create a site for each:

[bot1]
client_id=Y4PJOclpDQy3xZ
client_secret=UkGLTe6oqsMk5nHCJTHLrwgvHpr
password=pni9ubeht4wd50gk
username=fakebot1

[bot2]
client_id=6abrJJdcIqbclb
client_secret=Kcn6Bj8CClyu4FjVO77MYlTynfj
password=mi1ky2qzpiq8s59j
username=fakebot2

[bot3]
client_id=SI8pN3DSbt0zor
client_secret=xaxkj7HNh8kwg8e5t4m6KvSrbTI
password=1guiwevlfo00esyy
username=fakebot3

Choosing a Site

Site selection is done via the site_name parameter to Reddit. For example, to use the settings defined for bot2 as shown above, initialize Reddit like so:

reddit = praw.Reddit('bot2', user_agent='bot2 user agent')

Note

In the above example you can obviate passing user_agent if you add the setting user_agent=... in the [bot2] site definition.

A site can also be selected via a praw_site environment variable. This approach has precedence over the site_name parameter described above.