plaid-python

The official python client library for the Plaid API.

Table of Contents

• plaid-python
  • Install
  • Documentation
  • Getting Started
    • Calling Endpoints
    • Errors
  • Examples
  • Known Issues
  • Contributing
  • Legacy API
  • License

Install

$ pip install plaid-python

Documentation

The module supports all Plaid API endpoints. For complete information about the API, head to the docs.

For a full list of endpoints and arguments, see the python docs.

Getting Started

Calling Endpoints

To call an endpoint you must create a Client object.

from plaid import Client


# Available environments are 'sandbox', 'development', and 'production'.
client = Client(client_id='***', secret='***', public_key='***', environment='sandbox')

Each endpoint returns a dictionary which contains the parsed JSON from the HTTP response.

Errors

All non-200 responses will throw a plaid.errors.PlaidError.

import requests
from plaid import Client
from plaid.errors import APIError, ItemError

client = Client(client_id='***', secret='***', public_key='***', environment='sandbox')

try:
    client.Auth.get(access_token)
except ItemError as e:
    # check the code attribute of the error to determine the specific error
    if e.code == 'ITEM_LOGIN_REQUIRED':
        # the users' login information has changed, generate a public_token
        # for the user and initialize Link in update mode to
        # restore access to this user's data
        # see https://plaid.com/docs/api/#updating-items-via-link
    else:
        ...
except APIError as e:
    if e.code == 'PLANNED_MAINTENANCE':
        # inform user
    else:
        ...
except requests.Timeout:
    # retry request

For more information on Plaid response codes, head to the docs.

Examples

Create an Item using Link

Exchange a public_token from Plaid Link for a Plaid access token:

from plaid import Client


client = Client(client_id='***', secret='***', public_key='***', environment='sandbox')

# the public token is received from Plaid Link
response = client.Item.public_token.exchange(public_token)
access_token = response['access_token']

Create a Stripe bank account token

Exchange a Plaid Link public_token for an API access_token. Then exchange that access_token and the Plaid Link account_id (received along with the public_token) for a Stripe bank_account_token:

from plaid import Client


client = Client(client_id='***', secret='***', public_key='***', environment='sandbox')

exchange_token_response = client.Item.public_token.exchange('[Plaid Link public_token]')
access_token = exchange_token_response['access_token']

stripe_response = client.Processor.stripeBankAccountTokenCreate(access_token, '[Account ID]')
bank_account_token = stripe_response['stripe_bank_account_token']

Remove Item

from plaid import Client

client = Client(client_id='***', secret='***', public_key='***', environment='sandbox')

# Provide the access token for the Item you want to remove
client.Item.remove(access_token)

Retrieve Transactions

from plaid import Client

client = Client(client_id='***', secret='***', public_key='***', environment='sandbox')

response = client.Transactions.get(access_token, start_date='2016-07-12', end_date='2017-01-09')
transactions = response['transactions']

# the transactions in the response are paginated, so make multiple calls while increasing the offset to
# retrieve all transactions
while len(transactions) < response['total_transactions']:
    response = client.Transactions.get(access_token, start_date='2016-07-12', end_date='2017-01-09',
                                       offset=len(transactions)
                                      )
    transactions.extend(response['transactions'])

Retrieve Other Data

Most other item data can be retrieved by following this pattern:

from plaid import Client

client = Client(client_id='***', secret='***', public_key='***', environment='sandbox')

response = client.Auth.get(access_token)
numbers = response['numbers']

Authentication

Public endpoints (category information) require no authentication and can be accessed as follows:

import plaid

client = plaid.Client(None, None, None)

categories = client.Categories.get()

Authenticated endpoints require either a (client_id, secret) pair or a public_key to access. You do not need to pass in authentication to individual endpoints once you have set it on the plaid.Client object.

Known Issues

Please open an issue for anything not on this list!

1. SSLError: EOF occurred in violation of protocol (_ssl.c:581) (plaid#62) - Work around is installing pyopenssl ndg-httpsclient pyasn1 from pip.

2. Requests are no longer made using urlfetch.fetch on Google App Engine. You will need to use the appengine requests adapter to monkeypatch requests. See the app engine documentation for details.

Contributing

Please see Contributing for guidelines and instructions for local development.

Attribution & Maintenance

This repository was originally authored by Chris Forrette. Version 1.0.0 was authored by Ben Plesser. Version 2.0.0 was authored by Joy Zheng and Rohan Shah.

Contributors

• @chrisforrette (Chris Forrette)
• @gae123

Legacy API

If you're looking for a Python client that works with the legacy Plaid API, use plaid-python-legacy, available via pypi.

License

MIT