Usage guide#

To use this library, you will need to obtain an Akismet API key and register a site for use with the Akismet web service; you can do this at <https://akismet.com>. Once you have a key and corresponding registered site URL to use with it, place them in the environment variables PYTHON_AKISMET_API_KEY and PYTHON_AKISMET_BLOG_URL, and they will be automatically detected and used.

You can also optionally set the environment variable PYTHON_AKISMET_TIMEOUT to a float or int containing a connection-timeout threshold to use for making requests to the Akismet web service; if not set, this will default to 1.0 (one second).

Basic usage#

Once you have a key and registered site, and have set the environment variables, you can create an Akismet API client. Two are available, one being synchronous (blocking I/O), and the other asynchronous (non-blocking I/O).

Asynchronous Python

Most Python applications are synchronous, and cannot easily run async code (which requires an event loop and slightly different syntax to call functions/methods). So you’ll probably want to use the synchronous Akismet client unless your entire application is already async (most commonly, this will be when you have an asynchronous web application built with an async framework like FastAPI or Litestar).

And if you’re not sure what all this means, you definitely want the synchronous Akismet client.

To create an Akismet API client, call the validated_client() constructor method; this will automatically read your Akismet API key and site URL from the environment variables, and validate them with Akismet. If they’re not valid, you’ll get an akismet.ConfigurationError exception.

import akismet

akismet_client = akismet.SyncClient.validated_client()

import akismet

akismet_client = await akismet.AsyncClient.validated_client()

The most important operation of the Akismet client is checking a piece of content to see if it’s spam. This is done with the comment_check() method. There’s one required argument – the IP address of the user who submitted the content – but a large number of optional arguments are also accepted. It’s recommended that you include as much information as possible to help Akismet make accurate determinations, but at the very least you should pass the following arguments:

  • comment_content – The actual content that was submitted.

  • comment_type – The type of content. Common values for this are "comment", "forum-post", "contact-form", and "signup", but you can also pass other values depending on the type of user-submitted content you’re dealing with.

  • comment_author and/or comment_email – The identifier (such as a username) and/or the email address of the user who submitted the content.

For example, suppose you’re using the Django web framework to build an online forum. You might write a Django view for submitting new forum posts that looks like this (using the API client created above):

def new_post(request):
    """
    HTTP handler for a new forum post.

    """
    if akismet_client.comment_check(
        user_ip=request.META["REMOTE_ADDR"],
        comment_type="forum_post",
        comment_content=request.POST["post_body"],
        comment_author=request.user.username,
    ):
        # The post was spam, reject it.
    else:
        # The post wasn't spam, allow it.

async def new_post(request):
    """
    HTTP handler for a new forum post.

    """
    if await akismet_client.comment_check(
        user_ip=request.META["REMOTE_ADDR"],
        comment_type="forum_post",
        comment_content=request.POST["post_body"],
        comment_author=request.user.username,
    ):
        # The post was spam, reject it.
    else:
        # The post wasn't spam, allow it.

Advanced usage#

The full Akismet API has many more methods – see the API reference for SyncClient or AsyncClient for full details – but a few of the more useful things to know are:

Detecting “blatant” spam#

The example above showed spam detection as an either/or check – either something is spam, or it’s not. But Akismet actually supports three possible states: “not spam”, “spam”, and “blatant spam”. One way you could use this is to add a manual review step: if something is marked as “not spam” it’s allowed to post normally, “spam” goes into a review queue for you to look at, and “blatant spam” is just rejected without any further review.

You can implement this by looking at the return value of the comment_check() method, which is actually an enum – akismet.CheckResponse – with three possible values. So you could adapt the example of comment_check() above to do this:

from akismet import CheckResponse

def new_post(request):
    """
    HTTP handler for a new forum post.

    """
    classification = akismet_client.comment_check(
        user_ip=request.META["REMOTE_ADDR"],
        comment_type="forum_post",
        comment_content=request.POST["post_body"],
        comment_author=request.user.username,
    )

    if classification == CheckResponse.DISCARD:
        # The post was "blatant" spam, reject it.
    elif classification == CheckResponse.SPAM:
        # Send it into the manual-review queue.
    elif classification == CheckResponse.HAM:
        # The post wasn't spam, allow it.

from akismet import CheckResponse

async def new_post(request):
    """
    HTTP handler for a new forum post.

    """
    classification = await akismet_client.comment_check(
        user_ip=request.META["REMOTE_ADDR"],
        comment_type="forum_post",
        comment_content=request.POST["post_body"],
        comment_author=request.user.username,
    )

    if classification == CheckResponse.DISCARD:
        # The post was "blatant" spam, reject it.
    elif classification == CheckResponse.SPAM:
        # Send it into the manual-review queue.
    elif classification == CheckResponse.HAM:
        # The post wasn't spam, allow it.

This works because the CheckResponse enum uses integer values; when fed directly to an if/else, they work as boolean values (HAM is 0, SPAM is 1, and DISCARD is 2).

Using a custom HTTP client#

For some use cases, you may need custom HTTP client behavior. For example, you might be running on a server which has to use an HTTP proxy to access any external service. In that case, you can pass a custom HTTP client to the Akismet API client, as the constructor argument http_client. The Akismet API clients use the Python HTTPX library (which is automatically installed when you install akismet) for their HTTP clients, so you can create either an httpx.Client or an httpx.AsyncClient with the behavior you want.

You should also make sure to set a value for the User-Agent header of your custom HTTP client. If you want the default value the Akismet clients would use, it’s available as akismet.USER_AGENT.

import akismet
import httpx

from your_app.config import settings

akismet_client = akismet.SyncClient.validated_client(
    http_client=httpx.Client(
        proxy=settings.PROXY_URL,
        headers={"User-Agent": akismet.USER_AGENT}
    )
)

import akismet
import httpx

from your_app.config import settings

akismet_client = await akismet.AsyncClient.validated_client(
    http_client=httpx.AsyncClient(
        proxy=settings.PROXY_URL,
        headers={"User-Agent": akismet.USER_AGENT}
    )
)

Finally, note that if all you want is to set a custom timeout value for connections to the Akismet web service, you can do this with a custom HTTP client, or you can simply set the environment variable PYTHON_AKISMET_TIMEOUT as described above.

Alternative configuration#

If you don’t want to configure your Akismet client via the standard environment variables, or aren’t able to set the environment variables, you can avoid the validated_client() method and instantiate your Akismet client directly. This is done via the akismet.Config utility tuple. You should also make sure to validate the configuration before trying to use the client.

import akismet

config = akismet.Config(key=your_api_key, url=your_site_url)

akismet_client = akismet.SyncClient(config=config)

if not akismet_client.verify_key(config.key, config.url):
    # The configuration was invalid!

import akismet

config = akismet.Config(key=your_api_key, url=your_site_url)

# When constructing a client this way, you do *not* need to "await" it!
akismet_client = akismet.AsyncClient(config=config)

# But you *do* need to "await" the verify_key() method.
if not await akismet_client.verify_key(config.key, config.url):
    # The configuration was invalid!

If you also need a custom HTTP client when configuring this way, you can also pass it in, again as the keyword argument http_client.