pycountry

pycountry provides the ISO databases for the standards:

639-3

Languages

3166

Countries

3166-3

Deleted countries

3166-2

Subdivisions of countries

4217

Currencies

15924

Scripts

The package includes a copy from Debian's pkg-isocodes and makes the data accessible through a Python API.

Translation files for the various strings are included as well.

Data update policy

No changes to the data will be accepted into pycountry. This is a pure wrapper around the ISO standard using the pkg-isocodes database from Debian as is. If you need changes to the politicial situation in the world, please talk to the ISO or Debian people, not me.

Donations / Monetary Support

This is a small project that I maintain in my personal time. I am not interested in personal financial gain. However, if you would like to support the project then I would love if you would donate to Feminist Frequency instead. Also, let the world know you did so, so that others can follow your path.

Contributions

The code lives in a git repository on GitHub, and issues must be reported in there as well.

Some old issues still live in the Bitbucket project bugtracker but please do not report new issues there.

Countries (ISO 3166)

Countries are accessible through a database object that is already configured upon import of pycountry and works as an iterable:

>>> import pycountry
>>> len(pycountry.countries)
249
>>> list(pycountry.countries)[0]
Country(alpha_2='AF', alpha_3='AFG', name='Afghanistan', numeric='004', official_name='Islamic Republic of Afghanistan')

Specific countries can be looked up by their various codes and provide the information included in the standard as attributes:

>>> germany = pycountry.countries.get(alpha_2='DE')
>>> germany
Country(alpha_2='DE', alpha_3='DEU', name='Germany', numeric='276', official_name='Federal Republic of Germany')
>>> germany.alpha_2
'DE'
>>> germany.alpha_3
'DEU'
>>> germany.numeric
'276'
>>> germany.name
'Germany'
>>> germany.official_name
'Federal Republic of Germany'

The historic_countries database contains former countries that have been removed from the standard and are now included in ISO 3166-3, excluding existing ones:

>>> ussr = pycountry.historic_countries.get(alpha_3='SUN')
>>> ussr
Country(alpha_3='SUN', alpha_4='SUHH', withdrawal_date='1992-08-30', name='USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics', numeric='810')
>>> ussr.alpha_4
'SUHH'
>>> ussr.alpha_3
'SUN'
>>> ussr.name
'USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics'
>>> ussr.withdrawal_date
'1992-08-30'

There's also a "fuzzy" search to help people discover "proper" countries for names that might only actually be subdivisions. The fuzziness also includes normalizing unicode accents. There's also a bit of prioritization included to prefer matches on country names before subdivision names and have countries with more matches be listed before ones with fewer matches:

>>> pycountry.countries.search_fuzzy('England')
[Country(alpha_2='GB', alpha_3='GBR', name='United Kingdom', numeric='826', official_name='United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland')]

>>> pycountry.countries.search_fuzzy('Cote')
[Country(alpha_2='CI', alpha_3='CIV', name="Côte d'Ivoire", numeric='384', official_name="Republic of Côte d'Ivoire"),
 Country(alpha_2='FR', alpha_3='FRA', name='France', numeric='250', official_name='French Republic'),
 Country(alpha_2='HN', alpha_3='HND', name='Honduras', numeric='340', official_name='Republic of Honduras')]

Country subdivisions (ISO 3166-2)

The country subdivisions are a little more complex than the countries itself because they provide a nested and typed structure.

All subdivisons can be accessed directly:

>>> len(pycountry.subdivisions)
4847
>>> list(pycountry.subdivisions)[0]
Subdivision(code='AD-07', country_code='AD', name='Andorra la Vella', parent_code=None, type='Parish')

Subdivisions can be accessed using their unique code and provide at least their code, name and type:

>>> de_st = pycountry.subdivisions.get(code='DE-ST')
>>> de_st.code
'DE-ST'
>>> de_st.name
'Sachsen-Anhalt'
>>> de_st.type
'State'
>>> de_st.country
Country(alpha_2='DE', alpha_3='DEU', name='Germany', numeric='276', official_name='Federal Republic of Germany')

Some subdivisions specify another subdivision as a parent:

>>> al_br = pycountry.subdivisions.get(code='AL-BU')
>>> al_br.code
'AL-BU'
>>> al_br.name
'Bulqiz\xeb'
>>> al_br.type
'District'
>>> al_br.parent_code
'AL-09'
>>> al_br.parent
Subdivision(code='AL-09', country_code='AL', name='Dib\xebr', parent_code=None, type='County')
>>> al_br.parent.name
'Dib\xebr'

The divisions of a single country can be queried using the country_code index:

>>> len(pycountry.subdivisions.get(country_code='DE'))
16

>>> len(pycountry.subdivisions.get(country_code='US'))
57

Scripts (ISO 15924)

Scripts are available from a database similar to the countries:

>>> len(pycountry.scripts)
169
>>> list(pycountry.scripts)[0]
Script(alpha_4='Afak', name='Afaka', numeric='439')

>>> latin = pycountry.scripts.get(name='Latin')
>>> latin
Script(alpha_4='Latn', name='Latin', numeric='215')
>>> latin.alpha4
'Latn'
>>> latin.name
'Latin'
>>> latin.numeric
'215'

Currencies (ISO 4217)

The currencies database is, again, similar to the ones before:

>>> len(pycountry.currencies)
182
>>> list(pycountry.currencies)[0]
Currency(alpha_3='AED', name='UAE Dirham', numeric='784')
>>> argentine_peso = pycountry.currencies.get(alpha_3='ARS')
>>> argentine_peso
Currency(alpha_3='ARS', name='Argentine Peso', numeric='032')
>>> argentine_peso.alpha_3
'ARS'
>>> argentine_peso.name
'Argentine Peso'
>>> argentine_peso.numeric
'032'

Languages (ISO 639-3)

The languages database is similar too:

>>> len(pycountry.languages)
7874
>>> list(pycountry.languages)[0]
Language(alpha_3='aaa', name='Ghotuo', scope='I', type='L')

>>> aragonese = pycountry.languages.get(alpha_2='an')
>>> aragonese.alpha_2
'an'
>>> aragonese.alpha_3
'arg'
>>> aragonese.name
'Aragonese'

>>> bengali = pycountry.languages.get(alpha_2='bn')
>>> bengali.name
'Bengali'
>>> bengali.common_name
'Bangla'

Locales

Locales are available in the pycountry.LOCALES_DIR subdirectory of this package. The translation domains are called isoXXX according to the standard they provide translations for. The directory is structured in a way compatible to Python's gettext module.

Here is an example translating language names:

>>> import gettext
>>> german = gettext.translation('iso3166', pycountry.LOCALES_DIR,
...                              languages=['de'])
>>> german.install()
>>> _('Germany')
'Deutschland'

Lookups

For each database (countries, languages, scripts, etc.), you can also look up entities case insensitively without knowing which key the value may match. For example:

>>> pycountry.countries.lookup('de')
<pycountry.db.Country object at 0x...>

The search ends with the first match, which is returned.