Prerequisites

Before you can install HERE Location Services for Python, run its test-suite, or use the example notebooks to make sure you meet the following prerequisites:

A Python installation, 3.6+ recommended, with the pip command available to install dependencies.
In order to use Location services APIs, authentication is required.

There are two ways to authenticate: * Authentication using an API key:
- For API key-based authentication you will need a HERE developer account, freely available under HERE Developer Portal.
- An API key from the HERE Developer Portal, in an environment variable named LS_API_KEY which you can set like this (with a valid value, of course):
  $ export LS_API_KEY="MY-LS-API-KEY"
- OAuth token-based authentication:
  - For OAuth token authentication you will need an account on the HERE Platform. To get more details on the HERE Platform account please check our documentation Get a HERE account.
  Once you have the account follow the below steps to get credentials:
  - Go to HERE Platform Applications and Keys and register a new app.
  - Create a key for the app and download the generated ` credentials. properties` file.
  The HERE platform generated app credentials should look similar to the example below:
```
here.user.id = <example_here>
here.client.id = <example_here>
here.access.key.id = <example_here>
here.access.key.secret = <example_here>
here.token.endpoint.url = <example_here>
```
  You can provide your credentials using any of the following methods:
  - Default credentials
  Place the credentials file into
  
  For Linux/MacOS: $HOME/.here/credentials.properties
  
  For Windows: %USERPROFILE%.herecredentials.properties Code snippet to instantiate LS object:
```
from here_location_services import LS

# platform credentials will be picked from the default credentials file's location mentioned above
# and api_key should not be set in env variable LS_API_KEY.
ls = LS()
```
  - Environment Variables
  You can override default credentials by assigning values to the following environment variables:
```
HERE_USER_ID
HERE_CLIENT_ID
HERE_ACCESS_KEY_ID
HERE_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET
HERE_TOKEN_ENDPOINT_URL
```
  Code snippet to instantiate LS object:
```
from here_location_services import LS
from here_location_services import PlatformCredentials

ls = LS(platform_credentials=PlatformCredentials.from_env())
```
  - Credentials File
  You can specify any credentials file as an alternative to that found in ~/.here/credentials.properties. An error is generated if there is no file present at the path, or if the file is not properly formatted. Code snippet to instantiate LS object:
```
from here_location_services import LS
from here_location_services import PlatformCredentials

platform_credentials = PlatformCredentials.from_credentials_file("<Path_to_file>")
ls = LS(platform_credentials=platform_credentials)
```