API key

After you sign up for a Zyte API account, copy your API key.

It is recommended to configure your API key through an environment variable, so that it can be picked by both the command-line client and the Python client library:

On Windows:
```
> set ZYTE_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY
```
On macOS and Linux:
```
$ export ZYTE_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY
```

Instead of exporting the variable yourself, you can store it in a .env file and let it be loaded automatically:

.env

ZYTE_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY

The nearest .env file is looked up in the current working directory and its parent directories. Only the ZYTE_API_KEY variable is read from it; any other variables are ignored, a ZYTE_API_KEY set in the environment takes precedence over the file, and your environment is never modified.

To read a .env file from a different location, use the --dotenv-path switch of the command-line client, or the dotenv_path parameter of the Python client classes:

zyte-api --dotenv-path /path/to/.env …

from zyte_api import ZyteAPI

client = ZyteAPI(dotenv_path="/path/to/.env")

Alternatively, you may pass your API key to the clients directly:

To pass your API key directly to the command-line client, use the --api-key switch:
```
zyte-api --api-key YOUR_API_KEY …
```

To pass your API key directly to the Python client classes, use the api_key parameter when creating a client object:

from zyte_api import ZyteAPI

client = ZyteAPI(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY")

from zyte_api import AsyncZyteAPI

client = AsyncZyteAPI(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY")