pem 23.1.0
PEM file parsing in Python.
Requires Python: >=3.8
Keywords: cryptography,pem,pyopenssl,ssl,tls,twisted

# pem: PEM file parsing for Python


*pem* is a Python module for parsing and splitting of [PEM files](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509#Certificate_filename_extensions), i.e. Base64-encoded DER keys and certificates.

It has no dependencies and does not attempt to interpret the certificate data in any way.

It’s born from the need to load keys, certificates, trust chains, and Diffie–Hellman parameters from various certificate deployments:
some servers (like [Apache](https://httpd.apache.org/)) expect them to be a separate file, others (like [nginx](https://nginx.org/)) expect them concatenated to the server certificate and finally some (like [HAProxy](https://www.haproxy.org/)) expect key, certificate, and chain to be in one file.
With *pem*, your Python application can cope with all of those scenarios:

```pycon
>>> import pem
>>> certs = pem.parse_file("chain.pem")
>>> certs
[<Certificate(PEM string with SHA-1 digest '...')>, <Certificate(PEM string with SHA-1 digest '...')>]
>>> str(certs[0])
'-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n...'
```

Additionally to the vanilla parsing code, *pem* also contains helpers for [Twisted](https://docs.twistedmatrix.com/en/stable/api/twisted.internet.ssl.Certificate.html#loadPEM) that save a lot of boilerplate code.


## Project Information

- **License**: [MIT](https://github.com/hynek/pem/blob/main/LICENSE)
- [**PyPI**](https://pypi.org/project/pem/)
- [**Source Code**](https://github.com/hynek/pem)
- [**Documentation**](https://pem.readthedocs.io/)
- [**Changelog**](https://pem.readthedocs.io/en/stable/changelog.html)


### Credits

*pem* is written and maintained by [Hynek Schlawack](https://hynek.me).

The development is kindly supported by my employer [Variomedia AG](https://www.variomedia.de/) and all my amazing [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/hynek).


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## Release Information


### Removed

- Support for Python 2.7, 3.5, and 3.6 has been dropped.


### Added

- Support for RFC 4880 OpenPGP private & public keys: `pem.OpenPGPPublicKey` and `pem.OpenPGPPrivateKey`.
  [#72](https://github.com/hynek/pem/issues/72)
- Support for intra-payload headers like the ones used in OpenPGP keys using the `meta_headers` property.
  [#75](https://github.com/hynek/pem/pull/75)
- `pem.parse_file()` now accepts also [`pathlib.Path`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html#pathlib.Path) objects.
- `pem.parse()` now also accepts `str`.
- Added `text_payload`, `bytes_payload` and `decoded_payload` properties to all PEM objects that allow to directly access the payload without the envelope and possible headers.
  [#74](https://github.com/hynek/pem/pull/74)


---

[→ Full Changelog](https://pem.readthedocs.io/en/stable/changelog.html)