Finding packages in the Python Package Index

Earlier, we talked about installing packages from the Python Package Index, but what if we don't have a specific package we need to install? What if we just need a library to help us get the job done, but don't know which specific one we need? Well, as the name of the section implies, the Python Package Index is actually an index of packages, which classifies the packages according to a number of parameters. The index is conveniently hosted at https://pypi.python.org/pypi. We could search the available packages in a number of ways. Let's discuss it in detail.

Using keywords

Perhaps, the most useful way of accessing the index is to simply type keywords into the search box and see what it spits out.

If we ask to search for asyncio, we get back a collection of package names that have something to do with asyncio. The names are, of course, links to each package's detailed description on the index, which we can use to decide which package best suits our...