Advanced Topics

Advanced HTTP Configuration

Control timeout behavior, retry logic, and connection pooling using HTTPConfig:

from pyUSPTO import PatentDataClient, USPTOConfig, HTTPConfig

# Create HTTP configuration
http_config = HTTPConfig(
    timeout=60.0,              # 60 second read timeout
    connect_timeout=10.0,      # 10 seconds to establish connection
    max_retries=5,             # Retry up to 5 times on failure
    backoff_factor=2.0,        # Exponential backoff: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 seconds
    retry_status_codes=[429, 500, 502, 503, 504],  # Retry on these status codes
    pool_connections=20,       # Connection pool size
    pool_maxsize=20,          # Max connections per pool
    custom_headers={          # Additional headers for all requests
        "User-Agent": "MyApp/1.0",
        "X-Tracking-ID": "abc123"
    }
)

# Pass HTTPConfig via USPTOConfig
config = USPTOConfig(
    api_key="your_api_key",
    http_config=http_config
)

client = PatentDataClient(config=config)

Configure HTTP settings via environment variables:

export USPTO_REQUEST_TIMEOUT=60.0       # Read timeout
export USPTO_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=10.0       # Connection timeout
export USPTO_MAX_RETRIES=5              # Max retry attempts
export USPTO_BACKOFF_FACTOR=2.0         # Retry backoff multiplier
export USPTO_POOL_CONNECTIONS=20        # Connection pool size
export USPTO_POOL_MAXSIZE=20            # Max connections per pool

Then create config from environment:

config = USPTOConfig.from_env()  # Reads both API and HTTP config from env
client = PatentDataClient(config=config)

Share HTTP configuration across multiple clients:

# Create once, use multiple times
http_config = HTTPConfig(timeout=60.0, max_retries=5)

patent_config = USPTOConfig(api_key="key1", http_config=http_config)
petition_config = USPTOConfig(api_key="key2", http_config=http_config)

patent_client = PatentDataClient(config=patent_config)
petition_client = FinalPetitionDecisionsClient(config=petition_config)

Environment Variables Reference

All clients support configuration via environment variables. This is the recommended approach.

API Configuration

Environment Variable	Description	Default
`USPTO_API_KEY`	Your USPTO Open Data Portal API key (required)	None
`USPTO_BULK_DATA_BASE_URL`	Base URL for Bulk Data API	`https://api.uspto.gov`
`USPTO_PATENT_DATA_BASE_URL`	Base URL for Patent Data API	`https://api.uspto.gov`
`USPTO_PETITION_DECISIONS_BASE_URL`	Base URL for Petition Decisions API	`https://api.uspto.gov`
`USPTO_PTAB_BASE_URL`	Base URL for PTAB APIs	`https://api.uspto.gov`
`USPTO_DOWNLOAD_CHUNK_SIZE`	Chunk size in bytes for file downloads	`8192`

HTTP Transport Configuration

Environment Variable	Description	Default
`USPTO_REQUEST_TIMEOUT`	Read timeout in seconds	`30.0`
`USPTO_CONNECT_TIMEOUT`	Connection timeout in seconds	`10.0`
`USPTO_MAX_RETRIES`	Maximum number of retry attempts	`3`
`USPTO_BACKOFF_FACTOR`	Exponential backoff multiplier for retries	`2.0`
`USPTO_POOL_CONNECTIONS`	Number of connection pools to cache	`10`
`USPTO_POOL_MAXSIZE`	Maximum connections per pool	`10`

Example: Configuration

# API Configuration
export USPTO_API_KEY="your_api_key"

# Increase timeouts for large downloads
export USPTO_REQUEST_TIMEOUT=120.0
export USPTO_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20.0

# More aggressive retry policy
export USPTO_MAX_RETRIES=5
export USPTO_BACKOFF_FACTOR=2.0

# Larger connection pool for concurrent requests
export USPTO_POOL_CONNECTIONS=20
export USPTO_POOL_MAXSIZE=20

# Larger chunk size for faster downloads
export USPTO_DOWNLOAD_CHUNK_SIZE=65536

Debugging with Raw Data Preservation

When debugging API response issues or investigating data parsing problems, you can preserve the raw JSON response alongside the parsed data models using the include_raw_data flag:

from pyUSPTO import PatentDataClient, USPTOConfig

# Enable raw data preservation
config = USPTOConfig(
    api_key="your_api_key",
    include_raw_data=True  # Preserve original API responses
)

client = PatentDataClient(config=config)

# Make an API call
response = client.search_applications(inventor_name_q="Smith", limit=1)

# Access the parsed data normally
print(f"Found {response.count} applications")

# Access the raw JSON response for debugging
if response.raw_data:
    print("Raw API response:")
    import json
    print(json.dumps(response.raw_data, indent=2))

When to use include_raw_data:

Debugging parsing issues: When data isn’t appearing in the parsed models as expected
Investigating API changes: When you need to see exactly what the API returned
Reporting bugs: Include raw responses when filing issue reports
Development and testing: Useful during development to verify API responses

Important notes:

Raw data is stored in the raw_data attribute of response objects
This increases memory usage as both parsed and raw data are kept
Only enable when needed for debugging - disable for better performance
All response models support raw_data when this flag is enabled

Example: Debugging a missing field

config = USPTOConfig(api_key="your_api_key", include_raw_data=True)
client = PatentDataClient(config=config)

response = client.search_applications(limit=1)
if response.patent_file_wrapper_data_bag:
    wrapper = response.patent_file_wrapper_data_bag[0]

    # Check if a field is missing in the parsed model
    if wrapper.application_meta_data is None:
        # Inspect the raw data to see what was actually returned
        print("Raw wrapper data:", wrapper.raw_data)

Warning Control

The library uses Python’s standard warnings module to report data parsing issues. This allows you to control how warnings are handled based on your needs.

Warning Categories

All warnings inherit from USPTODataWarning:

USPTODateParseWarning: Date/datetime string parsing failures
USPTOBooleanParseWarning: Y/N boolean string parsing failures
USPTOTimezoneWarning: Timezone-related issues
USPTOEnumParseWarning: Enum value parsing failures

Controlling Warnings

import warnings
from pyUSPTO.warnings import (
    USPTODataWarning,
    USPTODateParseWarning,
    USPTOBooleanParseWarning,
    USPTOTimezoneWarning,
    USPTOEnumParseWarning
)

# Suppress all pyUSPTO data warnings
warnings.filterwarnings('ignore', category=USPTODataWarning)

# Suppress only date parsing warnings
warnings.filterwarnings('ignore', category=USPTODateParseWarning)

# Turn warnings into errors (strict mode)
warnings.filterwarnings('error', category=USPTODataWarning)

# Show warnings once per location
warnings.filterwarnings('once', category=USPTODataWarning)

# Always show all warnings (default Python behavior)
warnings.filterwarnings('always', category=USPTODataWarning)

The library’s permissive parsing philosophy returns None for fields that cannot be parsed, allowing you to retrieve partial data even when some fields have issues. Warnings inform you when this happens without stopping execution.