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Getting a Riot API key

To use Valaw, you need a Riot Games API key from the Riot Developer Portal.

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Development vs production keys

Riot Games provides two types of API keys:
  • Development keys: Free, automatically generated keys that expire every 24 hours. These have significant restrictions — only a small subset of endpoints are accessible, making them unsuitable for most real use cases.
  • Production keys: Require an application and approval process. These keys have full endpoint access, higher rate limits, and don’t expire.
A production key is strongly recommended. Development keys only have access to a handful of endpoints and will return 403 errors for most of the API.

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Storing keys securely

Never hardcode your API key directly in your source code. Use environment variables instead. Create a .env file in your project root: 
RIOT_API_TOKEN=RGAPI-your-api-key-here
Then load it in Python using python-dotenv: 
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import valaw

load_dotenv()

RIOT_API_TOKEN = os.getenv("RIOT_API_TOKEN")
Add .env to your .gitignore to prevent accidentally committing your API key.

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Initializing the client

import valaw
import os

client = valaw.Client(
    token=os.getenv("RIOT_API_TOKEN"),
    cluster="americas"
)

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Choosing a cluster

The cluster determines which Riot API server handles your requests:
  • americas — North America, Latin America, Brazil
  • europe — Europe, Turkey, Russia, Middle East
  • asia — Asia Pacific, Korea
  • esports — Esports data
Choose the cluster nearest to your server for best performance. Note that the cluster is for the API routing, not the player’s region — use region parameters on individual method calls for player-specific data.

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Client validation

The client validates your API key and cluster on initialization: 
try:
    client = valaw.Client(token="", cluster="invalid")
except valaw.Exceptions.InvalidRiotAPIKey:
    print("API key is required")
except valaw.Exceptions.InvalidCluster:
    print("Invalid cluster")

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Closing the client

Always close the client session when you’re done: 
import valaw
import asyncio
import os

async def main():
    client = valaw.Client(token=os.getenv("RIOT_API_TOKEN"), cluster="americas")
    try:
        account = await client.GET_getByRiotId("PlayerName", "NA1")
        print(f"Found: {account.gameName}#{account.tagLine}")
    finally:
        await client.close()

asyncio.run(main())

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Best practices

  1. Use a production key — development keys only work with a few endpoints
  2. Use environment variables — never commit API keys to version control
  3. Always close the session — call await client.close() in a finally block
  4. Choose the right cluster — use the cluster closest to your server
  5. Handle auth errors — implement proper handling for expired or invalid keys