RateMyProfessors API Client (Python)

A typed, retrying, rate-limited unofficial client for RateMyProfessors.

Looking for TypeScript? Check out the TypeScript version.

Requirements

• Python 3.10 or later
• Works with type checkers (Pydantic models, fully typed API)

Installation

pip install ratemyprofessors-client

Available Functions

Create a client and call any of these methods. See the full docs for parameters, return types, and examples.

from rmp_client import RMPClient

with RMPClient() as client:
    ...

Schools

• search_schools(query) — Search schools by name. Returns paginated results.
• get_school(school_id) — Get a single school by its numeric ID.
• get_compare_schools(school_id_1, school_id_2) — Fetch two schools side by side.
• get_school_ratings_page(school_id) — Get one page of school ratings (cached after first fetch).
• iter_school_ratings(school_id) — Iterator over all ratings for a school.

Professors

• search_professors(query) — Search professors by name. Returns paginated results.
• list_professors_for_school(school_id) — List professors at a given school.
• iter_professors_for_school(school_id) — Iterator over all professors at a school.
• get_professor(professor_id) — Get a single professor by their numeric ID.
• get_professor_ratings_page(professor_id) — Get one page of professor ratings (cached after first fetch).
• iter_professor_ratings(professor_id) — Iterator over all ratings for a professor.

Low-level

• raw_query(payload) — Send a raw GraphQL payload to the RMP endpoint.

Lifecycle

• close() — Close the client and clear caches. Safe to call multiple times.

Errors and What They Mean

All errors extend RMPError. Catch and narrow with isinstance:

• HttpError — The server returned a non-2xx status code (e.g. 404, 500).
• ParsingError — The response couldn't be parsed (e.g. professor/school not found).
• RateLimitError — The client's local rate limiter blocked the request.
• RetryError — The request failed after all retry attempts. Contains the last underlying error.
• RMPAPIError — The GraphQL API returned an errors array in the response.
• ConfigurationError — Invalid client configuration.

from rmp_client import RMPClient, HttpError, ParsingError

with RMPClient() as client:
    try:
        prof = client.get_professor("2823076")
    except ParsingError:
        print("Professor not found")
    except HttpError as e:
        print(f"HTTP error: {e.status_code}")

Types

All methods return Pydantic models. Import any of these:

from rmp_client.models import (
    School,
    Professor,
    Rating,
    SchoolRating,
    ProfessorSearchResult,
    SchoolSearchResult,
    ProfessorRatingsPage,
    SchoolRatingsPage,
    CompareSchoolsResult,
)

• School — ID, name, location, overall quality, category ratings (reputation, safety, etc.)
• Professor — ID, name, department, school, overall rating, difficulty, percent take again
• Rating — Date, comment, quality, difficulty, tags, course, thumbs up/down
• SchoolRating — Date, comment, overall score, category ratings, thumbs up/down
• ProfessorSearchResult / SchoolSearchResult — Paginated list with has_next_page and next_cursor
• ProfessorRatingsPage / SchoolRatingsPage — One page of ratings with cursor pagination
• CompareSchoolsResult — A pair of schools

Extras

Optional helpers for data pipelines:

from rmp_client import (
    analyze_sentiment,
    normalize_comment,
    is_valid_comment,
    build_course_mapping,
    clean_course_label,
)

• normalize_comment(text, *, strip_html=True, strip_punctuation=False) — Normalize text for deduplication (trim, strip HTML, lowercase, collapse whitespace; optionally strip punctuation)
• is_valid_comment(text, *, min_len=10) — Validate a comment and return a ValidationResult with diagnostics (empty, too short, all caps, excessive repeats, no alpha)
• clean_course_label(raw) — Clean scraped course labels (remove counts, normalize whitespace)
• build_course_mapping(scraped, valid) — Map scraped labels to known course codes
• analyze_sentiment(text) — Compute sentiment label from text (uses TextBlob)