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# Overview

Pycairo is a Python binding for the cairo graphics library.

The Pycairo bindings are designed to match the cairo C API as closely as possible, and to deviate only in cases which are clearly better implemented in a more ‘Pythonic’ way.

Features of the Pycairo bindings:

- Provides an object oriented interface to cairo.
- Pycairo_Check_Status() is called to check the status of cairo operations, and raise exceptions as appropriate.
- Provides a C API that can be used by other Python extensions.

The C cairo functions cairo_reference(), cairo_destroy(), cairo_surface_reference(), cairo_surface_destroy() (and their equivalents for surfaces and patterns) are not made public by the pycairo bindings. This is because pycairo handles cairo object construction and destruction.

To use the pycairo library:

    import cairo

See Reference for further details.

For examples of pycairo code see the ‘examples’ directory that comes with the pycairo distribution.

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