Selecting keys to encrypt to or to sign with will be a common occurrence when working with GPGMe and the means available for doing so are quite simple.

They do depend on utilising a Context; however once the data is recorded in another variable, that Context does not need to be the same one which subsequent operations are performed.

The easiest way to select a specific key is by searching for that key's key ID or fingerprint, preferably the full fingerprint without any spaces in it. A long key ID will probably be okay, but is not advised and short key IDs are already a problem with some being generated to match specific patterns. It does not matter whether the pattern is upper or lower case.

So this is the best method:

import gpg k = gpg.Context().keylist(pattern="258E88DCBD3CD44D8E7AB43F6ECB6AF0DEADBEEF") keys = list(k)

This is passable and very likely to be common:

import gpg k = gpg.Context().keylist(pattern="0x6ECB6AF0DEADBEEF") keys = list(k)

And this is a really bad idea:

import gpg k = gpg.Context().keylist(pattern="0xDEADBEEF") keys = list(k)

Alternatively it may be that the intention is to create a list of keys which all match a particular search string. For instance all the addresses at a particular domain, like this:

import gpg ncsc = gpg.Context().keylist(pattern="ncsc.mil") nsa = list(ncsc)