cx_Oracle install on MacOS

foo.md

1. Download Instant Client:

• instantclient-basic-macos.x64-11.2.0.4.0.zip
• instantclient-sdk-macos.x64-11.2.0.4.0.zip
• instantclient-sqlplus-macos.x64-11.2.0.4.0.zip

2. Unzip and move to /opt

3. Create symlink

    $ cd /opt/instantclient_11_2/
    $ ln -s libclntsh.dylib.11.1 libclntsh.dylib
   

4. [ This step might not be needed ]

   Copy files:

    sudo cp /opt/instantclient_11_2/sdk/include/*.h /usr/include/
    sudo cp /opt/instantclient_11_2/*.dylib /usr/lib
    sudo cp /opt/instantclient_11_2/sqlplus /usr/bin
   

5. Run pip install. If it needs root permission, su to root first. Make sure you do this rather than sudo because you need to set the environment variable in the correct shell

    export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/instantclient_11_2
    pip install cx_Oracle
   

6. Test:

    Python 2.7.6 (default, Sep  9 2014, 15:04:36)
    [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 6.0 (clang-600.0.39)] on darwin
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> import cx_Oracle
    >>> conn_str = u'USER/PASSWORD@host.foo.com:1521/orcl'
    >>> conn = cx_Oracle.connect(conn_str)
    >>> c = conn.cursor()
    >>> c.execute(u'select sysdate from dual')
    <cx_Oracle.Cursor on <cx_Oracle.Connection to USER/PASSWORD@host.foo.com:1521/orcl>>
    >>> for row in c:
    ...     print row
    ...
    (datetime.datetime(2015, 2, 19, 15, 56, 5),)
    >>>
   

If you get this:

Python 2.7.6 (default, Sep  9 2014, 15:04:36)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 6.0 (clang-600.0.39)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import cx_Oracle
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: dlopen(/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/cx_Oracle.so, 2): Library not loaded: /ade/b/3071542110/oracle/rdbms/lib/libclntsh.dylib.11.1
  Referenced from: /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/cx_Oracle.so
  Reason: image not found

Then make sure you've set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH correctly:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/instantclient_11_2/

In macOS mojave, it's not possible to copy under /usr/lib.
Instead i copied *. dylib files under /usr/local/lib.
And it works!