polyline is a Python implementation of Google's Encoded Polyline Algorithm Format (https://goo.gl/PvXf8Y). It is essentially a port of https://github.com/mapbox/polyline built with Python 2 and 3 support in mind.

polyline can be installed using pip or easy_install:

$ pip install polyline
or
$ easy_install polyline

To get the encoded polyline representation of a given set of coordinates:

import polyline
polyline.encode([(38.5, -120.2), (40.7, -120.9), (43.2, -126.4)], 5)

This should return _p~iF~ps|U_ulL~ugC_hgN~eq`@.

You can set the required precision with the optional precision parameter. The default value is 5.

You can encode lon-lat tuples by setting geojson=True.

To get a set of coordinates represented by a given encoded polyline string:

import polyline
polyline.decode('u{~vFvyys@fS]')

This should return [(40.63179, -8.65708), (40.62855, -8.65693)].

You can decode into lon-lat tuples by setting geojson=True.