'exportKey' function not recognized in pycrypto-2.6.1(python 2.7.6) ubuntu14.04 LTS

Hello I'm trying to run this simple code to generate a private key:

from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA
key = RSA.generate(2048)
f = open('mykey.pem','w')
f.write(RSA.exportKey('PEM'))
f.close()

But I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "erase-this.py", line 5, in <module>
    f.write(RSA.exportKey('PEM'))
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'exportKey'

I checked inside /pycrypto-2.6.1/lib/Crypto/PublicKey, and the function

def exportKey(self, format='PEM', passphrase=None, pkcs=1):

is present inside RSA.py.

Does someone knows why I get the error:

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'exportKey'???

Solution

exportKey() is a method of the key, not a module function. So you need to do

f.write(key.exportKey('PEM'))

Here's a short demo (using a smaller key size).

#!/usr/bin/env python

from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA
key = RSA.generate(1024)
print key.exportKey('PEM')

pub_key = key.publickey()
print pub_key.exportKey('PEM')

typical output