python requests async session

Python Requests Async Session

If you are working on a project that requires sending multiple HTTP requests, you may want to consider using an asynchronous session in Python requests. This can greatly improve the speed and efficiency of your code.

What is an asynchronous session?

An asynchronous session allows you to send multiple HTTP requests concurrently, without waiting for each request to complete before sending the next one. This can be especially useful when working with APIs that have rate limits, as it allows you to send requests more quickly without exceeding the limit.

How to use an asynchronous session in Python requests

To use an asynchronous session in Python requests, you will need to use the asyncio library. Here is an example:


import asyncio
import aiohttp

async def fetch(session, url):
    async with session.get(url) as response:
        return await response.text()

async def main():
    async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
        tasks = []
        for i in range(5):
            task = asyncio.ensure_future(fetch(session, f'https://example.com/page{i}'))
            tasks.append(task)
        results = await asyncio.gather(*tasks)
        print(results)

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.run_until_complete(main())
    

In this example, we are using the aiohttp library to create an asynchronous session. We define a function called fetch that will send a GET request to a given URL and return the response text. We then define a main function that creates a list of tasks, one for each URL we want to fetch. We use the asyncio.gather function to run all the tasks concurrently, and wait for them to complete before printing the results.

It is important to note that when using an asynchronous session, you should avoid using blocking I/O operations like time.sleep. Instead, you should use asynchronous equivalents like asyncio.sleep or asyncio.wait.

Alternative approaches

There are other libraries and approaches you can use to achieve asynchronous requests in Python, such as asynciohttp, aioxmlrpc, and aiojsonrpc. You can also use threads or processes to send requests concurrently, although this can be more complicated to implement.

In conclusion, using an asynchronous session in Python requests can greatly improve the performance and efficiency of your code when sending multiple HTTP requests. It is definitely worth considering if you are working on a project that involves a lot of API calls or scraping data from websites.