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python requests encoding

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 1 min read

Python Requests Encoding

Python's requests library is widely used for making HTTP requests in Python. When making a request, you might need to pass data with special characters or non-ASCII characters. In such cases, you need to specify the encoding of the data to ensure that it is transmitted correctly.

Requests automatically detects the encoding of the response content and sets the encoding attribute of the response object. However, when sending data in a request, you need to specify the encoding explicitly.

Specifying Encoding in Request

To specify the encoding of data in a request, you can use the data parameter and set the encode method to encode the data in the desired encoding. For example:


import requests

data = {'name': 'Raju', 'age': 25}
response = requests.post('https://example.com', data=data.encode('utf-8'))

In the above example, we are encoding the data in UTF-8 before sending it with the request. You can replace utf-8 with any encoding that suits your needs.

Specifying Encoding in Response

If the response returned by the server is not in the expected encoding, you can override the automatic detection by setting the encoding attribute of the response object. For example:


response.encoding = 'ISO-8859-1'
print(response.text)

In the above example, we are setting the encoding of the response to ISO-8859-1 even though requests detected a different encoding. This will ensure that we can read the response content correctly.

Conclusion

Python's requests library provides a simple way to make HTTP requests in Python. When dealing with special characters or non-ASCII characters, it is important to specify the encoding of your data to ensure that it is transmitted correctly. You can specify the encoding of your data using the encode method and set the encoding attribute of the response object to override automatic detection.

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