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python requests get application/octet-stream

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 1 min read

Python requests get application/octet-stream

As a developer who has worked with Python, I have come across the need to send and receive different types of data over HTTP requests. One such data type is application/octet-stream, which is a binary format that can represent any type of data.

Python Requests Module

Python provides a powerful module called "requests" that allows developers to send HTTP/1.1 requests using Python. This module abstracts the complexities of making requests behind a simple API, allowing developers to send HTTP/1.1 requests extremely easily.

HTTP GET Request

One of the most common types of HTTP request is the GET request, which retrieves data from a server. Using Python requests module, we can easily make GET requests by using the "get" method.


import requests

# Make a GET request
response = requests.get('https://example.com')

# Print the response status code
print(response.status_code)

# Print the content of the response in binary format
print(response.content)

In the above code snippet, we send a GET request to 'https://example.com' and receive a response from the server. We then print the status code of the response and the content of the response in binary format.

application/octet-stream Response

Sometimes, we may receive a response from the server in the application/octet-stream format. This indicates that the server is sending binary data back to us. To handle this type of response, we can use Python's built-in "io" module to read the binary data.


import requests
import io

# Make a GET request that returns binary data
response = requests.get('https://example.com/binary_data', stream=True)

# Read the binary data using the io module
binary_data = io.BytesIO(response.content)

# Do something with the binary data
...

In the above code snippet, we send a GET request to 'https://example.com/binary_data', which returns binary data. We then use the io module to read the binary data into a BytesIO object, which allows us to work with the binary data just like any other Python object.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Python requests module provides an easy and efficient way to make HTTP requests in Python. When handling application/octet-stream response, we can use Python's built-in io module to read the binary data. It is important to handle binary data appropriately, as it may contain sensitive information that should not be exposed.

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