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python requests layer lambda

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 1 min read

Python Requests Layer Lambda Explained

If you are familiar with Python and AWS Lambda, you probably already know that Lambda is a great platform for running serverless applications. Python is one of the most popular languages used with AWS Lambda as it is easy to learn and powerful enough to create complex applications. However, in order to communicate with external APIs or services, we need to make use of Python requests module.

The requests module is a popular library in Python used for making HTTP requests. It simplifies the process of sending HTTP/1.1 requests and handles the response for you. In order to use requests in AWS Lambda, we need to include it either in our deployment package or as a layer.

Using Requests as a Layer

Using requests as a layer means that we don't need to include it in our deployment package. Instead, we can create a separate layer and include all the necessary libraries in it. This way, we don't need to worry about the size of our deployment package and can reuse the same layer for different Lambda functions.

To create a layer, we need to create a folder and include all the necessary libraries in it. In our case, we need to include the requests module. Once we have created the folder, we need to zip it and upload it to AWS Lambda as a layer.


import requests

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    response = requests.get('https://example.com')
    return {
        'statusCode': response.status_code,
        'body': response.text
    }

Using Requests in Deployment Package

If we don't want to use requests as a layer, we can include it in our deployment package. This means that we need to include the requests module in our package along with our Python code.

To include requests in our deployment package, we can simply install it using pip and include it in our requirements.txt file. When we deploy our code, AWS Lambda will automatically install the required libraries.


import requests

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    response = requests.get('https://example.com')
    return {
        'statusCode': response.status_code,
        'body': response.text
    }
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