python requests library authentication

Python Requests Library Authentication

If you are working with an API that requires authentication, the Python Requests library provides an easy way to authenticate your requests. There are a few different types of authentication that Requests supports, including Basic Authentication and OAuth. In this post, we will focus on Basic Authentication.

What is Basic Authentication?

Basic Authentication is a simple method of authentication that involves sending a username and password with each request. The server then checks the credentials and determines whether the request should be allowed or denied.

How to Use Basic Authentication with Python Requests

To use Basic Authentication with Python Requests, you can simply pass your username and password as a tuple to the auth parameter of the requests.get() function. For example:


import requests

response = requests.get('https://api.example.com/', auth=('username', 'password'))

In this example, we are making a GET request to https://api.example.com/ and passing our username and password as a tuple to the auth parameter.

You can also create a session with authentication for making multiple requests to an API. Here's an example:


import requests

session = requests.Session()
session.auth = ('username', 'password')

response = session.get('https://api.example.com/')

In this example, we are creating a session object and setting the auth attribute to our username and password tuple. We can then make multiple requests with this session object and authentication will be automatically applied to each request.

Conclusion

Authentication is a crucial part of working with APIs, and the Python Requests library makes it easy to authenticate your requests. Basic Authentication is a simple method of authentication that involves sending a username and password with each request. With Python Requests, you can easily pass your credentials as a tuple to the auth parameter of the requests.get() function or create a session object that automatically applies authentication to each request.