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python requests library certificates

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 2 min read

Python Requests Library Certificates

Python Requests library is a powerful HTTP client that makes it easy to send HTTP requests and handle HTTP responses in Python. It supports authentication, cookies, and sessions out of the box, making it a popular choice for web scraping, automation, and testing.

What are Certificates?

Certificates are a way to establish a secure connection between a client and a server over the internet. They are used to verify the identity of the server and encrypt the communication between the client and the server.

When a client sends an HTTPS request to a server, the server responds with its SSL/TLS certificate. The client then verifies the authenticity of the certificate by checking its signature against a trusted Certificate Authority (CA) or a local store. If the verification succeeds, the client and the server establish a secure SSL/TLS connection and continue with the communication.

How to use Certificates in Requests Library?

To use certificates in Requests library, you can pass the path to your certificate file as a parameter to the requests.get() or requests.post() methods. You can also pass the path to your private key file and its password if it is encrypted.


import requests

url = 'https://example.com'

# using certificate file
response = requests.get(url, cert=('/path/to/certificate.pem', '/path/to/key.pem'))

# using certificate file with password
response = requests.get(url, cert=('/path/to/certificate.pem', '/path/to/key.pem', 'password'))

You can also use the verify parameter to specify the path to your CA bundle file or set it to True to use the system's default CA bundle. If you set it to False, Requests will skip certificate verification entirely, which is not recommended for security reasons.


# using CA bundle file
response = requests.get(url, verify='/path/to/ca-bundle.pem')

# using system's default CA bundle
response = requests.get(url, verify=True)

# disabling certificate verification
response = requests.get(url, verify=False)

You can also disable hostname verification by setting the verify_hostname parameter to False, but this is not recommended as it can leave your application vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.


# disabling hostname verification
response = requests.get(url, verify=False, verify_hostname=False)

Conclusion

Certificates are an essential part of secure communication over the internet. With Python Requests library, you can easily use certificates to establish secure connections with servers and protect your data from prying eyes. Just make sure to use them correctly and keep them up-to-date to avoid any security issues.

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