python requests library connection pool

Python Requests Library Connection Pool

The Python Requests library is a popular HTTP library that simplifies making HTTP requests in Python. It also supports connection pooling, which is a powerful feature that can greatly improve the performance of HTTP requests.

What is Connection Pooling?

Connection pooling is a technique used to reuse existing connections instead of creating new ones every time a request is made. This can greatly reduce the overhead of creating new connections and improve the performance of HTTP requests.

When connection pooling is enabled, Requests maintains a pool of HTTP connections to a particular host. When a request is made to that host, Requests checks if there is an existing connection in the pool that can be reused. If there is, it uses that connection instead of creating a new one. If there isn't, it creates a new connection and adds it to the pool.

How to Use Connection Pooling in Requests Library

You can enable connection pooling in Requests by creating a Session object and setting the max_connections parameter to the maximum number of connections you want to allow in the pool.


import requests

session = requests.Session()
adapter = requests.adapters.HTTPAdapter(pool_connections=10, pool_maxsize=100)
session.mount('http://', adapter)
  • pool_connections: The maximum number of connections to pool per host.
  • pool_maxsize: The maximum number of connections to allow in the pool for all hosts.

Once you have created the Session object and mounted the adapter, you can make requests using the session object and connection pooling will be automatically used.

Conclusion

Connection pooling is a powerful feature that can greatly improve the performance of HTTP requests in Python. By enabling connection pooling in the Python Requests library, you can reuse existing connections and reduce the overhead of creating new ones.