python requests library get parameters

Python Requests Library: Get Parameters

If you're working with APIs in Python, chances are you'll need to make HTTP requests to retrieve data. The Requests library is a popular HTTP client library that makes it easy to send HTTP requests in Python. One common use case is sending GET requests with parameters.

Using the Requests Library

To use the Requests library, you must first install it. You can install it by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install requests

Once you have the library installed, you can import it in your Python code:

import requests

Sending GET Requests

When you want to send a GET request with parameters, you can use the requests.get() function. The function takes two arguments: the URL to send the request to and a dictionary of parameters.

import requests

url = 'https://example.com/api'
params = {'param1': 'value1', 'param2': 'value2'}
response = requests.get(url, params=params)

print(response.json())

In the example above, we're sending a GET request to https://example.com/api with two parameters: param1 and param2. The response is returned as JSON.

URL Encoding Parameters

Note that the parameters are automatically URL encoded by the Requests library, so you don't need to worry about manually encoding them. If you want to see the URL that is being sent, you can print the response.url attribute.

import requests

url = 'https://example.com/api'
params = {'param1': 'value1', 'param2': 'value2'}
response = requests.get(url, params=params)

print(response.url)

The output will be something like: https://example.com/api?param1=value1&param2=value2.

Multiple Ways to Send GET Requests

There are multiple ways to send GET requests with parameters using the Requests library. Another common way is to include the parameters directly in the URL:

import requests

url = 'https://example.com/api?param1=value1&param2=value2'
response = requests.get(url)

print(response.json())

This approach can be handy when you have a simple URL and only a few parameters.