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python requests library text

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 2 min read

Python Requests Library Text

Python is one of the most popular programming languages used for web development. One powerful library that can be used for HTTP requests in Python is the Requests library.

What is the Requests Library?

The Requests library allows you to send HTTP requests and receive responses in Python. It is a popular third-party library that is easy to use and well-documented. You can install it using pip:


pip install requests

Sending a GET Request

To send a GET request using the Requests library, you can use the get() method. For example:


import requests

r = requests.get('https://www.example.com')
print(r.text)

This code sends a GET request to https://www.example.com and stores the response in the variable r. The response text is then printed to the console.

Handling Response Text

The response text is stored in the text attribute of the Response object. You can manipulate this text using Python string methods. For example, if you want to extract all the links from a webpage, you might use the following code:


import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

r = requests.get('https://www.example.com')
soup = BeautifulSoup(r.text, 'html.parser')
links = [link['href'] for link in soup.find_all('a')]
print(links)

This code uses the BeautifulSoup library to parse the HTML response text and extract all the links using a list comprehension.

Handling Response Content

You can access the raw content of the response using the content attribute instead of text. For example:


import requests

r = requests.get('https://www.example.com')
print(r.content)

This code sends a GET request to https://www.example.com and prints the raw content of the response to the console.

Sending POST Requests

You can also send POST requests using the Requests library. To do this, you can use the post() method with a data parameter. For example:


import requests

payload = {'key1': 'value1', 'key2': 'value2'}
r = requests.post('https://www.example.com', data=payload)
print(r.text)

This code sends a POST request to https://www.example.com with a payload of key-value pairs. The response text is then printed to the console.

Sending HTTP Headers

You can also send custom HTTP headers with your requests. To do this, you can pass a headers dictionary to the request method. For example:


import requests

headers = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'}
r = requests.get('https://www.example.com', headers=headers)
print(r.text)

This code sends a GET request to https://www.example.com with a custom User-Agent header. The response text is then printed to the console.

Error Handling

If a request encounters an error, such as a 404 Not Found error, the Requests library will raise an exception. You can catch these exceptions using a try-except block. For example:


import requests

try:
    r = requests.get('https://www.example.com/404')
    r.raise_for_status()
except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as e:
    print(e)

This code sends a GET request to a non-existent URL and catches the resulting HTTPError exception. The exception is then printed to the console.

Conclusion

The Requests library is a powerful tool for making HTTP requests in Python. It is well-documented, easy to use, and provides a lot of features for handling HTTP responses.

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