python requests module arguments

Python Requests Module Arguments

If you are working with web applications, you must have heard about the Python requests module. It is a third-party library that enables you to send HTTP/1.1 requests using Python. In this post, we will discuss the different types of arguments that we can pass to the requests module in Python, which can help you to send requests with different configurations.

Python Requests Module

Before we dive into the arguments, let's have a quick look at what the requests module is and how it works. The requests module is an HTTP library for Python that was built for human beings, which means it is easy to use and understand. The module allows you to send HTTP/1.1 requests using Python and provides methods for handling response content.

To start using the requests module, you first need to import it in your Python code:


import requests
    

Arguments in Requests Module

The requests module provides various arguments that you can pass to customize your HTTP requests. Here are some of the most commonly used arguments:

  • params: This argument is used to pass query parameters in the URL. For instance, if you want to search for a specific item on a website, you can pass the search term as a query parameter using this argument.
  • headers: This argument is used to pass headers in your HTTP request. Headers contain information about the request, such as the user agent and cookies.
  • data: This argument is used to pass data in the body of the HTTP request. This is used when making POST requests.
  • json: This argument is similar to the data argument, but it is used to pass JSON data in the body of the HTTP request. This is used when making POST requests with JSON data.
  • auth: This argument is used to pass authentication credentials, such as usernames and passwords, to the server.
  • cookies: This argument is used to pass cookies in the HTTP request. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored on the client-side and are used to maintain state between requests.
  • timeout: This argument is used to set a timeout for the HTTP request. If the server does not respond within the specified time, the request will be aborted.

Example Usage

Let's see an example of how we can use some of these arguments together:


import requests

url = "https://www.example.com/search"

# Pass query parameters in URL
params = {"q": "python requests module arguments"}

# Pass headers in request
headers = {"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36"}

# Make GET request with params and headers
response = requests.get(url, params=params, headers=headers)

# Print response content
print(response.content)