Menu
Article Troubleshooting

python requests post form data with file

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 2 min read

How to Use Python Requests to POST Form Data with File

If you are a developer who wants to automate the process of uploading files through a web form, then you might find Python Requests useful. In this tutorial, I will show you how to use Python Requests to POST form data with a file attachment.

Step 1: Import the Required Libraries

To use Python Requests, you need to install it first. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install requests

After installing Requests, you can import it in your Python script:

import requests

Step 2: Prepare the Form Data and File Attachment

The next step is to prepare the form data that you want to submit. You can do this by creating a dictionary that contains the form fields and their values, like this:

form_data = {
    'field1': 'value1',
    'field2': 'value2',
    'field3': 'value3'
}

In addition to the form data, you also need to prepare the file attachment. You can do this by opening the file and reading its contents into a variable:

with open('file.txt', 'rb') as f:
    file_data = f.read()

Step 3: Send the POST Request with Requests

Now that you have prepared the form data and file attachment, you can use Requests to send the POST request. Here is an example:

response = requests.post('http://example.com/upload', data=form_data, files={'file': ('file.txt', file_data)})

In this example, we are sending a POST request to the URL http://example.com/upload with the form data and file attachment. The data parameter contains the form data, and the files parameter contains the file attachment with its name and contents.

Step 4: Process the Response

Finally, you can process the response from the server. You can check the status code to see if the request was successful:

if response.status_code == 200:
    print('File uploaded successfully!')
else:
    print('Error uploading file.')

Alternative Method: Using MultipartEncoder

Another way to upload a file with form data is to use MultipartEncoder from the requests_toolbelt library. Here is an example:

from requests_toolbelt import MultipartEncoder

form_data = {
    'field1': 'value1',
    'field2': 'value2',
    'field3': 'value3'
}

with open('file.txt', 'rb') as f:
    file_data = f.read()

m = MultipartEncoder(fields={'file': ('file.txt', file_data, 'text/plain'), **form_data})
response = requests.post('http://example.com/upload', data=m, headers={'Content-Type': m.content_type})

if response.status_code == 200:
    print('File uploaded successfully!')
else:
    print('Error uploading file.')

In this example, we are using MultipartEncoder to encode both the form data and file attachment into a single request body. The fields parameter contains the file attachment with its name, contents, and content type. We also merge the form data into the fields dictionary using the unpacking operator (**). Finally, we send the POST request with the encoded data and the Content-Type header set to the encoder's content type.

Share