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python requests post xml response

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 2 min read

Python Requests Post XML Response

Python is a popular programming language used for web development, data analysis, machine learning, and more. One of the libraries used for making HTTP requests in Python is the requests library. In this article, we will explore how to make a POST request with an XML payload using the requests library and handle the response.

Sending a POST Request with XML Payload

To send a POST request with XML payload using the requests library, we need to define the payload as an XML string and set the data parameter of the requests.post() method to the payload. Here's an example:


import requests

url = 'https://example.com/xml-api'
xml_payload = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><request><data>Hello World!</data></request>'

response = requests.post(url, data=xml_payload)

print(response.content)

In this example, we define the URL to which we want to send the POST request as https://example.com/xml-api. We also define the XML payload as a string and set it to the variable xml_payload. The payload contains a simple message "Hello World!" wrapped in XML tags.

We then use the requests.post() method to send the POST request to the URL with the data parameter set to the xml_payload variable. This sends the XML payload as data in the POST request.

The response from the server is stored in the response variable. We print the content of the response using the response.content attribute. This prints the XML response received from the server.

Handling the XML Response

Once we have received the XML response from the server, we may want to parse it and extract useful information. One way to do this is to use the built-in Python xml.etree.ElementTree module. Here's an example:


import requests
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

url = 'https://example.com/xml-api'
xml_payload = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><request><data>Hello World!</data></request>'

response = requests.post(url, data=xml_payload)

root = ET.fromstring(response.content)
data = root.find('data').text

print(data)

In this example, we have added two lines of code to the previous example. First, we import the xml.etree.ElementTree module. This is a built-in module that provides a lightweight and fast way to parse XML data.

Next, after receiving the response from the server, we use the ET.fromstring() method to parse the XML content into an element tree. We then use the root.find() method to find the <data> element in the XML response and extract its text content using the .text attribute.

We then print the extracted text content, which in this case is "Hello World!".

Using XML Templates

Another way to generate XML payloads is to use XML templates. This can be useful when we need to generate complex XML payloads with dynamic data. Here's an example:


import requests
from xml.etree.ElementTree import Element, SubElement, tostring

url = 'https://example.com/xml-api'

# Define XML template
root = Element('request')
data = SubElement(root, 'data')

# Set dynamic data
data.text = 'Hello World!'

# Convert XML template to string
xml_payload = tostring(root)

# Send POST request with XML payload
response = requests.post(url, data=xml_payload)

print(response.content)

In this example, we define an XML template using the Element() and SubElement() methods of the xml.etree.ElementTree module. We then set the dynamic data in the <data> element using the .text attribute.

We then convert the XML template to a string using the tostring() method and send the POST request with the XML payload using the requests.post() method as before.

These are some of the ways to send a POST request with an XML payload and handle the response in Python using the requests library. By using XML templates and parsing the XML response, we can generate and extract dynamic data from XML payloads in a clean and efficient way.

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