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python requests_html

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 2 min read

Python Requests_HTML: What is it and How to Use it?

If you are a Python programmer and have been working with web scraping, then you must have heard about the popular requests library. Requests is a powerful and easy-to-use Python library that allows you to send HTTP/1.1 requests extremely easily. Python requests_html is an extension of the requests library that allows you to access the rendered HTML content of a web page.

What is requests_html?

Requests_html is a Python library that provides an easy way to access the rendered HTML content of a web page. This library allows you to interact with dynamic web pages and web pages that use JavaScript to generate content. Requests_html uses the requests library under the hood, so you will find it very easy to use if you are already familiar with the requests library.

How to Install requests_html?

You can install requests_html using pip, which is the most popular package manager for Python:


pip install requests_html

How to Use requests_html?

Using requests_html is very easy. First, you need to create an instance of the HTMLSession class:


from requests_html import HTMLSession

session = HTMLSession()

Next, you can use this session object to get the HTML content of any URL:


r = session.get('https://www.example.com')

# Get the rendered content
r.html.render()

# Get the plain text content
print(r.html.text)

# Get a specific element
element = r.html.find('#element-id')[0]

The first line creates a GET request to the specified URL. The second line renders the HTML content of the web page. Rendering the HTML content will execute any JavaScript code on the web page and load any dynamic content. The third line gets the plain text content of the web page. Finally, the fourth line gets a specific HTML element using its ID.

Alternative Ways to Use requests_html

There are a few alternative ways to use requests_html:

  • You can use the HTMLSession class to create a session object and then use the methods of this object to get the HTML content of any URL.
  • You can use the AsyncHTMLSession class to create an asynchronous session object and then use the methods of this object to get the HTML content of any URL.
  • You can use the get method of the HTML class to get the HTML content of any URL using a single line of code.

Here is an example of using the HTML class to get the HTML content of a web page:


from requests_html import HTML

# Get the HTML content of a URL
html = HTML.get('https://www.example.com')

# Render the HTML content
html.render()

# Get the plain text content
print(html.text)

# Get a specific element
element = html.find('#element-id')[0]

As you can see, using requests_html is very easy and powerful. It allows you to scrape and interact with dynamic web pages with ease.

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