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what does requests do in python

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 2 min read

What Does Requests Do in Python?

Requests is a Python library that allows you to send HTTP requests using Python. It provides a simple and easy-to-use interface with various methods to send HTTP requests such as GET, POST, DELETE, etc. It also supports various authentication methods, handling of cookies, and more.

HTTP

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which is an application protocol for the transfer of data over the internet. HTTP works on a client-server architecture where the client sends a request to the server, and the server responds with the requested data.

Installation

You can install the requests library using pip by running the following command:


  pip install requests

Sending Requests

To send an HTTP request using requests library, you can use the requests.request() method. This method takes various parameters such as method, URL, headers, data, and more.

The following example shows how to send a GET request:


  import requests
  
  response = requests.request('GET', 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts')
  
  print(response.status_code)
  print(response.text)

In the above example, we are sending a GET request to the URL 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts'. The response object returned by the request method contains the status code and content of the response.

HTTP Methods

The requests library supports various HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and more. You can use these methods by calling the respective method names on the requests object.

The following example shows how to send a POST request:


  import requests
  
  data = {'name': 'John', 'age': 30}
  
  response = requests.post('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts', data=data)
  
  print(response.status_code)
  print(response.text)

In the above example, we are sending a POST request to the URL 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts' along with some data. The data is passed as a dictionary to the data parameter of the post method.

Headers

HTTP headers contain additional information about the request or response, such as content type, encoding, authentication, and more. You can set headers for your requests using the headers parameter.

The following example shows how to set headers:


  import requests
  
  headers = {'Content-Type': 'application/json'}
  
  response = requests.get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts', headers=headers)
  
  print(response.status_code)
  print(response.text)

In the above example, we are setting the content type header to 'application/json' and sending a GET request to the URL 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts'.

Authentication

The requests library supports various authentication methods such as Basic, Digest, OAuth, and more. You can pass your authentication credentials as a tuple to the auth parameter.

The following example shows how to use Basic authentication:


  import requests
  
  auth = ('username', 'password')
  
  response = requests.get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts', auth=auth)
  
  print(response.status_code)
  print(response.text)

In the above example, we are using Basic authentication by passing our username and password as a tuple to the auth parameter of the get method.

Cookies

The requests library allows you to send and receive cookies with your requests. You can use the cookies parameter to set cookies for your requests.

The following example shows how to send cookies:


  import requests
  
  cookies = {'session_id': '123456'}
  
  response = requests.get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts', cookies=cookies)
  
  print(response.status_code)
  print(response.text)

In the above example, we are sending a GET request to the URL 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts' along with a cookie named 'session_id' with a value of '123456'.

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