what is python requests

What is Python Requests?

Python requests is a Python library that allows you to send HTTP/1.1 requests easily. It is an elegant and simple HTTP library for Python, designed to be user-friendly and intuitive. The requests library is built on top of urllib3, which is a powerful HTTP client for Python. The requests library makes it easy to send HTTP/1.1 requests to web servers and receive responses.

How to use Python Requests?

Python requests library can be installed using pip, which is the package installer for Python. You can install it using the following command:

pip install requests

Once the requests library is installed, you can use it in your Python code by importing it:

import requests

After importing the requests library, you can start sending HTTP/1.1 requests to web servers.

Example Usage

Here's an example of how to use Python Requests:

import requests

response = requests.get('https://www.example.com')
print(response.text)

In this example, we're sending a GET request to 'https://www.example.com', and then printing the response text.

Different Types of Requests

Python Requests library supports different types of HTTP requests like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. Here's a list of some commonly used HTTP methods:

  • GET: Sends a GET request to the specified URL and retrieves the response.
  • POST: Sends a POST request to the specified URL with the request body.
  • PUT: Sends a PUT request to the specified URL with the request body.
  • DELETE: Sends a DELETE request to the specified URL.

Headers and Parameters

You can also send headers and parameters with your requests. Headers are used to send additional information along with the request, such as authentication tokens or user agents. Parameters are used to send data to the server in the form of key-value pairs.

Here's an example of how to send headers and parameters with a GET request:

import requests

headers = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'}
params = {'key1': 'value1', 'key2': 'value2'}
response = requests.get('https://www.example.com', headers=headers, params=params)
print(response.text)

In this example, we're sending a GET request to 'https://www.example.com' with a user agent header and some parameters.