#Request Module in Python

>>Introduction

The Requests library in Python is one of the integral parts of Python for making HTTP requests to a specified URL. Whether it be REST APIs

or Web Scraping, requests are a must to be learned for proceeding further with these technologies. When one makes a request to a URI, it

returns a response. Python requests provide inbuilt functionalities for managing both the request and response

>> What is Python Requests module?

Requests is an Apache2 Licensed HTTP library, that allows to send HTTP/1.1 requests using Python.

To play with web, Python Requests is must. Whether it be hitting APIs, downloading entire facebook pages, and much more cool stuff, one will

have to make a request to the URL.

* Installing Requests

Requests installation depends on type of operating system on eis using, the basic command anywhere would be to open a command terminal and run,

pip install requests

* Making a Request

Python requests module has several built-in methods to make Http requests to specified URI using GET, POST, PUT, PATCH or HEAD requests. A

Http request is meant to either retrieve data from a specified URI or to push data to a server. It works as a request-response protocol

between a client and a server. Let’s demonstrate how to make a GET request to an endpoint. GET method is used to retrieve information from the

given server using a given URI. The GET method sends the encoded user information appended to the page request. The page and the encoded

information are separated by the ‘?’ character. For example: https://www.google.com/search?q=...

>>How to make GET request through Python Requests

Python’s requests module provides in-built method called get() for making a GET request to a specified URI.

* Syntax

requests.get(url, params={key: value}, args)

Example :

Let’s try making a request to github’s APIs for example purposes.

import requests

# Making a GET request

r = requests.get('https://api.github.com/...')

# check status code for response received

# success code - 200

print(r)

print(r.content)

save this file as request.py and through terminal run,

python request.py

>> Http Request Methods

Method Description

1. GET GET method is used to retrieve information from the given server using a given URI.

2.POST POST request method requests that a web server accepts the data enclosed in the body of the request message, most likely for

storing

3. PUT The PUT method requests that the enclosed entity be stored under the supplied URI. If the URI refers to an already existing

resource, it is modified and if the URI does not point to an existing resource, then the server can create the resource with that

URI.

4.DELETE The DELETE method deletes the specified resource

5.HEAD The HEAD method asks for a response identical to that of a GET request, but without the response body.

6.PATCH It is used for modify capabilities. The PATCH request only needs to contain the changes to the resource, not the complete

resource

>> Response object

When one makes a request to a URI, it returns a response. This Response object in terms of python is returned by requests.method(), method

being – get, post, put, etc. Response is a powerful object with lots of functions and attributes that assist in normalizing data or creating

ideal portions of code. For example, response.status_code returns the status code from the headers itself, and one can check if the request

was processed successfully or not. Response object can be used to imply lots of features, methods, and functionalities.

import requests

response = requests.get('https://api.github.com/')

print(response.url)

print(response.status_code)

>> Response Methods

Method ` ` Description

1.response.headers response.headers returns a dictionary of response headers.

2.response.encoding response.encoding returns the encoding used to decode response.content.

3.response.elapsed response.elapsed returns a timedelta object with the time elapsed from sending the request to the arrival of the response.

4.response.close() response.close() closes the connection to the server.

5.response.content response.content returns the content of the response, in bytes.

6.response.cookies response.cookies returns a CookieJar object with the cookies sent back from the server.

7.response.history response.history returns a list of response objects holding the history of request (url).

8.response.is_permanent_redirect returns True if the response is the permanent redirected url, otherwise False.