In Python, the Requests module allows you to send all kinds of HTTP requests to a given URL. It is an easy-to-use library with a lot of features ranging from passing parameters in URLs to sending custom headers and SSL Verification.

Python Requests Module

The request module allows us to perform a variety of tasks like adding headers, form data, multipart files, and parameters with simple Python dictionaries. Moreover, it also allows us to access the response data in the same way.

The request module is widely used with the REST APIs and Web Scrapping. When we send a request to a URI, it returns a response. Thus, the request module provides inbuilt functionalities for managing the request and response.

Hence, we can say Requests is ready for today’s web.

Features of Requests module

  • Keep-Alive & Connection Pooling
  • International Domains and URLs
  • Sessions with Cookie Persistence
  • Browser-style SSL Verification
  • Automatic Content Decoding
  • Basic/Digest Authentication
  • Elegant Key/Value Cookies
  • Automatic Decompression
  • Unicode Response Bodies
  • HTTP(S) Proxy Support
  • Multipart File Uploads
  • Streaming Downloads
  • Connection Timeouts
  • Chunked Requests
  • .netrc Support

Requests Installation

The first step to use Requests module is to install it using pip as shown below.

$ pip install requests

After installation, we can use it within a Python script by importing it as shown below.

import requests

Requests Methods

The requests module in Python offers several built-in methods for making HTTP requests to specified URLs using GET, POST, PUT, PATCH or HEAD requests. Hence, HTTP requests are either used for retrieving data from a URL or for pushing data to a server. Therefore, it works as a communication bridge between a client and a server.

References

Happy Learning 🙂