HTTP Requests

Python · Example / how-to

📋 Overview

Call HTTP APIs with the popular requests library (or stdlib urllib). Handle timeouts, status codes, and JSON payloads explicitly. Install: python -m pip install requests.

🔧 Core concepts

Task	Approach
GET/POST	`requests.get/post`
JSON body	`json=` param
Query string	`params=`
Headers	`headers=`
Timeout	Always set `timeout=`
Errors	`raise_for_status()`
Session	`requests.Session()` for connection reuse

Prefer sessions for multiple calls to the same host. Never hardcode secrets — use env vars.

💡 Examples

GET JSON:

import os
import requests

def fetch_user(user_id: int) -> dict:
    token = os.environ["API_TOKEN"]
    url = f"https://api.example.com/users/{user_id}"
    resp = requests.get(
        url,
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {token}"},
        timeout=10,
    )
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json()

POST and session:

import requests

with requests.Session() as s:
    s.headers.update({"Accept": "application/json"})
    r = s.post(
        "https://httpbin.org/post",
        json={"name": "Ada"},
        timeout=10,
    )
    r.raise_for_status()
    print(r.json()["json"])

stdlib alternative:

import json
from urllib.request import Request, urlopen

req = Request(
    "https://httpbin.org/get",
    headers={"Accept": "application/json"},
)
with urlopen(req, timeout=10) as resp:
    data = json.load(resp)
print(data["url"])

Retry sketch: see retry backoff.

⚠️ Pitfalls

Missing timeout can hang forever.
Not calling raise_for_status() treats 404/500 as success.
Logging response bodies may leak PII/tokens.
verify=False disables TLS verification — avoid.
Relative redirects + mixed POST/GET behavior — know allow_redirects.

HTTP Requests

HTTP Requests

📋 Overview

🔧 Core concepts

💡 Examples

⚠️ Pitfalls

🔗 Related

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