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Requests

Requests is building on the most downloaded Python library in the world, urllib3. It makes web requests really simple, yet remains very powerful and versatile. Chances are you know this one by heart already, but I couldn't make this list without mentioning it!

Install

pip install requests

Usage

A request is made up of four different pieces:

  • An endpoint --- which looks like the URL to the data
  • A method --- either GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE. We'll only be exploring GET requests in this post.
  • The headers --- which provide information such as authentication keys.
  • The data/body --- which isn't part of a GET request

Return Codes:

  • 1xx: Provide information
  • 2xx: Generally are successful
  • 3xx: Provide information on redirects
  • 4xx: Refer to a client error (our bad)
  • 5xx: Refer to a server error (their bad)

Import

import requests

Example

import requests
response = requests.get("http://api.open-notify.org/iss-now.json")
print(response.status_code)

#-----------------------------------------------------------------
# 200
import requests
import json
response = requests.get("http://api.open-notify.org/iss-now.json")
print(response.json())

#--------------------------------------------------------------------
# {'message': 'success', 'timestamp': 1583154620,
# 'iss_position': {'longitude': '-28.1832', 'latitude': '7.4263'}}
response = requests.get("http://api.open-notify.org/iss-now.json")
json_response = response.json()
dictionary = json.dumps(response.json(), sort_keys = True, indent = 4)
print(dictionary)

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# {
#     "iss_position": {
#         "latitude": "29.2380",
#         "longitude": "-117.4817"
#     },
#     "message": "success",
#     "timestamp": 1583170890
# }