Python requests: GET Request Explained
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Python requests library’s get method to fetch data via HTTP. The Python requests library abstracts the complexities in making HTTP requests. The requests.get() method allows you to fetch an HTTP response and analyze it in different ways.
By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have learned:
- How the Python requests get method works
- How to customize the Python requests get method with headers
- How to use the Python response objects
Understanding the Python requests get Function
An HTTP GET request is used to retrieve data from the specified resource, such as a website. When using the Python requests library, you can use the .get() function to create a GET request for a specified resource.
The function accepts a number of different parameters. Let’s take a look at the function and the different parameters that it accepts:
# Understand the Python requests.get() Function import requests req = requests.get( url, params=None, **kwargs )We can see in the code block above, that the function accepts two parameters:
- A url , which points to a resource, and
- params , which accepts a dictionary or tuples to send in the query string
The .get() function is actually a convenience function based off of the .request() function. The optional keyword arguments that you can pass in derive from that function. Let’s take a look at the options that you can pass in: