Python 24-Day Course - Day 18: HTTP Requests

Day 18: HTTP Requests

Installing the requests Library

pip install requests

GET Request

import requests

response = requests.get("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1")
print(response.status_code)  # 200
print(response.headers["content-type"])

data = response.json()
print(data["title"])

HTTP Methods

Method	Purpose	requests Function
GET	Retrieve data	requests.get()
POST	Create data	requests.post()
PUT	Update data (full)	requests.put()
PATCH	Update data (partial)	requests.patch()
DELETE	Delete data	requests.delete()

POST Request

new_post = {
    "title": "New Post",
    "body": "Sending HTTP requests from Python",
    "userId": 1
}

response = requests.post(
    "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts",
    json=new_post
)
print(response.status_code)  # 201
print(response.json()["id"])

Query Parameters and Headers

# Query parameters
params = {"userId": 1, "_limit": 5}
response = requests.get(
    "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts",
    params=params
)

# Custom headers
headers = {
    "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

Error Handling

def fetch_data(url):
    try:
        response = requests.get(url, timeout=10)
        response.raise_for_status()  # Raises exception for 4xx, 5xx errors
        return response.json()
    except requests.exceptions.Timeout:
        print("Request timed out")
    except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as e:
        print(f"HTTP error: {e}")
    except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError:
        print("Cannot connect to server")
    return None

Today’s Exercises

1. Write a program that fetches weather data from a public API and displays it.
2. Use the GitHub API to retrieve a specific user’s repository list.
3. Create a function that fetches data sequentially from multiple URLs and merges it.