Making HTTP Requests With Python

Christopher Bailey 17 Lessons 49m intermediate web-dev

The requests library is the de facto standard for making HTTP requests in Python. It abstracts the complexities of making requests behind a beautiful, simple API so that you can focus on interacting with services and consuming data in your application.

Throughout this course, you’ll see some of the most useful features that requests has to offer as well as how to customize and optimize those features for different situations you may come across. You’ll also learn how to use requests in an efficient way as well as how to prevent requests to external services from slowing down your application.

What’s Included:

17 Lessons
Video Subtitles and Full Transcripts
1 Downloadable Resource
Accompanying Text-Based Tutorial
Q&A With Python Experts: Ask a Question
Certificate of Completion

Downloadable Resources:

Course Slides (PDF)

Related Learning Paths:

Python Web Scraping

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Getting Started With Requests

5 Lessons 14m

1. Requests Introduction & Overview 01:18

2. The GET Request 01:59

3. Responses: Status Codes 06:28

4. Responses: Content and Headers 04:09

5. Section 1 Recap & Review 00:40

Fetching & Sending Data

6 Lessons 14m

1. Query String Parameters 03:54

2. Request Headers 03:22

3. Other HTTP Methods 02:44

4. The Message Body 03:05

5. Inspecting Requests 01:09

6. Section 2 Recap & Review 00:45

Advanced Usage

6 Lessons 19m

1. Making Authenticated Requests 05:48

2. SSL Certificate Verification 01:18

3. Request Timeouts 05:52

4. The Session Object 03:20

5. Limiting Retries 02:29

6. Section 3 Recap & Course Conclusion 00:48

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About Christopher Bailey

Chris is an avid Pythonista and creates video tutorials for Real Python. He is a programmer and data analyst. He creates music under the name Tripnet. Chris lives in Colorado with his wife and two dogs.

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Each tutorial at Real Python is created by a team of developers so that it meets our high quality standards. The team members who worked on this tutorial are:

Florian

Tappan

Alex

Brad

Geir Arne

Joanna

Aldren

Martin

Kate

Participant Comments

jramirez857 on Dec. 31, 2021

Great course! I had used requests before briefly and enjoyed filling in some gaps about its features.

mikesult on May 5, 2020

Thanks Chris, great course. I expecially liked how you explained concepts using the REPL before getting to writing the scripts. It’s a great way to learn and experiment, I’m going to add more of that to my workflow.

juansebasvasquez on Dec. 27, 2019

This was excellent - lots of context and foundational knowledge to help further ground and grow my scraping skills.

hithard on Sept. 1, 2019

Very simple way to explain complicated stuff. Thanks a lot

Abby Jones on June 25, 2019

I am learning SO much about Python, VIM, and now bpython. RealPython is literally the best site I have ever learned from. It’s increasing my workflow productivity.

adriangaluszka on May 11, 2019

Great and up to date course!

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