`http`

The Python http package is a collection of modules for working with HTTP. The module for making HTTP requests and handling responses is http.client, a low-level client that you normally use indirectly through higher-level interfaces like urllib.request. Other modules include http.server for building HTTP servers, http.cookies for handling cookies, and http.cookiejar for persisting cookies across requests.

Here’s a quick example:

>>> from http.client import HTTPConnection
>>> conn = HTTPConnection("www.example.com")
>>> conn.request("GET", "/")
>>> response = conn.getresponse()
>>> response.status
200
>>> conn.close()

Key Features

Sends HTTP requests
Receives HTTP responses
Handles HTTP headers and status codes
Supports HTTP/1.1 protocol
Supports building HTTP servers
Provides tools for parsing and generating cookies
Provides the HTTPStatus and HTTPMethod enums for status codes and request methods

Frequently Used Classes and Functions

Object	Type	Description
`HTTPConnection`	Class	Handles HTTP connections
`HTTPSConnection`	Class	Handles HTTPS connections
`HTTPResponse`	Class	Represents the response from an HTTP request
`responses`	Dictionary	Maps HTTP status codes to status messages
`HTTPStatus`	Enum	Maps HTTP status codes to names, reason phrases, and descriptions
`HTTPMethod`	Enum	Names the standard HTTP methods, such as `GET` and `POST`

Examples

Sending a simple HTTP GET request:

>>> from http.client import HTTPConnection
>>> conn = HTTPConnection("www.example.com")
>>> conn.request("GET", "/")
>>> response = conn.getresponse()
>>> response.status
200
>>> response.read()
b'<!doctype html>...'

Handling HTTP headers:

>>> from http.client import HTTPConnection
>>> conn = HTTPConnection("www.example.com")
>>> conn.request("GET", "/")
>>> response = conn.getresponse()
>>> response.getheaders()
[('Date', '...'), ('Content-Type', 'text/html'), ...]

Common Use Cases

Making HTTP requests to web servers
Retrieving and processing HTTP responses
Managing HTTP headers and status codes
Implementing HTTP clients and servers
Handle cookies

Real-World Example

Suppose you need to download the HTML content of a web page and save it to a file. You can achieve this using the http package:

>>> from http.client import HTTPConnection
>>> conn = HTTPConnection("www.example.com")
>>> conn.request("GET", "/")
>>> response = conn.getresponse()
>>> with open("example.html", "wb") as file:
...     file.write(response.read())
...
559
>>> conn.close()

In this example, the http package is used to send an HTTP GET request to a server, retrieve the HTML content, and save it to a local file, demonstrating how to perform basic HTTP client tasks.

Tutorial

Python's urllib.request for HTTP Requests

In this tutorial, you'll be making HTTP requests with Python's built-in urllib.request. You'll try out examples and review common errors encountered, all while learning more about HTTP requests and Python in general.

intermediate api web-dev web-scraping

For additional information on related topics, take a look at the following resources: