REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is a type of software architecture that enables a client and server to communicate with each other in order to exchange resources and data. It is a popular method of communication between applications, providing a flexible way to access and manipulate data.
Python is a powerful programming language that can be used to send requests to REST servers. With the right tools and knowledge, it is easy to send and receive data from a REST server using Python.
This article will provide some practical examples to help get started.
Python’s requests
library is a popular third-party package for making HTTP requests in Python. It enables developers to make HTTP requests such as GET and POST, as well as other more complex requests such as PUT and DELETE.
It includes features like HTTP authentication, cookies, and session handling. It also supports features like SSL verification, timeouts, and proxies.
The requests
library is built on top of Python’s built-in http.client
module, which provides the underlying functionality for making HTTP requests
Client class
from requests import Request, Session, exceptions import json class Client: def __init__(self, base_url): self.base_url = base_url def query(self, uri, method, body): parameter = {} if body is not None: parameter.update(body) r = self._make_request(uri, method, parameter) rp = r.prepare() s = Session() resp = s.send(rp) return json.loads(resp.text) def _make_request(self, uri, method, body): headers = { 'Accept': 'application/json' } r = Request(method.upper(), self.base_url + uri, headers=headers) if body: if r.method in ["POST", "PUT", "PATH"]: r.json = body else: r.params = body return r
Above is a Python code that defines a class Client
that can be used to make HTTP requests to a web API.
Use the class
client = Client("http://api-domain.com/") resp = client.query('login', 'POST', {'username': 'tester', 'password': 'tester'})