node-fetchvsrequests
node-fetch is a lightweight library that provides a fetch()-like API for making HTTP requests in Node.js. It is a light-weight implementation of the Fetch API, which is mostly compatible with the browser's version.
node-fetch is primarily known as almost identical package fetch() is included in web browsers so it shares the same use common API. It's great starting point for people coming from front-end environment.
The requests package is a popular library for making HTTP requests in Python.
It provides a simple, easy-to-use API for sending HTTP/1.1 requests, and it abstracts away many of the low-level details of working with HTTP.
One of the key features of requests is its simple API. You can send a GET request with a single line of code:
import requests
response = requests.get('https://webscraping.fyi/lib/requests/')
pip install requests
Highlights
popular
syncease-of-useno-http2no-asyncpopular
Example Use
const fetch = require('node-fetch');
// fetch supports both Promises and async/await
fetch('http://httpbin.org/get')
.then(res => res.text())
.then(body => console.log(body))
.catch(err => console.error(err));
const response = await fetch('http://httpbin.org/get');
// for concurrent scraping Promise.all can be used
const results = await Promise.all([
fetch('http://httpbin.org/html'),
fetch('http://httpbin.org/html'),
fetch('http://httpbin.org/html'),
])
// POST requests
await fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
body: JSON.stringify({ name: 'John Doe' }),
})
// Proxy use:
const agent = new https.Agent({
rejectUnauthorized: false,
proxy: {
host: 'proxy.example.com',
port: 8080
}
});
await fetch('https://httpbin.org/ip', { agent })
// setting headers and cookies
const headers = new fetch.Headers();
headers.append('Cookie', 'myCookie=123');
headers.append('X-My-Header', 'myValue');
await fetch('https://httpbin.org/headers', { headers })
import requests
# get request:
response = requests.get("http://webscraping.fyi/")
response.status_code
200
response.text
"text"
response.content
b"bytes"
# requests can automatically convert json responses to Python dictionaries:
response = requests.get("http://httpbin.org/json")
print(response.json())
{'slideshow': {'author': 'Yours Truly', 'date': 'date of publication', 'slides': [{'title': 'Wake up to WonderWidgets!', 'type': 'all'}, {'items': ['Why <em>WonderWidgets</em> are great', 'Who <em>buys</em> WonderWidgets'], 'title': 'Overview', 'type': 'all'}], 'title': 'Sample Slide Show'}}
# for POST request it can ingest Python's dictionaries as JSON:
response = requests.post("http://httpbin.org/post", json={"query": "hello world"})
# or form data:
response = requests.post("http://httpbin.org/post", data={"query": "hello world"})
# Session object can be used to automatically keep track of cookies and set defaults:
from requests import Session
s = Session()
s.headers = {"User-Agent": "webscraping.fyi"}
s.get('http://httpbin.org/cookies/set/foo/bar')
print(s.cookies['foo'])
'bar'
print(s.get('http://httpbin.org/cookies').json())
{'cookies': {'foo': 'bar'}}