requestsvscurl-cffi
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
Curl-cffi is a Python library for implementing curl-impersonate which is a
HTTP client that appears as one of popular web browsers like:
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Edge
- Safari
- Firefox
Unlike requests and httpx which are native Python libraries, curl-cffi uses cURL and inherits it's powerful features
like extensive HTTP protocol support and detection patches for TLS and HTTP fingerprinting.
Using curl-cffi web scrapers can bypass TLS and HTTP fingerprinting.
Highlights
syncease-of-useno-http2no-asyncpopular
bypasshttp2tls-fingerprinthttp-fingerprintsyncasync
Example Use
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'}}
curl-cffi can be accessed as low-level curl client as well as an easy high-level HTTP client:
from curl_cffi import requests
response = requests.get('https://httpbin.org/json')
print(response.json())
# or using sessions
session = requests.Session()
response = session.get('https://httpbin.org/json')
# also supports async requests using asyncio
import asyncio
from curl_cffi.requests import AsyncSession
urls = [
"http://httpbin.org/html",
"http://httpbin.org/html",
"http://httpbin.org/html",
]
async with AsyncSession() as s:
tasks = []
for url in urls:
task = s.get(url)
tasks.append(task)
# scrape concurrently:
responses = await asyncio.gather(*tasks)
# also supports websocket connections
from curl_cffi.requests import Session, WebSocket
def on_message(ws: WebSocket, message):
print(message)
with Session() as s:
ws = s.ws_connect(
"wss://api.gemini.com/v1/marketdata/BTCUSD",
on_message=on_message,
)
ws.run_forever()