requestsvstreq
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
treq is a Python library for making HTTP requests that provides a simple, convenient API for interacting with web services. It is inspired byt the popular requests library, but powered by Twisted asynchronous engine which allows promise based concurrency.
treq provides a simple, high-level API for making HTTP requests, including methods for GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. It also allows for easy handling of JSON data, automatic decompression of gzipped responses, and connection pooling.
treq is a lightweight library and it's easy to use, it's a good choice for small to medium-sized projects where ease of use is more important than performance.
In web scraping treq isn't commonly used as it doesn't support HTTP2 but it's the only Twisted based HTTP client. treq is also based on callback/errback promises (like Scrapy) which can be easier to understand and maintain compared to asyncio's corountines.
Highlights
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'}}
from twisted.internet import reactor
from twisted.internet.task import react
from twisted.internet.defer import ensureDeferred
import treq
# treq can be used with twisted's reactor with callbacks
response_deferred = treq.get(
"http://httpbin.org/get"
)
# or POST
response_deferred = treq.post(
"http://httpbin.org/post",
json={"key": "value"}, # JSON
data={"key": "value"}, # Form Data
)
# add callback or errback
def handle_response(response):
print(response.code)
response.text().addCallback(lambda body: print(body))
def handle_error(failure):
print(failure)
# this callback will be called when request completes:
response_deferred.addCallback(handle_response)
# this errback will be called if request fails
response_deferred.addErrback(handle_error)
# this will be called if request completes or fails:
response_deferred.addBoth(lambda _: reactor.stop()) # close twisted once finished
if __name__ == '__main__':
reactor.run()
#Note that treq can also be used with async/await:
async def main():
# content reads response data and get sends a get request:
print(await treq.content(await treq.get("https://example.com/")))
if __name__ == '__main__':
react(lambda reactor: ensureDeferred(main()))