A Detailed Tutorial on Sending GET Requests with Python Requests

Python is a powerful programming language, and the requests library makes processing network requests simple and efficient. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use the Python requests library to initiate a GET request and parse the response data.

What is a GET request

GET request is one of the HTTP request methods, mainly used to obtain data from the server. In Python, the requests library can easily handle this request.

Initiate a simple GET request

The following is a basic example of using requests to initiate a GET request:

import requests

response = requests.get('https://www.google.com')
print(response.status_code)
print(response.text)

Parsing response data

The response of a GET request can be parsed in many ways, such as obtaining the status code, response headers, or response content. Here are some common methods:

Get Status Code

Returns the HTTP status code of the server response:

print(response.status_code)

Get Response Header

Returns the HTTP header information in the server response:

print(response.headers)
print(response.headers['Content-Encoding'])

Get the response content

Return the original binary data of the server response:

print(response.content)

Unlike response.text, response.content does not automatically decode the content, but provides it in raw byte form. If you need to save the content as a file (such as a picture or PDF file), you can directly write response.content to the file.

Getting data in JSON format

Used to parse the response content returned by the server directly into a JSON object; this method is suitable for situations where the server returns data in JSON format, and it can help you easily parse and process JSON data.

json_data = response.json()

# 打印解析后的 JSON 数据
print(json_data)

# 访问具体字段
name = json_data['name']

Constructing URL Parameters

Constructing URL Parameters Manually

You can concatenate parameters directly into the URL; for example, if you need to add query parameters to a Google search request:

import requests

response = requests.get('https://www.google.com/search?q=完美代码')
print(response.url)

Use params keyword parameter

requests provides the params parameter, which allows you to pass URL parameters more conveniently. requests will automatically handle encoding issues for you:

import requests

# 构建参数字典
params = {'q': "完美代码"}

response = requests.get('https://www.google.com/search',params=params)
print(response.url)

You can view the full URL generated by printing response.url. Requests will automatically URL encode the parameters:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%AE%8C%E7%BE%8E%E4%BB%A3%E7%A0%81