Python .head()

The .head() method sends a HEAD request to a web server and it returns a response object.

Syntax

import requests

requests.head("url", **kwargs)

**kwargs are any number of dictionary items (named arguments) that are passed in as parameters. Many different named parameters can be passed into a HEAD request. For example, they can be used to include cookies in the request, set proxies, set user-agents, or set a page timeout.

Example

The .head() method sends a request for data to a web server. The response object it returns contains the response headers (information about the web server’s content) without including the content itself. Therefore, .head() is similar to .get(), but is usually faster.

For example, .head() can check to make sure a website is responding, and see what content type is returned, without actually downloading the content:

import requests

response = requests.head("https://www.codecademy.com")

print(response.status_code)

print(response.headers["Content-Type"])

print(response.text)

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This will produce the following output:

200
text/html; charset=utf-8

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Codebyte Example

The .head() method can also take in various parameters. These parameters allow a user to communicate additional information to the web server such as the content type that should be returned, and the user’s authentication.

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