Python .request()

The .request() method sends seven main kinds of request to a web server: GET, OPTIONS, HEAD, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE; it can also handle custom HTTP verbs if needed, and returns a response object.

Syntax

import requests

requests.request("method", "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 request. For example, they can be used to include cookies in the request, set proxies, set user-agents, or set a page timeout.

The requests module comes with some commonly used convenience methods such as .get(), .post(), and etc. Using one of these convenience methods has the same effect as calling the .request() method directly.

Example

The request() method returns a response object which contains various types of data such as the webpage text, status code, and the reason for that response.

import requests

response = requests.request("POST", "https://codecademy.com")

print(f"{response.status_code}: {response.reason}")

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The output will look like this:

200: OK

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Codebyte Example

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

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