Making HTTP Requests with Python

HTTP requests are fundamental to working with APIs or other web services. You can make HTTP requests to retrieve data from APIs, fetch HTML from websites, or do pretty much anything your web browser can do.

Below, we’ll review how to make HTTP requests using Python code on Pipedream.

We recommend using the popular requests HTTP client package available in Python to send HTTP requests, but you can use any PyPi package you’d like on Pipedream.

Basic requests usage notes

No need to run pip install, just import requests at the top of your step’s code and it’s available for your code to use.

To use requests on Pipedream, you’ll just need to import the requests PyPi package:

import requests

You make HTTP requests by passing a URL and optional request parameters to one of Requests’ 7 HTTP request methods.

Here’s how to make a basic HTTP request on Pipedream:

r = requests.get('https://swapi.dev/api/films/')

The Response object r contains a lot of information about the response: its content, headers, and more. Typically, you just care about the content, which you can access in the text property of the response:

r = requests.get('https://swapi.dev/api/films/')
 
# HTTP response content is in the text property
r.text

Requests automatically decodes the content of the response based on its encoding, r.encoding, which is determined based on the HTTP headers.

If you’re dealing with JSON data, you can call r.json() to decode the content as JSON:

r = requests.get('https://swapi.dev/api/films/')
 
# The json-encoded content of a response, if any
r.json()

If JSON decoding fails, r.json() raises an exception.

Making a GET request

GET requests typically are for retrieving data from an API. Below is an example.

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  url = "https://swapi.dev/api/people/1"
 
  r = requests.get(url)
 
  # The response is logged in your Pipedream step results:
  print(r.text)
 
  # The response status code is logged in your Pipedream step results:
  print(r.status_code)

Making a POST request

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  # This a POST request to this URL will echo back whatever data we send to it
  url = "https://postman-echo.com/post"
 
  data = {"name": "Bulbasaur"}
 
  r = requests.post(url, data=data)
 
  # The response is logged in your Pipedream step results:
  print(r.text)
 
  # The response status code is logged in your Pipedream step results:
  print(r.status_code)

When you make a POST request, pass a dictionary with the data you’d like to send to the data argument. Requests automatically form-encodes the data when the request is made.

  url = "https://postman-echo.com/post"
  data = {"name": "Bulbasaur"}
  r = requests.post(url, json=data)

Passing query string parameters to a GET request

Retrieve fake comment data on a specific post using JSONPlaceholder, a free mock API service. Here, you fetch data from the /comments resource, retrieving data for a specific post by query string parameter: /comments?postId=1.

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/comments"
  params = {"postId": 1}
 
  # Make an HTTP GET request using requests
  r = requests.get(url, params=params)
 
  # Retrieve the content of the response
  data = r.text

You should pass query string parameters as a dictionary using the params keyword argument, like above. When you do, requests automatically URL-encodes the parameters for you, which you’d otherwise have to do manually.

Sending a request with HTTP headers

To add HTTP headers to a request, pass a dictionary to the headers parameter:

import requests
import json
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
  headers = {"Content-Type": "application/json"}
  data = {"name": "Luke"}
 
  # Make an HTTP POST request using requests
  r = requests.post(url, headers=headers, data=json.dumps(data))

Sending a request with a secret or API key

Most APIs require you authenticate HTTP requests with an API key or other token. Please review the docs for your service to understand how they accept this data.

Here’s an example showing an API key passed in an HTTP header:

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
  headers = {"X-API-KEY": "123"} # API KEY
  data = {"name": "Luke"}
 
  # Make an HTTP POST request using requests
  r = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=data)

Sending files

An example of sending a previously stored file in the workflow’s /tmp directory:

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  # Retrieving a previously saved file from workflow storage
  files = {"image": open("/tmp/python-logo.png", "rb")}
 
  r = requests.post(url="https://api.imgur.com/3/image", files=files)

Downloading a file to the /tmp directory

This example shows you how to download a file to a file in the /tmp directory. This can be especially helpful for downloading large files: it streams the file to disk, minimizing the memory the workflow uses when downloading the file.

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  # Download the webpage HTML file to /tmp
  with requests.get("https://example.com", stream=True) as response:
      # Check if the request was successful
      response.raise_for_status()
 
      # Open the new file /tmp/file.html in binary write mode
      with open("/tmp/file.html", "wb") as file:
          for chunk in response.iter_content(chunk_size=8192):
              # Write the chunk to file
              file.write(chunk)

Uploading a file from the /tmp directory

This example shows you how to make a multipart/form-data request with a file as a form part. You can store and read any files from the /tmp directory.

This can be especially helpful for uploading large files: it streams the file from disk, minimizing the memory the workflow uses when uploading the file.

import requests
from requests_toolbelt.multipart.encoder import MultipartEncoder
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  m = MultipartEncoder(fields={
    'file': ('filename', open('/tmp/file.pdf', 'rb'), 'application/pdf')
    })
 
  r = requests.post("https://example.com", data=m,
                  headers={'Content-Type': m.content_type})

IP addresses for HTTP requests made from Pipedream workflows

By default, HTTP requests made from Pipedream can come from a large range of IP addresses. If you need to restrict the IP addresses HTTP requests come from, you can Use a Pipedream VPC to route all outbound HTTP requests through a single IP address.

Using an HTTP proxy to proxy requests through another host

By default, HTTP requests made from Pipedream can come from a range of IP addresses. If you need to make requests from a single IP address, you can route traffic through an HTTP proxy:

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  user = "USERNAME" # Replace with your HTTP proxy username
  password = "PASSWORD" # Replace with your HTTP proxy password
  host = "10.10.1.10" # Replace with the HTTP proxy URL
  port = 1080 # Replace with the port of the HTTP proxy
  proxies = {
    "https": f"http://{user}:{password}@{host}:{port}",
  }
 
  r = requests.request("GET", "https://example.com", proxies=proxies)

Paginating API requests

When you fetch data from an API, the API may return records in “pages”. For example, if you’re trying to fetch a list of 1,000 records, the API might return those in groups of 100 items.

Different APIs paginate data in different ways. You’ll need to consult the docs of your API provider to see how they suggest you paginate through records.

Sending a GraphQL request

Construct a GraphQL query as a string and then using the requests library to send it to the GraphQL server:

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  url = "https://beta.pokeapi.co/graphql/v1beta"
 
  query = """
query samplePokeAPIquery {
  generations: pokemon_v2_generation {
    name
    pokemon_species: pokemon_v2_pokemonspecies_aggregate {
      aggregate {
        count
      }
    }
  }
}
  """
 
  r = requests.post(url, json={"query": query})
  return r.json()

Sending an authenticated GraphQL request

Authenticate your connected accounts in Pipedream with GraphQL requests using pd.inputs[appName]["$auth"]:

import requests
 
def handler(pd: "pipedream"):
  url = "https://api.github.com/graphql"
  query = """
query { 
  viewer { 
    login
  }
}
  """
  token = pd.inputs["github"]["$auth"]["oauth_access_token"]
  headers = {"authorization": f"Bearer {token}"}
  r = requests.post(url, json={"query": query}, headers=headers)
  return r.json()

Alternatively, you can use Environment Variables as well for simple API key based GraphQL APIs.