How Can I Inspect HTTP Requests in Python Applications Using the Requests Library?

Inspecting HTTP Requests in Python Applications

When troubleshooting API errors, such as those encountered when calling PayPal's API, it becomes crucial to inspect the entire HTTP request sent by the application. This information is often required by support teams to pinpoint the cause of the issue.

Leveraging Logging for Request Inspection

Modern versions of the Requests library (1.x and above) offer a straightforward method for viewing HTTP requests: enabling logging. Requests utilizes the http.client and logging module configuration to control logging verbosity.

Demonstration:

import requests
import logging

# Enable debugging at HTTP level
http_client.HTTPConnection.debuglevel = 1

# Initialize logging
logging.basicConfig()
logging.getLogger().setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
requests_log = logging.getLogger("requests.packages.urllib3")
requests_log.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
requests_log.propagate = True

requests.get('https://httpbin.org/headers')

Example Output:

INFO:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:Starting new HTTPS connection (1): httpbin.org
send: 'GET /headers HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: httpbin.org\r\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, compress\r\nAccept: */*\r\nUser-Agent: python-requests/1.2.0 CPython/2.7.3 Linux/3.2.0-48-generic\r\n\r\n'
reply: 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n'
header: Content-Type: application/json
header: Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 11:19:34 GMT
header: Server: gunicorn/0.17.4
header: Content-Length: 226
header: Connection: keep-alive
DEBUG:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:"GET /headers HTTP/1.1" 200 226

This output provides detailed information about the HTTP request, including headers and the first part of the response. The full response body is not logged. Thus, enabling logging in Requests offers an easy way to inspect HTTP requests and assist in debugging API issues.

The above is the detailed content of How Can I Inspect HTTP Requests in Python Applications Using the Requests Library?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!