Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook

How to do it...

The steps for this recipe are as follows:

1. The urllib.request module provides the machinery required to submit an HTTP request. A light wrapper around it can solve most needs in terms of using HTTP:

import urllib.request
import urllib.parse
import json


def http_request(url, query=None, method=None, headers={}, data=None):
    """Perform an HTTP request and return the associated response."""
    parts = vars(urllib.parse.urlparse(url))
    if query:
        parts['query'] = urllib.parse.urlencode(query)

    url = urllib.parse.ParseResult(**parts).geturl()
    r = urllib.request.Request(url=url, method=method,  headers=headers, data=data) with urllib.request.urlopen(r) as resp: msg, resp = resp.info(), resp.read() if msg.get_content_type() == 'application/json': ...