Http Client in Logo

Here’s an idiomatic Python example demonstrating how to create an HTTP client:

import requests

def main():
    # Send an HTTP GET request to a server
    response = requests.get("https://pythonexample.com")
    
    # Check if the request was successful
    response.raise_for_status()
    
    # Print the HTTP response status
    print(f"Response status: {response.status_code} {response.reason}")
    
    # Print the first 5 lines of the response body
    lines = response.text.splitlines()
    for line in lines[:5]:
        print(line)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

This Python script demonstrates how to use the requests library to create a simple HTTP client. Here’s a breakdown of the code:

1. We import the requests library, which provides a user-friendly interface for making HTTP requests.

2. In the main() function, we use requests.get() to send a GET request to “https://pythonexample.com”. This method returns a Response object.

3. We call response.raise_for_status() to raise an exception for any unsuccessful HTTP status codes (4xx or 5xx).

4. We print the response status using response.status_code and response.reason.

5. To print the first 5 lines of the response body, we split the response text into lines and iterate over the first 5 using a slice.

6. The if __name__ == "__main__": block ensures that main() is only called if the script is run directly, not if it’s imported as a module.

To run this script:

1. Make sure you have the requests library installed. You can install it using pip:

   pip install requests

2. Save the code in a file named http_client.py.

3. Run the script from the command line:

   python http_client.py

This example demonstrates how to make HTTP requests in Python, handle responses, and process the response data. The requests library abstracts away many of the complexities of working with HTTP, making it easier to work with web services and APIs in Python.