In this blog post, we will discuss how to handle streaming requests using the requests library in Python. Streaming requests allow us to receive and process data from the server in real-time, which can be useful for downloading large files, monitoring live data, or processing continuous data streams.

Installing requests library

Before we dive into streaming requests, let’s make sure we have the requests library installed. If not, we can install it using the following command:

pip install requests

Making a Streaming Request

To make a streaming request, we can use the get() method from the requests library and set the stream parameter to True. This tells the server to send the response in chunks instead of downloading the whole response at once.

import requests

url = "https://example.com/streaming-data"

response = requests.get(url, stream=True)

if response.status_code == 200:
    # Process the response data
    for chunk in response.iter_content(chunk_size=4096):
        # Process the chunk of data
        print(chunk)
else:
    print("Failed to make a streaming request")

In the above code, we first create a GET request to the specified URL with the stream=True parameter. Then, we check if the response status code is 200 (indicating a successful request). If the request is successful, we can process the response data by iterating over the chunks using the iter_content() method provided by requests.

Processing Streaming Data

Once we have received the streaming data in chunks, we can process it as needed. For example, if we are downloading a large file, we can write the chunks to a file instead of printing them to the console:

import requests

url = "https://example.com/large-file"

response = requests.get(url, stream=True)

if response.status_code == 200:
    # Open a file to write the data
    with open("outputfile.mp4", "wb") as file:
        # Process the response data
        for chunk in response.iter_content(chunk_size=4096):
            # Write the chunk to the file
            file.write(chunk)
else:
    print("Failed to make a streaming request")

In the above code, we open a file named “outputfile.mp4” in binary write mode and write each chunk of data received from the server to the file.

Conclusion

Handling streaming requests using the requests library in Python is straightforward. By setting the stream parameter to True and iterating over the response data chunks, we can process the data as it arrives. Whether it’s downloading large files or processing continuous data streams, streaming requests are a powerful technique for real-time data handling.

Remember to install the requests library using pip install requests before running the code. Feel free to explore the requests library documentation to learn more about its capabilities and options.

Happy streaming!