Making HTTP requests with requests
#In this section, we'll practice on a special website I created for this purpose.
This website is a fake online store that functions exactly like a real one. It has a standard browser user interface and full coverage of all capabilities via the RESTful API.
Below, I'll provide several links so you can visit this website and familiarize yourself with it before working on the materials and exercises in this section:
The website's main page with information about it:
[https://apilearn.tukas.dev/](https://apilearn.tukas.dev/)
Specially created detailed documentation for its API (don't worry, you'll start to understand it soon):
[https://apilearn.tukas.dev/api/docs/](https://apilearn.tukas.dev/api/docs/)
Okay, now that we've briefly explored the website, let's move on to learning how to work with the API.
The web runs on a simple conversation: a client sends a request, a server sends a response. When you type a URL in a browser, the browser is the client. With the requests library, your Python script becomes the client.
Install it once:
```bash
pip install requests
```
To fetch data, use requests.get() with the URL:
```python
import requests
response = requests.get('https://apilearn.tukas.dev/api/products/')
print(response.status_code) # 200
```
The return value is a Response object. It holds everything the server sent back — a status code, response headers, and a body.
Status codes are three-digit numbers that tell you what happened:
- 2xx — success. 200 means OK, 201 means a resource was created.
- 4xx — client error. You made a bad request (400), forgot auth (401), or requested something that does not exist (404).
- 5xx — server error. The server crashed or is overloaded.
The .ok attribute gives you a quick boolean check — True for any 2xx status, False for anything else:
```python
if response.ok:
print('got a valid response')
else:
print(f'request failed with status {response.status_code}')
```
A common mistake is to call .json() without checking .ok first. If the server returns a 404, .json() will either raise an exception or return an error payload — not the data you wanted. Always check before you read.