HTTP Clients for Agents: httpx and requests
Synchronous and async HTTP requests, session management, headers.
Why HTTP Clients Matter for Agents
AI agents frequently need to fetch data from external sources: APIs, websites, and services. A reliable HTTP client is a core tool in any agent's toolkit.
Python has two popular HTTP libraries: requests (synchronous, simple) and httpx (supports both sync and async). Understanding when to use each is essential for building efficient agents.
Basic GET Request with requests
The requests library makes simple HTTP calls easy. Use requests.get(url) to fetch a resource and inspect the response.
Always check the status code before using the response body to avoid silent failures.
import requests
url = 'https://api.example.com/data'
response = requests.get(url)
print(response.status_code) # 200
print(response.text) # raw string body
print(response.json()) # parsed JSON dictAll lessons in this course
- HTTP Clients for Agents: httpx and requests
- Parsing HTML with BeautifulSoup
- Handling Pagination and Dynamic Content
- Respectful Scraping Practices