Accessing Specific Paths with the Python Requests Library

When making HTTP requests in Python, you may need to access a specific path on the server rather than just the root URL. The Requests library provides a simple way to do this by allowing you to append the path to the end of the base URL.

Constructing the URL

The Requests library uses the get(), post(), and other methods to make requests to a provided URL. To access a specific path, you simply append it to the end of the base URL like so:

import requests

base_url = 'https://api.example.com'
path = '/users/12345' 

url = base_url + path

response = requests.get(url)

Here we have the base URL stored in the base_url variable, and the specific path we want to access in the path variable. By concatenating these together with + we construct the full URL that points to that path.

Handling Path Parameters

Sometimes the path may contain dynamic parameters, like a user id. We can construct the path using Python's string formatting:

user_id = 12345
path = '/users/{id}'

url = base_url + path.format(id=user_id) 

Now the path will be interpolated with the value of user_id to become /users/12345.

Encoding the Path

One thing to watch out for is that any special characters in the path need to be URL encoded properly. The Requests library can do this automatically:

path = '/my files' 

url = base_url + requests.utils.quote(path)

This will encode the space as %20, making the path safe for URLs.

By leveraging the Requests library's API and Python's string handling capabilities, you can easily construct requests URLs that point to any specific path on a server.