Requests library is one of the important aspects of Python for making HTTP requests to a specified URL. This article revolves around how one can make PUT request to a specified URL using requests.put() method. Before checking out the PUT method, let’s figure out what a Http PUT request is –
PUT Http Method
PUT is a request method supported by HTTP used by the World Wide Web. The PUT method requests that the enclosed entity be stored under the supplied URI. If the URI refers to an already existing resource, it is modified and if the URI does not point to an existing resource, then the server can create the resource with that URI.
How to make PUT request through Python Requests
Python’s requests module provides in-built method called put() for making a PUT request to a specified URI.
Syntax –
requests.put(url, params={key: value}, args)
Example –
Let’s try making a request to httpbin’s APIs for example purposes.
Python3
import requests# Making a PUT request# check status code for response received# success code - 200print(r)# print content of requestprint(r.content) |
save this file as request.py and through terminal run,
python request.py
Output –
Difference between PUT and POST methods
| PUT | POST |
|---|---|
|
PUT request is made to a particular resource. If the Request-URI refers to an already existing resource, an update operation will happen, otherwise create operation should happen if Request-URI is a valid resource URI (assuming client is allowed to determine resource identifier). PUT /article/{article-id}
|
POST method is used to request that the origin server accept the entity enclosed in the POST /articles
|
| PUT method is idempotent. So if you send retry a request multiple times, that should be equivalent to single request modification. | POST is NOT idempotent. So if you retry the request N times, you will end up having N resources with N different URIs created on server. |
| Use PUT when you want to modify a single resource which is already a part of resources collection. PUT overwrites the resource in its entirety. Use PATCH if request updates part of the resource. |
Use POST when you want to add a child resource under resources collection. |
| Generally, in practice, always use PUT for UPDATE operations. | Always use POST for CREATE operations. |
