httpx: A Modern HTTP Client for Python

httpx is a next-generation HTTP client. Its interface is similar to requests, but it supports async/await out of the box.

Installation

uv add httpx

Basic Requests

import httpx

# GET request
response = httpx.get("https://wttr.in/Moscow?format=j1", timeout=10)
response.raise_for_status()  # raises an exception on 4xx/5xx
data = response.json()

# GET with query parameters
response = httpx.get(
    "https://api.example.com/search",
    params={"q": "python", "limit": 10},
    timeout=10
)

# POST with JSON
response = httpx.post(
    "https://api.example.com/data",
    json={"key": "value"},
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer token"},
    timeout=10
)

timeout — Always Set It

# Without a timeout, a request can hang forever
response = httpx.get(url, timeout=10)      # 10 seconds
response = httpx.get(url, timeout=None)    # no limit (bad practice)

# Separate timeouts for connect and read
timeout = httpx.Timeout(connect=5.0, read=30.0)
response = httpx.get(url, timeout=timeout)

raise_for_status()

try:
    response = httpx.get(url, timeout=10)
    response.raise_for_status()
    data = response.json()
except httpx.TimeoutException:
    return "Error: server did not respond within 10 seconds"
except httpx.HTTPStatusError as e:
    return f"Error {e.response.status_code}: {e.response.text}"

Reusing the Client

# Better to create a client once for multiple requests
with httpx.Client(timeout=10, base_url="https://api.example.com") as client:
    r1 = client.get("/users")
    r2 = client.get("/posts")

Async Client

import asyncio
import httpx

async def fetch(url: str) -> dict:
    async with httpx.AsyncClient(timeout=10) as client:
        response = await client.get(url)
        response.raise_for_status()
        return response.json()

# Parallel requests
async def fetch_all(urls: list[str]) -> list[dict]:
    async with httpx.AsyncClient(timeout=10) as client:
        tasks = [client.get(url) for url in urls]
        responses = await asyncio.gather(*tasks)
        return [r.json() for r in responses]

httpx vs requests