Demystifying the HTTP protocol

Interaction between services (or websites) uses the HTTP protocol. When working with APIs and building communicating microservices, it is important to understand the basics of the HTTP protocol.

The most important thing to know is how to send and format requests and responses.

The GET request

The simplest HTTP request is the GET request. You use this when you need to get something from a server or a service. For example, when going to a website, your browser sends a GET request to the website's IP address to obtain the website's layout code.

A GET request can simply be sent from Python using the following code:

Code block 2-2

import requests

import json

response = requests.get('http://www.google.com')

print(response.status_code)

print(response.text)

This code uses the requests library in Python to send a GET request to the Google home page. This is technically the same process as...