Python requests Module

requests is a high-level HTTP client for Python that lets you talk to APIs using simple, readable code instead of low-level networking.

What Really Happens When You Call requests.get()

Below is get call with params - requests.get() is wrapper to make HTTP GET call

response = requests.get(url="https://gorest.co.in/public/v2/users", params={"page":2})

Below is behind the scene calls for above get() call

Internally this calls requests.api.request()

requests.api.get(url)
        ↓
requests.api.request("GET", url, **kwargs)

A temporary session is created

• A new Session object is created

• It exists only for this single request

• It is managed using a context manager

• It is automatically closed after the request completes

with sessions.Session() as session:
    ...

A Request Object Is Built

req = Request(
         method="GET",
         url="https://gorest.co.in/public/v2/users",
         params={"page": 2}
)

The Request Is Prepared

• Query params are URL-encoded

• ?page=2 is appended to the URL

• Headers are merged and normalized

• Default headers like User-Agent are added

• Body (if any) is serialized

prepared_req = session.prepare_request(req)

The Prepared Request Is Sent

• DNS lookup happens

• TCP connection is opened

• TLS handshake occurs (for HTTPS)

• HTTP request bytes are sent

• Server response is received

response = session.send(prepared_req)

A Response Object Is Created

Once the server replies, requests build a Response object.

• Status code

• Response headers

• Raw response body

• Timing information

Helper methods like .json()

The Session Is Closed Automatically

with Session() as session:

Once the response is returned:

• The session is closed

• Connections are released

---

API Testing using requests and pytest

In this section will use requests module to make API requests, process response, add assertion and execute using pytest.

Setup variables

BASE_URL = "https://gorest.co.in/public/v2"
USERS_ENDPOINT = f"{BASE_URL}/users"
USER_ENDPOINT = f"{USERS_ENDPOINT}/{{user_id}}"
TOKEN = os.environ.get("API_TOKEN")

headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}"}

Create User Flow 

• Using Faker to create unique user data support for multiple execution

• Created user payload using Python dictionary but API doesn’t understand Python dictionary

• Requests module convert python dictionary to JSON string using json.dumps(create_user_payload) before sending request and also append header as Content-Type: application/json→ Serialization

• To process the response body we need to convert response bytes to Python dictionary → deserialization

  • Using response_body = response.json() which internally calls json.loads(decoded_response_text)

def test_create_user():
    # Create unique data for multiple execution 
    fake = Faker()
    username = fake.name_male()
    user_email = fake.email()
    user_gender = "male"
    user_status = "inactive"

    # create user payload as python dict
    create_user_payload = {
        "name": username,
        "email": user_email,
        "gender": user_gender,
        "status": user_status
    }

    # send POST request
    response = requests.post(url= USERS_ENDPOINT, headers= headers, json= create_user_payload)
    response_body = response.json()

    print(f"Status Code: {response.status_code}")
    print(f"Response Body: {response_body}")

    # Assertion 
    assert response.status_code == 201
    assert response_body["name"] == username
    assert response_body["email"] == user_email
    assert response_body["gender"] == user_gender
    assert response_body["status"] == user_status

Execute the test using pytest and uv

uv run pytest -s tests/test_gorest_crud.py::test_create_user

---

Test execution using pytest and uv

Rest of test can be found here → https://github.com/sksingh329/gorest-api-test/blob/basics/gorest-crud/tests/test_gorest_crud.py

# Check uv is installed 
uv --version 

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/sksingh329/gorest-api-test.git

# Switch to directory and branch 
cd gorest-api-test
git switch basics/gorest-crud

# Install required package 
uv sync

# Export token 
export API_TOKEN=<replace with your token>

# Run specific test 
uv run pytest -s tests/test_gorest_crud.py::test_create_user

# Run all tests 
uv run pytest

---

In this section, we used requests to make API calls and pytest to execute tests. This approach works well for basic testing, but it doesn’t scale. To build a maintainable and scalable test suite, we need shared utilities—such as requests.Session, pytest fixtures via conftest.py, and structured HTML reporting—which will be covered in upcoming articles.