agilesteel / requests-scala

A Scala port of the popular Python Requests HTTP client: flexible, intuitive, and straightforward to use.

Requests-Scala

Requests-Scala is a Scala port of the popular Python Requests HTTP client. Requests-Scala aims to provide the same API and user-experience as the original Requests: flexible, intuitive, and straightforward to use.

• Making a Request
  • Passing in Parameters
  • Response Content
• Streaming Requests
• Multipart Uploads
• Misc Configuration
  • Custom Headers
  • Timeouts
  • Compression
  • Cookies
  • Redirects
• Sessions
• Why Requests-Scala?

Getting Started

Use the following import to get you starting in an Ammonite REPL:

import $ivy.`com.lihaoyi::requests:0.1.2`

The following for a Mill build:

ivy"com.lihaoyi::requests:0.1.2"

And the following for an SBT build:

import "com.lihaoyi" %% "requests" % "0.1.2"

Making a Request

val r = requests.get("https://api.github.com/users/lihaoyi")

r.statusCode
// 200

r.headers("content-type")
// Buffer("application/json; charset=utf-8")

r.text
// {"login":"lihaoyi","id":934140,"node_id":"MDQ6VXNlcjkzNDE0MA==",...

Making your first HTTP request is simple: simply call requests.get with the URL you want, and requests will fetch it for you.

You can also call requests.post, requests.put, etc. to make other kinds of HTTP requests:

val r = requests.post("http://httpbin.org/post", data = Map("key" -> "value"))

val r = requests.put("http://httpbin.org/put", data = Map("key" -> "value"))

val r = requests.delete("http://httpbin.org/delete")

val r = requests.head("http://httpbin.org/head")

val r = requests.options("http://httpbin.org/get")

Passing in Parameters

val r = requests.get(
    "http://httpbin.org/get", 
    params = Map("key1" -> "value1", "key2" -> "value2")
)

You can pass in URL parameters to GET requests via the params argument; simply pass in a Map[String, String]. As seen earlier, when passing in POST or PUT parameters, you instead need the data argument:

val r = requests.post("http://httpbin.org/post", data = Map("key" -> "value"))

val r = requests.put("http://httpbin.org/put", data = Map("key" -> "value"))

Apart from POSTing key-value pairs, you can also POST Strings, Array[Byte]s, java.io.Files, java.nio.file.Paths, and requests.MultiPart uploads:

requests.post("https://httpbin.org/post", data = "Hello World")
requests.post("https://httpbin.org/post", data = Array[Byte](1, 2, 3))
requests.post("https://httpbin.org/post", data = new java.io.File("thing.json"))
requests.post("https://httpbin.org/post", data = java.nio.file.Paths.get("thing.json"))

Response Content

val r = requests.get("https://api.github.com/events")

r.statusCode
// 200

r.headers("content-type")
// Buffer("application/json; charset=utf-8")

As seen earlier, you can use .statusCode and .headers to see the relevant metadata of your HTTP response. The response data is in the .data field of the Response object. Most often, it's text, which you can decode using the .text property as shown below:

r.text
// [{"id":"7990061484","type":"PushEvent","actor":{"id":6242317,"login":...

If you want the raw bytes of the response, use r.content

r.content
// Array(91, 123, 34, 105, 100, 34, 58, 34, 55, 57,  57, 48, 48, 54, 49, ...

Streaming Requests

requests.get.stream("https://api.github.com/events")(
  onDownload = inputStream => {
    inputStream.transferTo(new java.io.FileOutputStream("file.json"))
  }
)

Requests exposes the requests.get.stream (and equivalent requests.post.stream, requests.put.stream, etc.) functions for you to perform streaming uploads/downloads without needing to load the entire request/response into memory. This is useful if you are upload/downloading large files or data blobs. .stream gives you three callbacks that get called in order:

requests.get.stream("https://api.github.com/events")(
  onUpload = outputStream => {...},
  onHeadersReceived = streamHeaders => {...}
  onDownload = inputStream => {...}
)

• onUpload gives you a chance to write data to the server. You have access to a raw java.io.OutputStream to write to, and can easily upload data from memory, files, network, or any other data source.

• onHeadersReceived is called after any upload is complete but before download starts: this gives you the metadata present in the header of the HTTP response, but without the data` field (which you will have access to download later)

• onDownload gives you a chance to read data from the server. Again, you have access to the raw stream, this time a java.io.InputStream. You can download data however you like, saving it in memory, to files, sending it over the network, or to any other destination

Together, these three callbacks should make it easy for you to work with data too big to fit in memory, while still benefiting from most of Requests' friendly & intuitive API.

Note that streaming upload using .stream, and streaming upload using data = is: java.io.InputStream, relies on chunked transfer encoding, a feature not fully supported by all HTTP servers. If your server doesn't support it, fall back to buffering your data in memory and using data = is: Array[Byte] to upload it.

Handling JSON

Requests does not provide any built-in JSON support, but you can easily use a third-party JSON library to work with it. This example shows how to use uJson talk to a HTTP endpoint that requires a JSON-formatted body, either using ujson.write:

requests.get(
  "https://api.github.com/some/endpoint",
  data = ujson.write(Map("user-agent" -> "my-app/0.0.1"))
)

requests.get(
  "https://api.github.com/some/endpoint",
  data = ujson.write(ujson.Js.Obj("user-agent" -> "my-app/0.0.1"))
)

It is equally easy ot use uJson to deal with JSON returned in the response from the server:

val r = requests.get("https://api.github.com/events")

val json = ujson.read(r.text)

json.arr.length
// 30

json.arr(0).obj.keys
// Set("id", "type", "actor", "repo", "payload", "public", "created_at")

While Requests-Scala doesn't come bundled with JSON functionality, it is trivial to use it together with any other 3rd party JSON library (I like uJson) So just pick whatever library you want.

Multipart Uploads

val r = requests.post(
  "http://httpbin.org/post",
  data = requests.MultiPart(
    requests.MultiItem("name", new java.io.File("build.sc"), "file.txt"),
    // you can upload strings, and file name is optional
    requests.MultiItem("name2", "Hello"), 
    // bytes arrays are ok too
    requests.MultiItem("name3", Array[Byte](1, 2, 3, 4)) 
  )
)

Multipart uploads are done by passing requests.MultiPart/requests.MultiItem to the data parameter. Each MultiItem needs a name and a data-source, which can be a String, Array[Byte], java.io.File, or java.nio.file.Path. Each MultiItem can optionally take a file name that will get sent to the server

Misc Configuration

Earlier you already saw how to use the params and data arguments. Apart from those, the requests.get method takes in a lot of arguments you can use to configure it, e.g. passing in custom headers:

Custom Headers

requests.get(
  "https://api.github.com/some/endpoint",
  headers = Map("user-agent" -> "my-app/0.0.1")
)

Timeouts

readTimeouts and connectTimeouts:

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/delay/1", readTimeout = 10)
// TimeoutException

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/delay/1", readTimeout = 1500)
// ok 

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/delay/3", readTimeout = 1500)
// TimeoutException

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/delay/1", connectTimeout = 10)
// TimeoutException

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/delay/1", connectTimeout = 1500)
// ok

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/delay/3", connectTimeout = 1500)
// ok

Compression

Configuration for compressing the request data upload with Gzip or Deflate via the compress parameter:

requests.post(
  "https://httpbin.org/post",
  compress = requests.Compress.None,
  data = "Hello World"
)

requests.post(
  "https://httpbin.org/post",
  compress = requests.Compress.Gzip,
  data = "I am cow"
)

requests.post(
  "https://httpbin.org/post",
  compress = requests.Compress.Deflate,
  data = "Hear me moo"
)

Or to disabling the de-compression of the response data being downloaded via the autoCompress parameter, in case you want the un-compressed data blob for whatever reason:

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/gzip").content.length
// 250

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/gzip", autoDecompress=false).content.length
// 201


requests.get("https://httpbin.org/deflate").content.length
// 251

requests.get("https://httpbin.org/deflate", autoDecompress=false).content.length
// 188

Note that by default, compression of fixed-size in-memory input (Strings, Array[Byte]s, ...) buffers up the compressed data in memory before uploading it. Compression of unknown-length/not-in-memory data (files, InputStreams, ...) doesn't perform this buffering and uses chunked transfer encoding, as normal. If you want to avoid buffering in memory and are willing to use chunked transfer encoding for in-memory data, wrap it in an inputstream (e.g. Array[Byte] can be wrapped in a ByteArrayInputStream)

Cookies

You can take the cookies that result from one HTTP request and pass them into a subsequent HTTP request:

val r = requests.get("https://httpbin.org/cookies/set?freeform=test")

r.cookies
// Map("freeform" -> freeform=test)

val r2 = requests.get("https://httpbin.org/cookies", cookies = r.cookies)

r2.text
// {"cookies":{"freeform":"test"}}

This is a common pattern, e.g. to maintain an authentication/login session across multiple requests. However, it may be easier to instead use Sessions...

Redirects

Requests handles redirects automatically for you, up to a point:

val r = requests.get("http://www.github.com")

r.url
// https://github.com/

r.history
// Some(Response("https://www.github.com", 301, "Moved Permanently", ...

r.history.get.history
// Some(Response("http://www.github.com", 301, "Moved Permanently", ...

r.history.get.history.get.history
// None

As you can see, the request to http://www.github.com was first redirected to https://www.github.com, and then to https://github.com/. Requests by default only follows up to 5 redirects in a row, though this is configurable via the maxRedirects parameter:

val r0 = requests.get("http://www.github.com", maxRedirects = 0)
// Response("http://www.github.com", 301, "Moved Permanently", ...

r0.history
// None

val r1 = requests.get("http://www.github.com", maxRedirects = 1)
// Response("http://www.github.com", 301, "Moved Permanently", ...

r1.history
// Some(Response("http://www.github.com", 301, "Moved Permanently", ...

r1.history.get.history
// None

As you can see, you can use maxRedirects = 0 to disable redirect handling completely, or use another number to control how many redirects Requests follows before giving up.

All of the intermediate responses in a redirect chain are available in a Response's .history field; each .history points 1 response earlier, forming a linked list of Response objects until the earliest response has a value of None. You can crawl up this linked list if you want to inspect the headers or other metadata of the intermediate redirects that brought you to your final value.

Sessions

A requests.Session automatically handles sending/receiving/persisting cookies for you across multiple requests:

val s = requests.Session()

val r = s.get("https://httpbin.org/cookies/set?freeform=test")

val r2 = s.get("https://httpbin.org/cookies")

r2.text
// {"cookies":{"freeform":"test"}}

If you want to deal with a website that uses cookies, it's usually easier to use a requests.Session rather than passing around cookie variables manually.

Apart from persisting cookies, sessions are also useful for consolidating common configuration that you want to use across multiple requests, e.g. custom headers, cookies or other things:

val s = requests.Session(
  headers = Map("x-special-header" -> "omg"), 
  cookieValues = Map("cookie" -> "vanilla")
)

val r1 = requests.get("https://httpbin.org/cookies")

r1.text
// {"cookies":{"cookie":"vanilla"}}

val r2 = requests.get("https://httpbin.org/cookies")

r1.text
// {"cookies":{"cookie":"vanilla"}}

val r3 = s.get("https://httpbin.org/headers")

r3.text
// {"headers":{"X-Special-Header":"omg", ...}}

val r4 = s.get("https://httpbin.org/headers")

r4.text
// {"headers":{"X-Special-Header":"omg", ...}}
"""

Why Requests-Scala?

There is a whole zoo of HTTP clients in the Scala ecosystem. Akka-http, Play-WS, STTP, HTTP4S, Scalaj-HTTP, RosHTTP, Dispatch. Nevertheless, none of them come close to the ease and weightlessness of using Kenneth Reitz's Requests library: too many implicits, operators, builders, monads, and other things.

When I want to make a HTTP request, I do not want to know about .unsafeRunSync, infix methods like svc OK as.String, or define implicit ActorSystems, ActorMaterializers, and ExecutionContexts. So far sttp and scalaj-http come closest to what I want, but still fall short: both still use a pattern of fluent builders that to me doesn't fit how I think when making a HTTP request. I just want to call one function to make a HTTP request, and get back my HTTP response.

Most people will never reach the scale that asynchrony matters, and most of those who do reach that scale will only need it in a small number of specialized places, not everywhere.

Compare the getting-started code necessary for Requests-Scala against some other common Scala HTTP clients:

// Requests-Scala
val r = requests.get(
  "https://api.github.com/search/repositories", 
  params = Map("q" -> "http language:scala", "sort" -> None)
)

r.text
// {"login":"lihaoyi","id":934140,"node_id":"MDQ6VXNlcjkzNDE0MA==",...

// Akka-Http
import akka.actor.ActorSystem
import akka.http.scaladsl.Http
import akka.http.scaladsl.model._
import akka.stream.ActorMaterializer

import scala.concurrent.Future
import scala.util.{ Failure, Success }

implicit val system = ActorSystem()
implicit val materializer = ActorMaterializer()
// needed for the future flatMap/onComplete in the end
implicit val executionContext = system.dispatcher

val responseFuture: Future[HttpResponse] = Http().singleRequest(HttpRequest(uri = "http://akka.io"))

responseFuture
  .onComplete {
    case Success(res) => println(res)
    case Failure(_)   => sys.error("something wrong")
  }

// Play-WS

import akka.actor.ActorSystem
import akka.stream.ActorMaterializer
import play.api.libs.ws._
import play.api.libs.ws.ahc._

import scala.concurrent.Future

import DefaultBodyReadables._
import scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext.Implicits._

// Create Akka system for thread and streaming management
implicit val system = ActorSystem()
implicit val materializer = ActorMaterializer()

// Create the standalone WS client
// no argument defaults to a AhcWSClientConfig created from
// "AhcWSClientConfigFactory.forConfig(ConfigFactory.load, this.getClass.getClassLoader)"
val wsClient = StandaloneAhcWSClient()

wsClient.url("http://www.google.com").get()
  .map { response ⇒
    val statusText: String = response.statusText
    val body = response.body[String]
    println(s"Got a response $statusText")
  }.
  andThen { case _ => wsClient.close() }
  andThen { case _ => system.terminate() }

// Http4s
import org.http4s.client.dsl.io._
import org.http4s.headers._
import org.http4s.MediaType

val request = GET(
  Uri.uri("https://my-lovely-api.com/"),
  Authorization(Credentials.Token(AuthScheme.Bearer, "open sesame")),
  Accept(MediaType.application.json)
)

httpClient.expect[String](request)

// sttp
import com.softwaremill.sttp._

val sort: Option[String] = None
val query = "http language:scala"

// the `query` parameter is automatically url-encoded
// `sort` is removed, as the value is not defined
val request = sttp.get(uri"https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=$query&sort=$sort")
  
implicit val backend = HttpURLConnectionBackend()
val response = request.send()

// response.unsafeBody: by default read into a String 
println(response.unsafeBody)                     

import dispatch._, Defaults._
val svc = url("http://api.hostip.info/country.php")
val country = Http.default(svc OK as.String)

The existing clients require a complex mix of imports, implicits, operators, and DSLs. The goal of Requests-Scala is to do away with all of that: your HTTP request is just a function call that takes parameters; that is all you need to know.

As it turns out, Kenneth Reitz's Requests is not a lot of code. Most of the heavy lifting is done in other libraries, and his library is a just thin-shim that makes the API 10x better. It turns out on the JVM most of the heavy lifting is also done for you, by java.net.HttpUrlConnection in the simplest case, and other libraries like AsyncHttpClient for more advanced use cases.

Given that's the case, how hard can it be to port over a dozen Python files to Scala? This library attempts to do that: class by class, method by method, keyword-argument by keyword-argument. Not everything has been implemented yet, some things differ (some avoidably, some unavoidably), and it's nowhere near as polished, but you should definitely try it out as the HTTP client for your next codebase or project!