How can I see the entire HTTP request that's being sent by my Python application?

Question

In my case, I'm using the requests library to call PayPal's API over HTTPS. Unfortunately, I'm getting an error from PayPal, and PayPal support cannot figure out what the error is or what's causing it. They want me to "Please provide the entire request, headers included".

How can I do that?

score 644 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 07 '20 at 04:47

644

A simple method: enable logging in recent versions of Requests (1.x and higher.)

Requests uses the http.client and logging module configuration to control logging verbosity, as described here.

Demonstration

Code excerpted from the linked documentation:

import requests
import logging

# These two lines enable debugging at httplib level (requests->urllib3->http.client)
# You will see the REQUEST, including HEADERS and DATA, and RESPONSE with HEADERS but without DATA.
# The only thing missing will be the response.body which is not logged.
try:
    import http.client as http_client
except ImportError:
    # Python 2
    import httplib as http_client
http_client.HTTPConnection.debuglevel = 1

# You must initialize logging, otherwise you'll not see debug output.
logging.basicConfig()
logging.getLogger().setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
requests_log = logging.getLogger("requests.packages.urllib3")
requests_log.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
requests_log.propagate = True

requests.get('https://httpbin.org/headers')

Example Output

$ python requests-logging.py 
INFO:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:Starting new HTTPS connection (1): httpbin.org
send: 'GET /headers HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: httpbin.org\r\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, compress\r\nAccept: */*\r\nUser-Agent: python-requests/1.2.0 CPython/2.7.3 Linux/3.2.0-48-generic\r\n\r\n'
reply: 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n'
header: Content-Type: application/json
header: Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 11:19:34 GMT
header: Server: gunicorn/0.17.4
header: Content-Length: 226
header: Connection: keep-alive
DEBUG:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:"GET /headers HTTP/1.1" 200 226

edited Feb 07 '20 at 04:47

Harmon758

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answered May 19 '13 at 02:17

Inactivist

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Thanks, @EmmettJ.Butler =) Though I'm not sure this info was available at the time of the original inquiry. – Inactivist Jul 22 '13 at 22:14
12

Note that httplib isn't available on Python 3. To make the code portable, replace `import httplib` with `import requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool as httplib` or use six and `from six.moves import http_client as httplib`. – Jason R. Coombs May 02 '14 at 17:46
1

In `requests` 2.18.1 and Python 3, the logger `logging.getLogger("requests.packages.urllib3")` doesn't exist or has no effect. – Flimm Jul 05 '17 at 16:07
2

for Python3 see here - http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/api/?highlight=debug ```from http.client import HTTPConnection``` – shershen Mar 15 '18 at 11:43
Unfortunately "send:" "reply:" and "header:" lines are not actually logged, but just printed to stdout. But I want to have this info in the log files! – lesnik Dec 26 '19 at 14:22
1

The link posted by @shershen no longer works. This appears to be the current replacement: https://requests.readthedocs.io/en/master/api/?highlight=debug#api-changes – Danek Duvall Jun 12 '20 at 17:34
to have complete logs, use 'hooks', see my answer further below – squalou Nov 29 '21 at 14:09

score 188 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 14 '19 at 09:50

188

r = requests.get('https://api.github.com', auth=('user', 'pass'))

r is a response. It has a request attribute which has the information you need.

r.request.allow_redirects  r.request.headers          r.request.register_hook
r.request.auth             r.request.hooks            r.request.response
r.request.cert             r.request.method           r.request.send
r.request.config           r.request.params           r.request.sent
r.request.cookies          r.request.path_url         r.request.session
r.request.data             r.request.prefetch         r.request.timeout
r.request.deregister_hook  r.request.proxies          r.request.url
r.request.files            r.request.redirect         r.request.verify

r.request.headers gives the headers:

{'Accept': '*/*',
 'Accept-Encoding': 'identity, deflate, compress, gzip',
 'Authorization': u'Basic dXNlcjpwYXNz',
 'User-Agent': 'python-requests/0.12.1'}

Then r.request.data has the body as a mapping. You can convert this with urllib.urlencode if they prefer:

import urllib
b = r.request.data
encoded_body = urllib.urlencode(b)

depending on the type of the response the .data-attribute may be missing and a .body-attribute be there instead.

edited Jun 14 '19 at 09:50

vog

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answered May 14 '12 at 18:10

Skylar Saveland

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Which of these gives me "the entire request, headers included"? – Chris B. May 14 '12 at 18:18
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added some more. What else do you need besides the headers and the body? – Skylar Saveland May 14 '12 at 21:14
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I'm not entirely sure what they're looking for. I was hoping to capture everything that went over the wire for them, in that exact format, byte-for-byte. – Chris B. May 14 '12 at 22:05
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Same feeling as Chris. And I end up using @Inactivist 's answer. It is good. Upvoted. – RayLuo Jun 28 '13 at 09:33
I think this doesn't work if the initial response is a redirect. – Mechanical snail Dec 06 '13 at 01:22
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I think for most cases, this is the right way to go. If you just want to see the headers, print the headers. But for the OP's particular needs, debug tracing might be justified. – Steve Bennett Dec 15 '14 at 04:42
23

This is the preferred way of doing it in my case. Only one note: the `response.request` seems to be a `PreparedRequest` in my case; it doesn't have `.data` but `.body` instead. – Antti Haapala -- Слава Україні Aug 10 '15 at 10:36
`r.request.path_url` worked best for me (`full_url` no longer seems to exist). – Martin Tapp Feb 06 '18 at 19:15
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for the full URL (with the querystring parameters) you can also use `response.url` (which is a bit different in that it's not `response.request...` – Chuck van der Linden Jun 06 '18 at 23:43
How come I can't see all the request attribute you shown @Skylar ? `vars(r.request) {'_body_position': None, '_cookies': , 'body': None, 'headers': {'User-Agent': 'python-requests/2.18.4', 'Connection': 'keep-alive', 'Accept': '*/*', 'Accept-Encoding': 'gzip, deflate'}, 'hooks': {'response': []}, 'method': 'GET', 'url': 'myUrl..'}` `requests==2.18.4`I am looking if actually sent request via specified proxy – user305883 Apr 15 '19 at 07:49

score 13 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 30 '19 at 14:35

You can use HTTP Toolkit to do exactly this.

It's especially useful if you need to do this quickly, with no code changes: you can open a terminal from HTTP Toolkit, run any Python code from there as normal, and you'll be able to see the full content of every HTTP/HTTPS request immediately.

There's a free version that can do everything you need, and it's 100% open source.

I'm the creator of HTTP Toolkit; I actually built it myself to solve the exact same problem for me a while back! I too was trying to debug a payment integration, but their SDK didn't work, I couldn't tell why, and I needed to know what was actually going on to properly fix it. It's very frustrating, but being able to see the raw traffic really helps.

amazing work buddy! this just helped me a lot after hours of testing and unsuccessfully fiddling with fiddler... — drkthng, Jul 01 '21 at 21:42

score 5 · Answer 4 · edited May 15 '12 at 02:16

5

If you're using Python 2.x, try installing a urllib2 opener. That should print out your headers, although you may have to combine that with other openers you're using to hit the HTTPS.

import urllib2
urllib2.install_opener(urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPHandler(debuglevel=1)))
urllib2.urlopen(url)

edited May 15 '12 at 02:16

Jason Sundram

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answered May 14 '12 at 20:46

Kafonek

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score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 29 '21 at 08:05

A much simpler way to debug HTTP local requests is to use netcat. If you run

nc -l 1234

you'll start listening on port 1234 for HTTP connections. You can access it via http://localhost:1234/foo/foo/....

On the terminal, you'll see whatever raw data you sent to the endpoint. For example:

POST /foo/foo HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json
Connection: keep-alive
Host: example.com
Accept-Language: en-en
Authorization: Bearer ay...
Content-Length: 15
Content-Type: application/json

{"test": false}

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 12 '16 at 21:52

1

The verbose configuration option might allow you to see what you want. There is an example in the documentation.

NOTE: Read the comments below: The verbose config options doesn't seem to be available anymore.

edited Dec 12 '16 at 21:52

jcoppens

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answered May 15 '12 at 02:51

Bruno

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There is? Can't really find it. – BastiBen Mar 02 '13 at 11:46
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@badcat. There [was a "Verbose Logging" section at the time](https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests/blob/da288ad57a2875487aefc6d8fc624954c898e13d/docs/user/advanced.rst). It seems it was [removed in December](https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests/commit/1451ba0c6d395c41f86da35036fa361c3a41bc90#docs/user/advanced.rst). – Bruno Mar 02 '13 at 14:40
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Ah, that would explain that. :) Still, now this question is kind of valid again, because I couldn't find a way to print the whole traffic between server and client for debugging. – BastiBen Mar 02 '13 at 14:46
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Is there a recommended "new way" to achieve the same effect as verbose logging? – cbare May 07 '13 at 18:33
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[My answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/16630836/1309774) demonstrates the correct method for Requests 1.x and higher. – Inactivist Jun 29 '13 at 11:17

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 29 '21 at 14:08

No logging system completely works, (as of requests 2.26 anyway, very old versions had maybe another behaviour)

The good solution is to use 'hooks' and print details as they happen.

This is fairly well explained here : https://findwork.dev/blog/advanced-usage-python-requests-timeouts-retries-hooks/

under "printing everything",

but in case the link dies here is the important parts

import requests
from requests_toolbelt.utils import dump

def logging_hook(response, *args, **kwargs):
    data = dump.dump_all(response)
    print(data.decode('utf-8'))

http = requests.Session()
http.hooks["response"] = [logging_hook]

http.get("https://api.openaq.org/v1/cities", params={"country": "BA"})

The result this time will be a complete trace of sent query and received response.

I've tried it successfully with POST and lots of headers : it works. Don't forget to pip install requests_toolbelt.

# Output
< GET /v1/cities?country=BA HTTP/1.1
< Host: api.openaq.org

> HTTP/1.1 200 OK
> Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
> Transfer-Encoding: chunked
> Connection: keep-alive
>
{
   "meta":{
      "name":"openaq-api",
      "license":"CC BY 4.0",
      "website":"https://docs.openaq.org/",
      "page":1,
      "limit":100,
      "found":1
   },
   "results":[
      {
         "country":"BA",
         "name":"Goražde",
         "city":"Goražde",
         "count":70797,
         "locations":1
      }
   ]
}

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 14 '21 at 16:02

A previous answer seems to have been downvoted because it started with "nothing completely works" and then provides this perfect solution:

Install the requests_toolbelt collection of utilities with pip install requests-toolbelt.

Use it like so:

import requests
from requests_toolbelt.utils import dump

response = requests.get("https://v2.jokeapi.dev/joke/Any?safe-mode")
print(dump.dump_all(response).decode("utf-8"))

How can I see the entire HTTP request that's being sent by my Python application?

8 Answers8

Demonstration

Example Output

Linked

Related