How to prevent python requests from percent encoding my URLs?

48
votes

I'm trying to GET an URL of the following format using requests.get() in python:

http://api.example.com/export/?format=json&key=site:dummy+type:example+group:wheel

#!/usr/local/bin/python

import requests

print(requests.__versiom__)
url = 'http://api.example.com/export/'
payload = {'format': 'json', 'key': 'site:dummy+type:example+group:wheel'}
r = requests.get(url, params=payload)
print(r.url)

However, the URL gets percent encoded and I don't get the expected response.

2.2.1
http://api.example.com/export/?key=site%3Adummy%2Btype%3Aexample%2Bgroup%3Awheel&format=json

This works if I pass the URL directly:

url = http://api.example.com/export/?format=json&key=site:dummy+type:example+group:wheel
r = requests.get(url)

Is there some way to pass the the parameters in their original form - without percent encoding?

Thanks!

5
pythonurlpython-requestspercent-encoding
It is a standard. What is wrong with it? - alecxe
@alecxe: The site I'm querying doesn't seem to work with percent encoded URLs and I get unexpected response. - Satyen Rai
I got this problem with Google Maps API and comma in location=43.585278,39.720278 and I didn't find solution. - furas

5 Answers

59
votes

It is not good solution but you can use directly string:

r = requests.get(url, params='format=json&key=site:dummy+type:example+group:wheel')

BTW:

Code which convert payload to this string

payload = {
    'format': 'json', 
    'key': 'site:dummy+type:example+group:wheel'
}

payload_str = "&".join("%s=%s" % (k,v) for k,v in payload.items())
# 'format=json&key=site:dummy+type:example+group:wheel'

r = requests.get(url, params=payload_str)

EDIT (2020):

You can also use urllib.parse.urlencode(...) with parameter safe=':+' to create string without converting chars :+ .

As I know requests also use urllib.parse.urlencode(...) for this but without safe=.

import requests
import urllib.parse

payload = {
    'format': 'json', 
    'key': 'site:dummy+type:example+group:wheel'
}

payload_str = urllib.parse.urlencode(payload, safe=':+')
# 'format=json&key=site:dummy+type:example+group:wheel'

url = 'https://httpbin.org/get'

r = requests.get(url, params=payload_str)

print(r.text)

I used page https://httpbin.org/get to test it.

14
votes

The solution, as designed, is to pass the URL directly.

13
votes

In case someone else comes across this in the future, you can subclass requests.Session, override the send method, and alter the raw url, to fix percent encodings and the like. Corrections to the below are welcome.

import requests, urllib

class NoQuotedCommasSession(requests.Session):
    def send(self, *a, **kw):
        # a[0] is prepared request
        a[0].url = a[0].url.replace(urllib.parse.quote(","), ",")
        return requests.Session.send(self, *a, **kw)

s = NoQuotedCommasSession()
s.get("http://somesite.com/an,url,with,commas,that,won't,be,encoded.")
7
votes

The answers above didn't work for me.

I was trying to do a get request where the parameter contained a pipe, but python requests would also percent encode the pipe. So instead i used urlopen:

# python3
from urllib.request import urlopen

base_url = 'http://www.example.com/search?'
query = 'date_range=2017-01-01|2017-03-01'
url = base_url + query

response = urlopen(url)
data = response.read()
# response data valid

print(response.url)
# output: 'http://www.example.com/search?date_range=2017-01-01|2017-03-01'
0
votes

Please have a look at the 1st option in this github link. You can ignore the urlibpart which means prep.url = url instead of prep.url = url + qry