Resolving Python Requests Issues: Why Your GET Requests Return Empty Responses

Learn how to fix empty responses from Python Requests when trying to fetch content from specific URLs. Discover the role of cookies in your requests.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/71186817/ asked by the user 'Free Styler' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/18253700/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/71187052/ provided by the user 'Artyom Vancyan' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/12755187/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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Troubleshooting Python Requests: Why Is Your URL Returning an Empty Response?

If you've been using Python's requests library to fetch web content, you may hit a snag where a previously working request starts returning an empty response. This can be frustrating, especially if you discover that the same URL loads perfectly fine in your browser. In this post, we'll explore why this happens and how you can fix it.

The Problem: Empty Response from a Valid URL

Until recently, you may have successfully retrieved content from a URL like https://www.moviemeter.nl/ using the code:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

However, now you find that instead of receiving the content you expect, you're getting a response that looks like this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Despite returning a 200 OK status, which indicates that the request was successful, page.text is empty, and you can't see the content you're looking for. Trying various methods, including using headers or a VPN, did not resolve the issue. So, what could be the cause?

Understanding the Root Cause

The underlying issue here is that some websites require cookies to be sent along with your requests to access their content. While browsers handle cookies automatically, your Python code does not unless specifically told to do so. When you try to access the URL directly without sending the required cookies, the server may not provide the content you seek, resulting in the empty response.

The Solution: Using Requests with Sessions and Cookies

To tackle this issue, you can modify your original code to include session handling and proper cookie management. Here’s how to do it:

Step-by-step Guide

Import Requests Library: Ensure you have the requests library imported.

Create a Session: By using a session, you can persist certain parameters across requests, like cookies.

Make the Request: Make an initial GET request to the URL to set up the cookie jar.

Fetch the Content Again: Use the cookies from your first request to make a second GET request for the content.

Here’s how your updated code should look:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation of the Code

requests.session(): This establishes a session context, allowing cookies from both requests to be stored and reused.

response.cookies: After the initial request, the cookies are stored within the response object, which can then be passed when making the second GET request.

print(response.content): Finally, this command outputs the actual content fetched from the page.

Conclusion

If you come across similar issues in the future, remember that many websites require cookies for page content to be displayed correctly. Using Python’s requests library with a session to handle cookies can effectively resolve most issues related to empty responses. This simple adjustment can save you time and frustration when working with web scraping or API interactions. Happy coding!

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