Using the Requests python library in Google App Engine

Question

I'm trying to use the awesome Requests library on Google App Engine. I found a patch for urllib3, which requests relies on, that is compatible with App Engine. https://github.com/shazow/urllib3/issues/61

I can successfully

import requests

but then

response = requests.get('someurl')

fails with the following traceback. What's going on?

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Applications/GoogleAppEngineLauncher.app/Contents/Resources/GoogleAppEngine-default.bundle/Contents/Resources/google_appengine/google/appengine/ext/admin/__init__.py", line 317, in post
    exec(compiled_code, globals())
  File "<string>", line 6, in <module>
  File "/Users/Rohan/Dropbox/MuktiTechnologiesINC/MuktiTechnologies/GAE/humanmictweet/GAE/libraries/requests/api.py", line 52, in get
    return request('get', url, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/Rohan/Dropbox/MuktiTechnologiesINC/MuktiTechnologies/GAE/humanmictweet/GAE/libraries/requests/api.py", line 40, in request
    return s.request(method=method, url=url, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/Rohan/Dropbox/MuktiTechnologiesINC/MuktiTechnologies/GAE/humanmictweet/GAE/libraries/requests/sessions.py", line 208, in request
    r.send(prefetch=prefetch)
  File "/Users/Rohan/Dropbox/MuktiTechnologiesINC/MuktiTechnologies/GAE/humanmictweet/GAE/libraries/requests/models.py", line 458, in send
    self.auth = get_netrc_auth(url)
  File "/Users/Rohan/Dropbox/MuktiTechnologiesINC/MuktiTechnologies/GAE/humanmictweet/GAE/libraries/requests/utils.py", line 43, in get_netrc_auth
    for loc in locations:
  File "/Users/Rohan/Dropbox/MuktiTechnologiesINC/MuktiTechnologies/GAE/humanmictweet/GAE/libraries/requests/utils.py", line 40, in <genexpr>
    locations = (os.path.expanduser('~/{0}'.format(f)) for f in NETRC_FILES)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/posixpath.py", line 260, in expanduser
    userhome = pwd.getpwuid(os.getuid()).pw_dir
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'getuid'

Tarkany

possible duplicate of Requests: HTTP for Humans - python-requests.org on Google App Engine – Cloyd

Answer 1

As mentioned, master branch of standalone urllib3 supposedly supports AppEngine now (I'll do a proper PyPI release once someone confirms this fact), but Requests does not yet support AppEngine since it makes assumption about various filesystem things to load configuration files which don't exist on AppEngine. Specifically the error you ran into has to do with loading the ~/.netrc configuration file.

See Issue #493.

For what it's worth, the equivalent in urllib3 would be:

import urllib3
http = urllib3.PoolManager()
response = http.request('GET', 'someurl')

Update: urllib3 v1.3 was released yesterday which includes AppEngine support.

Fret

thank much, shazow. I'm using your patched urllib3 on App Engine successfully. Guess we'll have to see how difficult abstracting away some of this low-level filesystem stuff is. – Tarkany

Answer 2

You can use the latest version of Requests on Google App Engine with the help of requests-toolbelt. This configures Requests to use urllib3's underlying support for App Engine's URLFetch service.

• Google's documentation on how to use Requests.
• Straightforward sample of using Requests on Google App Engine.
• request-toolbelt's AppEngineAdapter.
• urllib3's AppEngineManager.

Tiatiana

Answer 3

On Google Appengine (version 1.9.18) requests version 2.3.0 (only!) works IN PRODUCTION (but not on SDK) if you have billing enabled, which enables sockets support.

requests on the Appengine SDK fails with all https:// requests:

  ConnectionError: ('Connection aborted.', error(13, 'Permission denied'))

requests version 2.4.1 fails with:

  File "distlib/requests/adapters.py", line 407, in send
    raise ConnectionError(err, request=request)
  ConnectionError: ('Connection aborted.', error(13, 'Permission denied'))

requests version 2.5.1 fails with:

  File "distlib/requests/adapters.py", line 415, in send
    raise ConnectionError(err, request=request)
  ConnectionError: ('Connection aborted.', error(13, 'Permission denied'))

Info on sockets support: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/python/sockets/

PS: Replace awsome with very-painful if you intend to use requests on GAE.

See Also: Can Python Requests library be used on Google App Engine?

Wolter

But it's possible to use urlfetch. Wonder if it's possible to make requests use it. – Jato

No. The maintainers of requests do not support appengine. In most cases you can replace/monkeypatch the calls from 3rd party libs to requests with urlfetch pretty easily, or you monkeypatch requests directly with compatible calls to urlfetch. We had a module called fake_requests.py emulating requests. – Wolter

version 2.3.0 indeed did the trick for me. See #29302363 – Snug