python requests: how to check for "200 OK"

Question

What is the easiest way to check whether the response received from a requests post was "200 OK" or an error has occurred?

I tried doing something like this:

....
resp = requests.post(my_endpoint_var, headers=header_var, data=post_data_var)
print(resp)
if resp == "<Response [200]>":
    print ('OK!')
else:
    print ('Boo!')

The output on the screen is:

Response [200] (including the "<" and ">")
Boo!

So even though I am getting a 200, my check in the if statement is somehow not matching?

Answer 1

According to the docs, there's a status_code property on the response-object. So you can do the following:

if resp.status_code == 200:
    print ('OK!')
else:
    print ('Boo!')

EDIT:

As others have pointed out, a simpler check would be

if resp.ok:
    print ('OK!')
else:
    print ('Boo!')

if you want to consider all 2xx response codes and not 200 explicitly. You may also want to check Peter's answer for a more python-like way to do this.

Answer 2

Just checking the response attribute resp.ok is True is sufficient for all 2xx responses (while it will be False for 4xx and 5xx)

However, a potentially more Pythonic way to check for success would be to test and optionally raise an exception with Response.raise_for_status() (which will raise requests.HTTPError if the request was unsuccessful, or continue without interruption for a successful request)

This can be directly handled or raised to the calling function (which might, for example, try the request again after a few seconds if it believes the error was transient)

try:
    resp = requests.post(url, headers=headers, data=data, timeout=timeout)
    resp.raise_for_status()
except requests.HTTPError as ex:
    # possibly check response for a message
    raise ex  # let the caller handle it
except requests.Timeout:
    # request took too long

---

EAFP: It’s Easier to Ask for Forgiveness than Permission
It's frequently clearer to just do what you expect to work and if an exception is raised from the operation, except and handle it.

Finally, note that some APIs will return a valid response (200) for errors with information about why the request was bad, while others may respond with a 400-level with additional information that might be useful (such as a link to documentation or a specific message about what to do), which can be worth checking for.

Answer 3

Since any 2XX class response is considered successful in HTTP, I would use:

if 200 <= resp.status_code <= 299:
    print ('OK!') 
else:
    print ('Boo!')

Answer 4

Much simpler check would be

    if resp.ok :
        print ('OK!')
    else:
        print ('Boo!')

Answer 5

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this so:

If you want to check for exactly a 200 response:

if resp.status_code == requests.codes.ok:

The status_code of a response contains the HTTP status returned.

requests.codes.ok is exactly 200.

---

If you want to check if the status code is "ok", and not an error:

if resp.ok:

The ok attribute of a response checks that the status code of the response is less than 400.

---

Make sure you know what it is you want to check, for example a 201 HTTP Created is a successful response that you would be omitting if you only check for exactly 200.

Answer 6

resp.status_code will return the status code as an integer.

See http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/

Answer 7

try:

if resp.status_code == 200:
    print ('OK!')
else:
    print ('Boo!)

Answer 8

In easy case:

import requests

response = requests.get(url)
if not response:
    #handle error here
else:
    #handle normal response