How do I make a PATCH request in Python?

Question

Is there a way to make a request using the PATCH HTTP method in Python?

I tried using httplib, but it doesn't accept PATCH as method param.

Answer 1

With Requests, making PATCH requests is very simple:

import requests

r = requests.patch('http://httpbin.org/patch')

Answer 2

Seems to work in 2.7.1 as well.

>>> import urllib2
>>> request = urllib2.Request('http://google.com')
>>> request.get_method = lambda: 'PATCH'
>>> resp = urllib2.urlopen(request)
Traceback (most recent call last):
 ...
urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 405: Method Not Allowed

Answer 3

I tried this in Python 3, and it seemed to work (but I don't have a server handy that supports the PATCH request type):

>>> import http.client
>>> c = http.client.HTTPConnection("www.google.com")
>>> r = c.request("PATCH", "/index.html")
>>> print(r.status, r.reason)
405 Method Not Allowed

I'm assuming that the HTTP 405 is coming from the server and that it is "not allowed".

By the way, thanks for showing me the cool PATCH method in HTTP.

Answer 4

It is incredibly simple with httplib2:

import httplib2

http = httplib2.Http()
http.request("http://www.google.com", "PATCH", <patch content>)

I've used the httplib2 library myself in a professional REST framework that includes PATCH support. It supports Python 2.3 or later (including 3.x) and works beautifully!