Skip to content

Extensions

Request and response extensions provide a untyped space where additional information may be added.

Extensions should be used for features that may not be available on all transports, and that do not fit neatly into the simplified request/response model that the underlying httpcore pacakge uses as it's API.

Several extensions are supported on the request:

# Request timeouts actually implemented as an extension on
# the request, ensuring that they are passed throughout the
# entire call stack.
client = httpx.Client()
response = client.get(
    "https://www.example.com",
    extensions={"timeout": {"connect": 5.0}}
)
response.request.extensions["timeout"]
{"connect": 5.0}

And on the response:

client = httpx.Client()
response = client.get("https://www.example.com")
print(response.extensions["http_version"])  # b"HTTP/1.1"
# Other server responses could have been
# b"HTTP/0.9", b"HTTP/1.0", or b"HTTP/1.1"

Request Extensions

"trace"

The trace extension allows a callback handler to be installed to monitor the internal flow of events within the underlying httpcore transport.

The simplest way to explain this is with an example:

import httpx

def log(event_name, info):
    print(event_name, info)

client = httpx.Client()
response = client.get("https://www.example.com/", extensions={"trace": log})
# connection.connect_tcp.started {'host': 'www.example.com', 'port': 443, 'local_address': None, 'timeout': None}
# connection.connect_tcp.complete {'return_value': <httpcore.backends.sync.SyncStream object at 0x1093f94d0>}
# connection.start_tls.started {'ssl_context': <ssl.SSLContext object at 0x1093ee750>, 'server_hostname': b'www.example.com', 'timeout': None}
# connection.start_tls.complete {'return_value': <httpcore.backends.sync.SyncStream object at 0x1093f9450>}
# http11.send_request_headers.started {'request': <Request [b'GET']>}
# http11.send_request_headers.complete {'return_value': None}
# http11.send_request_body.started {'request': <Request [b'GET']>}
# http11.send_request_body.complete {'return_value': None}
# http11.receive_response_headers.started {'request': <Request [b'GET']>}
# http11.receive_response_headers.complete {'return_value': (b'HTTP/1.1', 200, b'OK', [(b'Age', b'553715'), (b'Cache-Control', b'max-age=604800'), (b'Content-Type', b'text/html; charset=UTF-8'), (b'Date', b'Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:08:42 GMT'), (b'Etag', b'"3147526947+ident"'), (b'Expires', b'Thu, 28 Oct 2021 17:08:42 GMT'), (b'Last-Modified', b'Thu, 17 Oct 2019 07:18:26 GMT'), (b'Server', b'ECS (nyb/1DCD)'), (b'Vary', b'Accept-Encoding'), (b'X-Cache', b'HIT'), (b'Content-Length', b'1256')])}
# http11.receive_response_body.started {'request': <Request [b'GET']>}
# http11.receive_response_body.complete {'return_value': None}
# http11.response_closed.started {}
# http11.response_closed.complete {'return_value': None}

The event_name and info arguments here will be one of the following:

  • {event_type}.{event_name}.started, <dictionary of keyword arguments>
  • {event_type}.{event_name}.complete, {"return_value": <...>}
  • {event_type}.{event_name}.failed, {"exception": <...>}

Note that when using async code the handler function passed to "trace" must be an async def ... function.

The following event types are currently exposed...

Establishing the connection

  • "connection.connect_tcp"
  • "connection.connect_unix_socket"
  • "connection.start_tls"

HTTP/1.1 events

  • "http11.send_request_headers"
  • "http11.send_request_body"
  • "http11.receive_response"
  • "http11.receive_response_body"
  • "http11.response_closed"

HTTP/2 events

  • "http2.send_connection_init"
  • "http2.send_request_headers"
  • "http2.send_request_body"
  • "http2.receive_response_headers"
  • "http2.receive_response_body"
  • "http2.response_closed"

The exact set of trace events may be subject to change across different versions of httpcore. If you need to rely on a particular set of events it is recommended that you pin installation of the package to a fixed version.

"sni_hostname"

The server's hostname, which is used to confirm the hostname supplied by the SSL certificate.

If you want to connect to an explicit IP address rather than using the standard DNS hostname lookup, then you'll need to use this request extension.

For example:

# Connect to '185.199.108.153' but use 'www.encode.io' in the Host header,
# and use 'www.encode.io' when SSL verifying the server hostname.
client = httpx.Client()
headers = {"Host": "www.encode.io"}
extensions = {"sni_hostname": "www.encode.io"}
response = client.get(
    "https://185.199.108.153/path",
    headers=headers,
    extensions=extensions
)

"timeout"

A dictionary of str: Optional[float] timeout values.

May include values for 'connect', 'read', 'write', or 'pool'.

For example:

# Timeout if a connection takes more than 5 seconds to established, or if
# we are blocked waiting on the connection pool for more than 10 seconds.
client = httpx.Client()
response = client.get(
    "https://www.example.com",
    extensions={"timeout": {"connect": 5.0, "pool": 10.0}}
)

This extension is how the httpx timeouts are implemented, ensuring that the timeout values are associated with the request instance and passed throughout the stack. You shouldn't typically be working with this extension directly, but use the higher level timeout API instead.

Response Extensions

"http_version"

The HTTP version, as bytes. Eg. b"HTTP/1.1".

When using HTTP/1.1 the response line includes an explicit version, and the value of this key could feasibly be one of b"HTTP/0.9", b"HTTP/1.0", or b"HTTP/1.1".

When using HTTP/2 there is no further response versioning included in the protocol, and the value of this key will always be b"HTTP/2".

"reason_phrase"

The reason-phrase of the HTTP response, as bytes. For example b"OK". Some servers may include a custom reason phrase, although this is not recommended.

HTTP/2 onwards does not include a reason phrase on the wire.

When no key is included, a default based on the status code may be used.

"stream_id"

When HTTP/2 is being used the "stream_id" response extension can be accessed to determine the ID of the data stream that the response was sent on.

"network_stream"

The "network_stream" extension allows developers to handle HTTP CONNECT and Upgrade requests, by providing an API that steps outside the standard request/response model, and can directly read or write to the network.

The interface provided by the network stream:

  • read(max_bytes, timeout = None) -> bytes
  • write(buffer, timeout = None)
  • close()
  • start_tls(ssl_context, server_hostname = None, timeout = None) -> NetworkStream
  • get_extra_info(info) -> Any

This API can be used as the foundation for working with HTTP proxies, WebSocket upgrades, and other advanced use-cases.

See the network backends documentation for more information on working directly with network streams.

Extra network information

The network stream abstraction also allows access to various low-level information that may be exposed by the underlying socket:

response = httpx.get("https://www.example.com")
network_stream = response.extensions["network_stream"]

client_addr = network_stream.get_extra_info("client_addr")
server_addr = network_stream.get_extra_info("server_addr")
print("Client address", client_addr)
print("Server address", server_addr)

The socket SSL information is also available through this interface, although you need to ensure that the underlying connection is still open, in order to access it...

with httpx.stream("GET", "https://www.example.com") as response:
    network_stream = response.extensions["network_stream"]

    ssl_object = network_stream.get_extra_info("ssl_object")
    print("TLS version", ssl_object.version())