urllib.request.urlopen()

from urllib import request, parse

# GET request
with request.urlopen(url) as res:
    data = res.read()

# POST request
data = parse.urlencode({'key': 'value'}).encode()
with request.urlopen(url, data=data) as res:
    result = res.read()

# URL encoding
encoded = parse.urlencode({'q': 'search keyword'})
quoted  = parse.quote('hello world')

from urllib import request, parse
import json

# GET request
url = 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/1'
try:
    with request.urlopen(url, timeout=10) as res:
        data   = res.read()
        status = res.status
        ctype  = res.getheader('Content-Type')
        print(f"Status: {status}")               # 200
        print(f"Content-Type: {ctype}")
        result = json.loads(data.decode('utf-8'))
        print(result)                             # {'userId': 1, 'id': 1, ...}
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Error: {e}")

# GET request with query string
params = {'q': 'Python', 'page': 1, 'limit': 10}
query  = parse.urlencode(params)
url    = f'https://api.example.com/search?{query}'
print(url)  # https://api.example.com/search?q=Python&page=1&limit=10

# Request with custom headers
req = request.Request(
    'https://api.example.com/data',
    headers={
        'User-Agent': 'MyApp/1.0',
        'Accept':     'application/json',
    }
)
# with request.urlopen(req) as res: ...

# POST request (application/x-www-form-urlencoded)
post_data = parse.urlencode({'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30}).encode('utf-8')
req = request.Request(
    'https://httpbin.org/post',
    data=post_data,
    headers={'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'},
)
# with request.urlopen(req) as res: ...

# URL encoding and decoding
text    = 'hello world'
encoded = parse.quote(text)
print(encoded)              # hello%20world
decoded = parse.unquote(encoded)
print(decoded)              # hello world

# Parsing a URL
parsed = parse.urlparse('https://example.com:8080/path?key=val#section')
print(parsed.scheme)        # https
print(parsed.netloc)        # example.com:8080
print(parsed.path)          # /path
print(parsed.query)         # key=val
print(parsed.fragment)      # section

urllib.request.urlopen() supports HTTPS and validates SSL certificates by default. You can set a timeout in seconds using the timeout parameter — always set one, because omitting it causes the program to wait indefinitely for a server response.

The response body is returned as bytes, so decode it with the appropriate encoding (usually UTF-8) before treating it as a string. You can also retrieve the encoding from the Content-Type response header.

If you make frequent HTTP requests in production, the requests library is recommended. It makes session management, authentication, and retries straightforward, and results in more concise code. When you can install external packages, run pip install requests to get started.