How to Set HTTP Proxy Settings in Python

1. Use export to Set HTTP Proxy Settings in Python
2. Use set to Set HTTP Proxy Settings in Python
3. Use --proxy to Set HTTP Proxy Settings in Python
4. Use proxies to Set HTTP Proxy Setting in Python

Working within Python, we might connect to external servers from typical network requests to pip package installations. If you are behind the HTTP proxy, you might experience a connection timeout.

To solve this issue, you need to configure your HTTP proxy setting, and more natively, this is an operating system (OS) issue, and some commands can suffice.

However, we can also use specific parameters within a third-party library to specify the proxies we intend to use without changing our native OS proxy.

In this article, we will discuss our to set HTTP proxy settings on our PC and within Python.

Use export to Set HTTP Proxy Settings in Python

As said earlier, configuring HTTP proxies is a more native operation and will defer based on the OS you are using.

For Linux and macOS, you can use the export command and specify the http_proxy with the HTTP proxy you intend to use.

export http_proxy="username:password@ip address:port number"

Also, you can use https_proxy to update the HTTPS proxy.

export https_proxy="username:password@ip address:port number"

It is important to note that this HTTP proxy setting configuration is only for the terminal session you execute it for and is not global; and is most valuable, especially if the connection timeout is specific to only that Python operation.

To make it global, you need to add the above command to your ~/.bash_profile for Linux or Older Macs or ~/.zshrc for newer macOS.

Use set to Set HTTP Proxy Settings in Python

To configure your HTTP and HTTPS proxy setting in Windows, you need the same variables as within Linux and macOS environments, http_proxy and https_proxy. However, the command to set the proxy settings is set.

set http_proxy="username:password@ip address:port number"

And for the HTTPS proxy.

set https_proxy="username:password@ip address:port number"

As with the Linux and macOS environments, the HTTP and HTTPS configuration is only functional for the terminal session.

Use --proxy to Set HTTP Proxy Settings in Python

If you are experiencing connection timeout or HTTP issues when working or downloading Python packages, you can use the --proxy argument.

pip install --proxy="username:password@ip address:port number" package-name

The above commands allow pip to use a proxy server to access sites; if a password is required, it will ask for it.

Use proxies to Set HTTP Proxy Setting in Python

When working with API or external websites, you can use proxies to bypass filters, increase your anonymity, and maintain your security.

To use such proxies, you can use the requests package and create a dictionary holding the proxies for both HTTP and HTTPS.

proxies = {
    "http": "http://211.161.103.139",
    "https": "http://63.239.220.5",
}

To install the requests package, use the pip command given below:

pip install requests

To use the proxies argument, we can pass the URL and the proxies.

import requests as req

proxies = {
    "http": "http://211.161.103.139",
    "https": "http://63.239.220.5",
}

URL = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/1"
response = req.get(URL)
print(response)

If the proxies are working, the output of the code would be a status code (200) that indicates success. It means that the resource we are looking for at the URL has been fetched.

<Response [200]>