Can I use Requests to perform a request with HTTP/2?

Short Answer

No, the standard requests library in Python does not support HTTP/2 natively. You'll need to use alternative libraries like httpx or requests-http2 for HTTP/2 support.

Why Requests Doesn't Support HTTP/2

The requests library is built on top of urllib3, which doesn't provide HTTP/2 support. The requests library has remained focused on HTTP/1.1 and doesn't have plans to add native HTTP/2 support.

Best Solution: Using httpx

The most recommended approach is to use httpx, which offers a similar API to requests but with HTTP/2 support:

Installation

pip install httpx[http2]

Basic HTTP/2 Request

import httpx

# Synchronous HTTP/2 client
with httpx.Client(http2=True) as client:
    response = client.get('https://www.example.com')

    # Check protocol version
    print(f'Protocol: {response.http_version}')
    print(f'Status: {response.status_code}')
    print(f'Content: {response.text}')

Async HTTP/2 Request

import asyncio
import httpx

async def make_http2_request():
    async with httpx.AsyncClient(http2=True) as client:
        response = await client.get('https://www.example.com')
        return response

# Run the async function
response = asyncio.run(make_http2_request())
print(f'Protocol: {response.http_version}')

Advanced HTTP/2 Features

import httpx

# Configure HTTP/2 with custom settings
with httpx.Client(
    http2=True,
    timeout=30.0,
    headers={'User-Agent': 'MyApp/1.0'}
) as client:
    # Make multiple requests with connection reuse
    urls = [
        'https://httpbin.org/get',
        'https://httpbin.org/headers',
        'https://httpbin.org/user-agent'
    ]

    for url in urls:
        response = client.get(url)
        print(f'{url}: {response.http_version}')

Alternative: requests-http2

If you prefer to stick closer to the requests API, you can use requests-http2:

pip install requests-http2

import requests_http2

# Create an HTTP/2 session
session = requests_http2.Session()

response = session.get('https://www.example.com')
print(f'Status: {response.status_code}')
print(f'Content: {response.text}')

Legacy Option: hyper (Not Recommended)

While hyper was previously used for HTTP/2 support, it's no longer actively maintained:

# This approach is deprecated and not recommended
from hyper.contrib import HTTP20Adapter
import requests

s = requests.Session()
s.mount('https://', HTTP20Adapter())
response = s.get('https://www.example.com')

Verifying HTTP/2 Support

To test if your requests are actually using HTTP/2:

import httpx

with httpx.Client(http2=True) as client:
    # Test with a known HTTP/2 server
    response = client.get('https://http2.akamai.com/demo')

    if response.http_version == 'HTTP/2':
        print('✓ Successfully using HTTP/2')
    else:
        print(f'✗ Using {response.http_version}')

When to Use HTTP/2

HTTP/2 offers benefits like: - Multiplexing: Multiple requests over a single connection - Header compression: Reduced overhead - Server push: Proactive resource delivery - Binary protocol: More efficient than HTTP/1.1

Consider HTTP/2 for applications making many requests to the same server or when working with modern web services that support it.