Async IO for Python: aiohttp 3.7.4

The aiohttp library provides asynchronous HTTP client/server functionality for Python based on the asyncio event loop. Version 3.7.4, released in October 2021, contains useful updates that make aiohttp even more powerful and developer-friendly.

Key Capabilities

Some of the main capabilities of aiohttp include:

For example, you can use aiohttp on the client side to rapidly fetch data from multiple API endpoints in an asynchronous manner. And on the server side, you can use it to handle many concurrent requests without blocking thanks to asyncio.

New in 3.7.4

The 3.7.4 release contained several handy improvements:

So if you are already using an older version of aiohttp, upgrading to 3.7.4 should provide a nicer experience.

Hands-On Usage

Here is a quick example of using aiohttp to fetch data from a URL in asynchronous mode:

import aiohttp
import asyncio

async def fetch_data(session, url):
    async with session.get(url) as response:
        return await response.text()
        
async def main():
    async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
        html = await fetch_data(session, "http://example.com")
        print(html)

asyncio.run(main())

As you can see, aiohttp allows you to write asynchronous, non-blocking code in Python that can improve the performance of I/O bound applications.

There are many more use cases for aiohttp - from web scraping to building real-time dashboards or APIs. Overall it is a versatile library for modern Python applications.