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Python Programming with Raspberry Pi

You're reading from   Python Programming with Raspberry Pi Build small yet powerful robots and automation systems with Raspberry Pi Zero

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Product type Paperback
Published in Apr 2017
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781786467577
Length 312 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Authors (2):
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Sai Yamanoor Sai Yamanoor
Author Profile Icon Sai Yamanoor
Sai Yamanoor
Srihari Yamanoor Srihari Yamanoor
Author Profile Icon Srihari Yamanoor
Srihari Yamanoor
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Toc

Table of Contents (12) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Getting Started with Python and the Raspberry Pi Zero FREE CHAPTER 2. Arithmetic Operations, Loops, and Blinky Lights 3. Conditional Statements, Functions, and Lists 4. Communication Interfaces 5. Data Types and Object-Oriented Programming in Python 6. File I/O and Python Utilities 7. Requests and Web Frameworks 8. Awesome Things You Could Develop Using Python 9. Lets Build a Robot! 10. Home Automation Using the Raspberry Pi Zero 11. Tips and Tricks

Connecting to the Internet – web requests


Now that we discussed the try/except keywords, let's make use of it to build a simple application that connects to the Internet. We will write a simple application that retrieves the current time from the Internet. We will be making use of the requests library for Python (http://requests.readthedocs.io/en/master/#).

The requests module enables connecting to the Web and retrieving information. In order to do so, we need to make use of the get() method from the requests module to make a request:

import requests
response = requests.get('http://nist.time.gov/actualtime.cgi')

In the preceding code snippet, we are passing a URL as an argument to the get() method. In this case, it is the URL that returns the current time in the Unix format (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time).

Let's make use of the try/except keywords to make a request to get the current time:

#!/usr/bin/python3

import requests

if __name__ == "__main__":
  # Source for link: http://stackoverflow...
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