response.content Python requests (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 12 Jul, 2025

When you make an HTTP request in Python using the requests library, it returns a response object. One of the most important attributes of this object is **response.content, which gives you the raw response body in bytes. This is especially useful when dealing with binary data like **images, **PDFs, **audio files, or any **non-textual content.
Let's look at an example that demonstrates how to use request.content in step by step:

Installation

To use request module, we need to first install it using this command:

pip install requests

Basic Example: Reading Raw Response from an API

Example 1:

Let’s make a simple GET request to **GitHub’s API and view the raw response content in bytes.

Python `

import requests

res = requests.get('https://api.github.com/') print(res.content)

`

**Output:

Terminal Output

**Explanation:

• **requests.get() sends a **GET request to the given **URL.
• **res.content gives you the entire response body in raw bytes.
• Check that '**b' at the start of output, it means the reference to a **bytes object.

Example 2: Download an Image using response.content

Download and save an image from a URL using response.content:

Python `

import requests

img_url = 'https://picsum.photos/id/237/200/300' res = requests.get(img_url)

with open('sample_image.png', 'wb') as f: f.write(res.content)

`

**Output:

This code downloads the image from the given URL and saves it as 'sample_image.png' in the current working directory..

This is the sample image