Asynchronous Requests with Python requests

Unfortunately, as far as I know, the requests library is not equipped for performing asynchronous requests. You can wrap async/await syntax around requests, but that will make the underlying requests no less synchronous. If you want true async requests, you must use other tooling that provides it. One such solution is aiohttp (Python 3.5.3+). It works well in my experience using it with the Python 3.7 async/await syntax. Below I write three implementations of performing n web requests using

1. Purely synchronous requests (sync_requests_get_all) using the Python requests library
2. Synchronous requests (async_requests_get_all) using the Python requests library wrapped in Python 3.7 async/await syntax and asyncio
3. A truly asynchronous implementation (async_aiohttp_get_all) with the Python aiohttp library wrapped in Python 3.7 async/await syntax and asyncio

"""
Tested in Python 3.5.10
"""

import time
import asyncio
import requests
import aiohttp

from asgiref import sync

def timed(func):
    """
    records approximate durations of function calls
    """
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        start = time.time()
        print('{name:<30} started'.format(name=func.__name__))
        result = func(*args, **kwargs)
        duration = "{name:<30} finished in {elapsed:.2f} seconds".format(
            name=func.__name__, elapsed=time.time() - start
        )
        print(duration)
        timed.durations.append(duration)
        return result
    return wrapper

timed.durations = []


@timed
def sync_requests_get_all(urls):
    """
    performs synchronous get requests
    """
    # use session to reduce network overhead
    session = requests.Session()
    return [session.get(url).json() for url in urls]


@timed
def async_requests_get_all(urls):
    """
    asynchronous wrapper around synchronous requests
    """
    session = requests.Session()
    # wrap requests.get into an async function
    def get(url):
        return session.get(url).json()
    async_get = sync.sync_to_async(get)

    async def get_all(urls):
        return await asyncio.gather(*[
            async_get(url) for url in urls
        ])
    # call get_all as a sync function to be used in a sync context
    return sync.async_to_sync(get_all)(urls)

@timed
def async_aiohttp_get_all(urls):
    """
    performs asynchronous get requests
    """
    async def get_all(urls):
        async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
            async def fetch(url):
                async with session.get(url) as response:
                    return await response.json()
            return await asyncio.gather(*[
                fetch(url) for url in urls
            ])
    # call get_all as a sync function to be used in a sync context
    return sync.async_to_sync(get_all)(urls)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    # this endpoint takes ~3 seconds to respond,
    # so a purely synchronous implementation should take
    # little more than 30 seconds and a purely asynchronous
    # implementation should take little more than 3 seconds.
    urls = ['https://postman-echo.com/delay/3']*10

    async_aiohttp_get_all(urls)
    async_requests_get_all(urls)
    sync_requests_get_all(urls)
    print('----------------------')
    [print(duration) for duration in timed.durations]

On my machine, this is the output:

async_aiohttp_get_all          started
async_aiohttp_get_all          finished in 3.20 seconds
async_requests_get_all         started
async_requests_get_all         finished in 30.61 seconds
sync_requests_get_all          started
sync_requests_get_all          finished in 30.59 seconds
----------------------
async_aiohttp_get_all          finished in 3.20 seconds
async_requests_get_all         finished in 30.61 seconds
sync_requests_get_all          finished in 30.59 seconds