Python Proxy Setup with Requests Library: Complete Tutorial

Python Requests Proxy Configuration

The requests library makes proxy configuration straightforward.

TL;DR: Pass a proxies dictionary to requests.get() with http and https keys containing your proxy URLs.

Basic Setup

import requests
proxies = {
    'http': 'http://username:password@proxy.outreachproxy.com:8080',
    'https': 'http://username:password@proxy.outreachproxy.com:8080'
}
response = requests.get('https://httpbin.org/ip', proxies=proxies)
print(response.json())

SOCKS5 Proxy

Install PySocks first:

pip install requests[socks]

Then:

proxies = {
    'http': 'socks5://username:password@proxy.outreachproxy.com:1080',
    'https': 'socks5://username:password@proxy.outreachproxy.com:1080'
}

Session-Based Usage

session = requests.Session()
session.proxies = proxies
# All requests use the proxy
response = session.get('https://example.com')

Error Handling

try:
    response = requests.get(url, proxies=proxies, timeout=10)
except requests.exceptions.ProxyError:
    print("Proxy connection failed")
except requests.exceptions.Timeout:
    print("Request timed out")

Environment Variables

Alternatively:

import os
os.environ['HTTP_PROXY'] = 'http://proxy:port'
os.environ['HTTPS_PROXY'] = 'http://proxy:port'