cURL to Python requests Converter

Readable Python from any curl command

The requests library is the most popular way to call HTTP APIs from Python, and its keyword arguments map neatly onto curl's options. This curl to Python converter produces idiomatic code: headers, query parameters, cookies and JSON bodies become Python dictionaries instead of long encoded strings, so the request is easy to read and modify.

Example

curl -X POST 'https://api.example.com/v1/orders?notify=true' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN' \
  -d '{"sku":"LAMP-01","qty":2}' \
  --max-time 30

import requests

headers = {
    'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN',
}

params = {
    'notify': 'true',
}

json_data = {
    'sku': 'LAMP-01',
    'qty': 2,
}

response = requests.post('https://api.example.com/v1/orders',
    headers=headers,
    params=params,
    json=json_data,
    allow_redirects=False,
    timeout=30,
)

print(response.status_code)
print(response.text)

Notice that the Content-Type: application/json header disappears: passing json= makes requests serialize the body and set that header automatically.

How the conversion works

• Query string – parameters in the URL are moved into a params dict.
• JSON bodies – parsed and written as Python literals (True, False, None) for json=.
• Form data – URL-encoded bodies become a data dict; -F fields become data and files with open(path, 'rb').
• Cookies – a Cookie header or -b value becomes a cookies dict.
• Auth – -u user:pass becomes auth=('user', 'pass').
• Redirects – curl does not follow redirects unless you pass -L, while requests does. The converter adds allow_redirects=False so behavior matches; remove it or add -L to follow redirects.
• TLS and proxies – -k becomes verify=False (for testing only) and -x becomes a proxies dict.
• Timeouts – --connect-timeout and -m become timeout=(connect, total).

Supported curl options

Line continuations (\), single and double quotes are parsed like a Unix shell. Options that only affect curl's own output, such as -s, -v or -o, are ignored silently; any other unsupported option is listed as a comment at the top of the generated code, so nothing is dropped without notice.

Next steps

• Run the script with Python 3 in a virtual environment so the requests package does not conflict with system packages.
• Always keep a timeout; without one, requests can wait indefinitely.
• Call response.raise_for_status() to turn HTTP errors into exceptions, and response.json() to parse JSON responses.
• Load tokens from environment variables (os.environ['API_TOKEN']) instead of committing them.
• For many requests to the same host, use a requests.Session() to reuse connections.

Need a different language? Use cURL to PHP or cURL to JavaScript. To inspect the response format first, send the request with the API tester. Conversion happens locally in your browser.