relihttp 0.1.1

A production-ready, reliable HTTP client for Python.

relihttp

A production-ready, reliable HTTP client for Python

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📖 Quick Start • ✨ Features • 🧰 Development • 🏗️ Architecture • 🔧 Configuration • 🤝 Contributing

🌟 Why choose relihttp?

relihttp is a lightweight HTTP client built on requests with reliability features enabled by default. It provides a policy-based design that makes behaviors easy to customize or replace.

🎯 Reliability by Default	⚡ Fast Development	🛡️ Customizable	📊 Structured Logging
Built-in timeouts, retries, and rate limiting	Simple API with sensible defaults	Policy-based architecture	Standard logging with request/response details

Status

Alpha (v0.1.0). APIs may change.

✨ Core Features

🔧 Reliability Controls

• Timeout Control - Global and per-request timeout settings
• Smart Retries - Retry policy for safe methods by default
• Exponential Backoff - With jitter to prevent thundering herds
• Network Resilience - Retries on network errors and select HTTP status codes
• Circuit Breaker - Prevent cascading failures under error bursts
• Idempotency Keys - Safe retries for non-idempotent methods

📦 Rate Limiting

• Token Bucket Algorithm - Smooth rate limiting
• Flexible Modes - sleep (wait for tokens) or raise (fail fast)
• Per-Client Configuration - Easy to adjust for different endpoints

📝 Logging & Observability

• Structured Logging - Standard logging module integration
• Rich Context - Request ID, method, URL, status, and timing information
• Event Types - http.request, http.response, http.error events
• Tracing Headers - Inject request/trace IDs for end-to-end tracking

Example Usage

import logging
from relihttp import Client

# Configure logging
logging.basicConfig(
    level=logging.INFO,
    format='%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s'
)

client = Client()
response = client.get("https://api.example.com/users")

Log Output

2026-02-03 14:30:00 - relihttp - INFO - event=http.request request_id=abc123 method=GET url=https://api.example.com/users
2026-02-03 14:30:00 - relihttp - INFO - event=http.response request_id=abc123 status_code=200 elapsed_ms=150

The structured logging format makes it easy to integrate with monitoring systems like ELK, Loki, or APM tools for better observability and faster issue debugging.

🏗️ Extensible Architecture

• Policy-Based Design - Easy to add or replace behaviors
• Pluggable Transport - Defaults to requests, but customizable
• Middleware Hooks - Before/after request and retry decision callbacks

🎨 Developer Experience

• Familiar API - Built on requests interface
• Per-Request Overrides - Customize settings for individual requests
• Type Hints - Full Python type annotations support
• Clear Documentation - Comprehensive guides and examples
• AsyncIO Support - Async client and transport (optional aiohttp)

Installation

pip install relihttp

🧰 Development with uv

uv is the recommended package manager for development. It provides faster installation and better dependency management.

Install uv

# Install uv (if not already installed)
pip install uv

Common Commands

# Create a virtual environment
uv venv

# Activate the virtual environment
source .venv/bin/activate  # Linux/macOS
.venv\Scripts\activate     # Windows

# Install dependencies
uv install

# Install with development dependencies
uv install -e .[dev]

# Run tests
uv run pytest

# Run tests with coverage
uv run pytest --cov=relihttp

# Format code with ruff
uv run ruff format

# Lint code with ruff
uv run ruff check

# Type check with mypy
uv run mypy

# Build the package
uv build

# Clean up
uv clean

📦 Packaging & Publish

Build locally

# Build sdist and wheel into dist/
uv build

Publish to PyPI

# 1) Create API token on PyPI and export it
export TWINE_USERNAME="__token__"
export TWINE_PASSWORD="pypi-***"

# 2) Upload
python -m pip install twine
twine upload dist/*

Publish to TestPyPI (recommended first)

export TWINE_USERNAME="__token__"
export TWINE_PASSWORD="pypi-***"

python -m pip install twine
twine upload --repository testpypi dist/*

🛠️ Technology Stack

Component	Technology	Version
Core HTTP Client	requests	2.0+
Python Version	Python	3.9+
Logging	Standard logging module	-
Architecture	Policy-based middleware	-

🚀 Quick Start (Sync)

from relihttp import Client

client = Client(
    base_url="https://api.example.com",
    timeout=3.0,
    retry="safe",
    max_retries=3,
    rate_limit=100,
)

resp = client.get("/users")
print(resp.json())

Per-request overrides:

client.post("/pay", json={"amount": 10}, timeout=1.5, max_retries=1)

⚡ Async Quick Start

import asyncio
from relihttp import AsyncClient

async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient(
        base_url="https://api.example.com",
        timeout=3.0,
        retry="safe",
        max_retries=3,
    ) as client:
        resp = await client.get("/users")
        print(resp.text)

asyncio.run(main())

🔧 Usage Examples

Sync Client (Basic)

from relihttp import Client

client = Client(base_url="https://api.example.com")
resp = client.get("/health")
print(resp.status_code)

Sync Client (Custom Policies)

from relihttp import Client
from relihttp.policies.circuit import CircuitBreakerPolicy
from relihttp.policies.idempotency import IdempotencyPolicy
from relihttp.policies.tracing import TracingPolicy
from relihttp.policies.timeout import TimeoutPolicy
from relihttp.policies.retry import RetryPolicy
from relihttp.policies.logger import LoggingPolicy
from relihttp.policies.rate_limit import RateLimitPolicy

client = Client(
    policies=[
        TimeoutPolicy(timeout=3.0),
        RetryPolicy(max_retries=3, retry="safe"),
        RateLimitPolicy(rate_limit=50, burst=100, mode="sleep"),
        CircuitBreakerPolicy(window_size=20, failure_ratio=0.5, min_requests=10),
        IdempotencyPolicy(),
        TracingPolicy(request_id_header="X-Request-ID", trace_id_header="X-Trace-ID"),
        LoggingPolicy(),
    ]
)

resp = client.post("/payments", json={"amount": 10})
print(resp.status_code)

Async Client (Basic)

import asyncio
from relihttp import AsyncClient

async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient() as client:
        resp = await client.get("https://example.com")
        print(resp.status_code)

asyncio.run(main())

Async Client (Per-request Override)

import asyncio
from relihttp import AsyncClient

async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient(base_url="https://api.example.com") as client:
        resp = await client.post("/pay", json={"amount": 10}, timeout=1.5, max_retries=1)
        print(resp.text)

asyncio.run(main())

Async Client (Custom Transport)

import asyncio
from relihttp import AsyncClient
from relihttp.transport.aiohttp import AiohttpTransport

async def main() -> None:
    transport = AiohttpTransport()
    async with AsyncClient(transport=transport) as client:
        resp = await client.get("https://example.com")
        print(resp.status_code)

asyncio.run(main())

🔧 Configuration

Enable additional reliability features with simple flags:

from relihttp import Client

client = Client(
    base_url="https://api.example.com",
    circuit_breaker=True,
    idempotency=True,
    trace=True,
)

Circuit Breaker (Advanced)

from relihttp import Client
from relihttp.policies.circuit import CircuitBreakerPolicy
from relihttp.policies.timeout import TimeoutPolicy
from relihttp.policies.retry import RetryPolicy
from relihttp.policies.logger import LoggingPolicy

client = Client(
    policies=[
        TimeoutPolicy(timeout=3.0),
        RetryPolicy(max_retries=3, retry="safe"),
        LoggingPolicy(),
        CircuitBreakerPolicy(failure_threshold=3, recovery_timeout=10.0),
    ]
)

Idempotency Key (Advanced)

from relihttp import Client
from relihttp.policies.idempotency import IdempotencyPolicy
from relihttp.policies.timeout import TimeoutPolicy
from relihttp.policies.retry import RetryPolicy
from relihttp.policies.logger import LoggingPolicy

client = Client(
    policies=[
        TimeoutPolicy(timeout=3.0),
        RetryPolicy(max_retries=3, retry="safe"),
        LoggingPolicy(),
        IdempotencyPolicy(header_name="Idempotency-Key"),
    ]
)

Tracing & Request ID (Advanced)

from relihttp import Client
from relihttp.policies.tracing import TracingPolicy
from relihttp.policies.timeout import TimeoutPolicy
from relihttp.policies.retry import RetryPolicy
from relihttp.policies.logger import LoggingPolicy

client = Client(
    policies=[
        TimeoutPolicy(timeout=3.0),
        RetryPolicy(max_retries=3, retry="safe"),
        LoggingPolicy(),
        TracingPolicy(request_id_header="X-Request-ID", trace_id_header="X-Trace-ID"),
    ]
)

Async Client (AsyncIO)

 # Install async support:
 # pip install relihttp[async]
 
import asyncio
from relihttp import AsyncClient

async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient() as client:
        resp = await client.get("https://example.com")
        print(resp.status_code)

asyncio.run(main())

Retry Behavior

Default retry="safe" only retries idempotent methods: GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, DELETE.
Retries are triggered for network errors from requests and for HTTP status codes 500, 502, 503, 504, 429.

max_retries is the maximum total attempts (including the first try).

Custom policy example:

from relihttp import Client
from relihttp.policies.retry import RetryPolicy
from relihttp.policies.timeout import TimeoutPolicy
from relihttp.policies.logger import LoggingPolicy

client = Client(
    policies=[
        TimeoutPolicy(timeout=2.0),
        RetryPolicy(max_retries=5, retry="all", retry_on_status=[500, 502, 503]),
        LoggingPolicy(),
    ]
)

Rate Limiting

rate_limit is tokens per second. By default, the limiter blocks until a token is available.
You can switch to raise mode to fail fast; it raises RateLimitedError.

from relihttp import Client
from relihttp.policies.rate_limit import RateLimitPolicy
from relihttp.policies.timeout import TimeoutPolicy
from relihttp.policies.retry import RetryPolicy
from relihttp.policies.logger import LoggingPolicy

client = Client(
    policies=[
        TimeoutPolicy(timeout=3.0),
        RetryPolicy(max_retries=3),
        RateLimitPolicy(rate_limit=50, burst=100, mode="raise"),
        LoggingPolicy(),
    ]
)

Logging

The library emits structured logs through the relihttp logger with event names:

• http.request
• http.response
• http.error

Each record includes fields like request_id, method, url, attempt, status_code, and elapsed_ms. Configure handlers and formatters via the standard logging module.

Policies and Transport

Client(policies=...) uses exactly the policies you pass; defaults are not added automatically.
If you override policies, include TimeoutPolicy, RetryPolicy, and LoggingPolicy explicitly as needed.

The default transport is RequestsTransport, built on requests.Session. You can implement your own transport by subclassing Transport and passing it to Client(transport=...).

📁 Project Structure

relihttp/
  __init__.py                 # Package initialization
  client.py                   # Main Client class
  async_client.py             # Async Client (AsyncIO)
  models.py                   # Data models
  transport/                  # Transport layer implementations
    base.py                  # Transport base class
    requests.py              # Requests-based transport
    async_base.py            # Async transport base class
    aiohttp.py               # aiohttp-based transport
  policies/                   # Policy implementations
    base.py                  # Policy base class
    retry.py                 # Retry policy
    timeout.py               # Timeout policy
    rate_limit.py            # Rate limiting policy
    logger.py                # Logging policy
    circuit.py               # Circuit breaker policy
    idempotency.py           # Idempotency key support
    tracing.py               # Tracing support
  utils.py                    # Utility functions
tests/                        # Test suite
pyproject.toml               # Project configuration
README.md                    # English documentation
README-ZH.md                 # Chinese documentation

🔮 Roadmap (Planned)

• OpenTelemetry Integration - Standardized tracing propagation
• More Transports - httpx/urllib3 support

📋 Requirements

• Python 3.9+

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please follow these steps:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Run tests before submitting:

pytest

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

💡 Philosophy

Reliability should be the default, not an afterthought.

We believe that building resilient systems shouldn't require complex configuration or boilerplate code. relihttp provides reliability features out of the box, so you can focus on building your application rather than worrying about network failures or transient errors.