It's really cool to use requests to communicate with RESTful API in python! Requests is an elegant and simple HTTP library for Python, built for human beings. It also support Basic/Digest authentication methods, you can simply pass parameters with it. If you are still using other low level library such as urllib/urllib2/pycurl, etc... to communicate with RESTful API, you should give it a try! A lightning talk in EuroPython 2012: Communicate with RESTful APIs in Python Ref: Communicating with RESTful APIs in PythonWritten by Balthazar