httpware

A Python HTTP client framework with sync and async clients for building resilient service clients. httpware is a thin opinionated wrapper around httpx2 — it re-exports httpx2.Request/httpx2.Response as the public request/response surface, adds a middleware chain (with a built-in resilience suite: AsyncRetry/Retry + RetryBudget, AsyncBulkhead/Bulkhead), opt-in typed response decoding, and a status-keyed exception tree raised automatically on 4xx/5xx.

Status: Pre-1.0. Public API is subject to change between minor releases until v1.0.

Install

pip install httpware

Optional extras:

pip install httpware[pydantic]   # PydanticDecoder (the default decoder path)
pip install httpware[msgspec]    # MsgspecDecoder

First request

Async usage:

import asyncio

from httpware import AsyncClient

async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient(base_url="https://example.test") as client:
        response = await client.get("/users/42")
        print(response.json())

asyncio.run(main())

Sync usage:

from httpware import Client

with Client(base_url="https://example.test") as client:
    response = client.get("/users/42")
    print(response.json())

Typed decoding via response_model= works the same way in both worlds:

from httpware import AsyncClient
from pydantic import BaseModel


class User(BaseModel):
    id: int
    name: str


async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient(base_url="https://api.example.com") as client:
        user = await client.get("/users/1", response_model=User)
        print(user.name)

With resilience middleware

Compose resilience middleware at construction; AsyncBulkhead goes outside AsyncRetry so one slot covers all retry attempts.

from httpware import AsyncClient, AsyncBulkhead, AsyncRetry


async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient(
        base_url="https://api.example.com",
        middleware=[
            AsyncBulkhead(max_concurrent=10),  # cap total in-flight
            AsyncRetry(),                       # default: 3 attempts, full-jitter backoff
        ],
    ) as client:
        user = await client.get("/users/1", response_model=User)

Response metadata + typed body

When you need both the raw httpx2.Response (for headers, status, or the request URL) and a typed body, use send_with_response. It returns both atomically and routes the decode through the configured ResponseDecoder, so decoder failures surface as DecodeError — caught by except httpware.ClientError like every other failure mode.

Canonical use case: RFC 5988 Link header pagination.

Assume process and next_link are caller-defined — pick a Link header parser that fits.

from httpware import AsyncClient
from pydantic import BaseModel


class Tag(BaseModel):
    name: str


async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient(base_url="https://gitlab.example/api/v4") as client:
        url = "/projects/1/repository/tags"
        params: dict[str, str] | None = {"per_page": "100", "page": "1"}
        while url:
            request = client.build_request("GET", url, params=params)
            response, tags = await client.send_with_response(request, response_model=list[Tag])
            for tag in tags:
                process(tag)
            url = next_link(response.headers.get("link"))   # caller's parser
            params = None                                    # next link carries query

For body-only with a high-level verb, prefer client.get(..., response_model=...). For body-only with a custom Request, prefer client.send(request, response_model=...). send_with_response is not for streaming responses — use stream().

Streaming responses

For large responses or server-sent events, stream the body chunk-by-chunk. stream() is an async context manager:

from httpware import AsyncClient


async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncClient(base_url="https://api.example.com") as client:
        async with client.stream("GET", "/big-file") as response:
            async for chunk in response.aiter_bytes():
                process(chunk)

stream() auto-raises StatusError subclasses on 4xx/5xx with the response body pre-read, so exc.response.content is accessible from the caught exception.

It does NOT pass through the middleware chain: AsyncRetry, AsyncBulkhead, and any custom middleware are bypassed. (AsyncRetry separately refuses to retry any request — stream or non-stream — whose body was an async-iterable, since streams can't replay across attempts.)

Errors

All 4xx/5xx responses raise typed exceptions automatically: NotFoundError, ServiceUnavailableError, RateLimitedError, etc. — all subclasses of httpware.StatusError. Transport-layer transient failures raise NetworkError; the resilience middleware raise RetryBudgetExhaustedError and BulkheadFullError. Everything inherits httpware.ClientError.

Observability

AsyncRetry/Retry and AsyncBulkhead/Bulkhead emit operational events via two channels — stdlib logging records (always on) and OpenTelemetry span events (when opentelemetry-api is installed). Event names and payloads are identical across sync and async; dashboards built against one class apply unchanged to the other.

Logger names (httpware.retry, httpware.bulkhead) and event names (retry.giving_up, retry.budget_refused, retry.streaming_refused, bulkhead.rejected) are the stable public contract.

import logging

# Enable visibility into retry / bulkhead operational events
logging.getLogger("httpware.retry").setLevel(logging.WARNING)
logging.getLogger("httpware.bulkhead").setLevel(logging.WARNING)

For OTel attribute enrichment on the active span — install the extra:

pip install httpware[otel]

When installed, _emit_event calls trace.get_current_span().add_event(name, attributes=...) automatically. We never create our own spans; for HTTP-level tracing install opentelemetry-instrumentation-httpx separately.

Where to go next

• Resilience reference — every parameter on AsyncRetry, RetryBudget, and AsyncBulkhead; the retry-rule matrix; Retry-After parsing; budget sharing.
• Middleware guide — write your own middleware. Covers the AsyncMiddleware Protocol, the phase decorators, a worked Request-ID propagation example, and OpenTelemetry wiring.
• Errors reference — the full exception tree, catching strategies, exc.response.* access pattern.
• Testing guide — mock-transport injection pattern for testing code that uses httpware.
• Recipes — wiring AsyncClient into a modern-di container.
• Engineering Notes — design invariants, the three protocol seams, exception contract, module layout, testing patterns, optional-extras pattern. Lives in the repo at planning/engineering.md.
• Contributing — setup, conventions, workflow.
• Release notes — per-version changelogs.

Part of modern-python

httpware ships under the modern-python org. See the org profile for the categorized index of related templates and libraries.