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Migration from httpx

httpxr is a drop-in replacement for httpx. In most cases, migration is a single import change.

Step 1: Install

pip install httpxr

Step 2: Replace Imports

- import httpx
+ import httpxr

Or, for an even more seamless transition:

import httpxr as httpx  # Everything works as before

Step 3: That's It

The full httpx API is supported:

  • ✅ Client / AsyncClient
  • ✅ Request / Response
  • ✅ URL, Headers, QueryParams, Cookies
  • ✅ Timeout, Limits, Proxy
  • ✅ BasicAuth, DigestAuth, FunctionAuth, NetRCAuth
  • ✅ MockTransport, ASGITransport, WSGITransport
  • ✅ Authentication flows, redirects, streaming, event hooks
  • ✅ HTTP/1.1 & HTTP/2, SOCKS proxy
  • ✅ codes status code constants
  • ✅ Full exception hierarchy
  • ✅ CLI via httpxr command

Zero-Effort Migration with httpxr.compat

Don't want to change any imports? Use the compatibility shim to redirect all import httpx calls — including from third-party libraries — to httpxr:

import httpxr.compat   # add this one line

import httpx            # now resolves to httpxr 🚀

This is great for trying httpxr in an existing project with zero risk. See the full compat docs for details.

Behavioral Differences

There are a few minor behavioral differences to be aware of. None of these should affect real-world usage:

Difference Detail Why it's OK
Header ordering Default headers may be sent in a different order Headers are unordered per RFC 9110 §5.3
User-Agent python-httpxr/... instead of python-httpx/... Reflects the actual client identity
Logger name "httpxr" instead of "httpx" Logs should identify the actual library
Transport layer Rust (reqwest/tokio) instead of Python (httpcore) Same HTTP semantics, faster execution

Zero Dependencies

Unlike httpx, httpxr has no runtime Python dependencies:

httpx dependency httpxr equivalent
httpcore Rust reqwest transport
certifi Rust native-tls / rustls
anyio / sniffio Rust tokio runtime
idna Rust IDNA encoding
h2 (optional) Rust reqwest HTTP/2
brotli (optional) Rust native brotli
zstandard (optional) Rust native zstd

Bonus: httpxr Extensions

After migrating, you gain access to features not available in httpx:

  • gather() — Concurrent batch requests via Rust's tokio
  • paginate() — Auto-follow pagination links
  • Raw API — Maximum-speed dispatch bypassing Response construction