curl-cffi

[Twilight0]

Package Information

• Package Name: curl-cffi
• PyPI Link: https://pypi.org/project/curl-cffi/
• Package Type: Native (CFFI wrapper over C-compiled libcurl with browser impersonation patches)

Dependency Breakdown

Using pipgrip curl-cffi:

• cffi (Native C extension)
• pycparser (Pure Python)
• certifi (Pure Python)

Rationale & Why it is Necessary for Flet / serious-python

Standard Python HTTP client libraries (requests, urllib3, httpx, aiohttp) rely on Python's built-in ssl module. When connecting to services protected by Cloudflare, Akamai, or similar anti-bot systems (e.g., Dailymotion, video hosters, protected REST APIs), standard SSL connections are immediately blocked with HTTP 403 Forbidden due to TLS Client Hello fingerprinting (JA3/JA4) and HTTP/2 signature checks.

curl_cffi provides Python bindings for curl-impersonate, allowing Python applications to impersonate the exact TLS fingerprints and HTTP/2 settings of real web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari).

Why Mobile Build Support is Needed:

curl_cffi requires compiled native binaries (libcurl + CFFI C extensions). PyPI currently only distributes binary wheels for desktop OSs (Linux, macOS, Windows). To run Flet / serious-python apps on mobile devices (Android arm64-v8a / x86_64 and iOS arm64), native mobile wheel builds are required.

[Twilight0]

I couldn't wait, so I 've setup a repo and the wheels made by github action, I bet @ndonkoHenri can find it useful.

[ndonkoHenri]

Happy to know you find a way for your usecase.

OK. So, if someone needs Flet to build the wheels for this package, they can let know, and we will have a look.

[ndonkoHenri]

curl-cffi 0.16.2 is now supported on Android and iOS: https://pypi.flet.dev/curl-cffi

• Docs
• Example

With this, browser TLS impersonation now works on device — the JA3/JA4 handshake, HTTP/2 settings and header order that go out are a real browser's, not a Python library's.

Note

One thing before you build: you have to narrow your Android ABIs — target_arch = ["arm64-v8a", "x86_64"] under [tool.flet.android]. There is no upstream 32-bit ARM build of curl-impersonate to link against, so flet build apk's default of all three ABIs fails resolving armeabi-v7a.

Give it a try and let us know! 🤟🏿