requests.post should accept strings in addition to dicts

[pydanny]

The specification for HTTP POST is that it has a "message body". HTML forms sticks encoded key/values representing form inputs into that message body when submitted. However, this means that currently requests.post can't accept JSON or XML message bodies, which could make it hard to use with some APIs. Therefore, I propose the following:

"""inside of requests.post method"""

if isinstance(data, dict):
    # process as existing code now handles POST
elif isinstance(data, str) or isinstance(data, unicode):
    # Stick into message body
    # Do encoding if that is what the spec demands (I'm not sure)
else:
    # raise InvalidRequestDataFormat

"""Example of implementation"""

import json

import requests

post_dict = {"hello":"world"}
r = request.post(form_url, post_dict)

post_json = json.dumps(post_dict)
r = request.post(json_url, post_json)

[kennethreitz]

Request.post accepts both dicts and bytestrings for the data parameter already :)

[kennethreitz]

Thanks for submitting this issue though. Clearly, the docs need to reflect that capability. :)