Make requests using Python over Tor

Question

I want to make multiple GET requests using Tor to a webpage. I want to use a different ipaddress for each request.

import socks
import socket
socks.set_default_proxy(socks.SOCKS5, "127.0.0.1", 9150)
socket.socket = socks.socksocket
import requests
print (requests.get('http://icanhazip.com')).content

Using this, I made one request. How can I change the ipaddress to make another?

Answer 1

There are 2 aspects to your question -

1. Making requests using Tor
2. Renewing the connection as per requirement (in your case, after every request)

---

Part 1

The first one is easy to do with the latest (upwards of v2.10.0) requests library with an additional requirement of requests[socks] for using the socks proxy.

Installation -

pip install requests requests[socks]

Basic usage -

import requests

def get_tor_session():
    session = requests.session()
    # Tor uses the 9050 port as the default socks port
    session.proxies = {'http':  'socks5://127.0.0.1:9050',
                       'https': 'socks5://127.0.0.1:9050'}
    return session

# Make a request through the Tor connection
# IP visible through Tor
session = get_tor_session()
print(session.get("http://httpbin.org/ip").text)
# Above should print an IP different than your public IP

# Following prints your normal public IP
print(requests.get("http://httpbin.org/ip").text)

---

Part 2

To renew the Tor IP, i.e. to have a fresh visible exit IP, you need to be able to connect to the Tor service through it's ControlPort and then send a NEWNYM signal.

Normal Tor installation does not enable the ControlPort by default. You'll have to edit your torrc file and uncomment the corresponding lines.

ControlPort 9051
## If you enable the controlport, be sure to enable one of these
## authentication methods, to prevent attackers from accessing it.
HashedControlPassword 16:05834BCEDD478D1060F1D7E2CE98E9C13075E8D3061D702F63BCD674DE

Please note that the HashedControlPassword above is for the password "password". If you want to set a different password, replace the HashedControlPassword in the torrc by noting the output from tor --hash-password "<new_password>" where <new_password> is the password that you want to set.

................................................................................

Warning for Windows users: see post here.

There is an issue on windows where the setting for the controlport in the torrc file is ignored if tor was installed using the following command:

tor --service install

To resolve the issue, after editing your torrc file, type the following commands:

tor --service remove
tor --service install -options ControlPort 9051

................................................................................

Okay, so now that we have Tor configured properly, you will have to restart Tor if it is already running.

sudo service tor restart

Tor should now be up & running on the 9051 ControlPort through which we can send commands to it. I prefer to use the official stem library to control Tor.

Installation -

pip install stem

You may now renew the Tor IP by calling the following function.

Renew IP -

from stem import Signal
from stem.control import Controller

# signal TOR for a new connection 
def renew_connection():
    with Controller.from_port(port = 9051) as controller:
        controller.authenticate(password="password")
        controller.signal(Signal.NEWNYM)

To verify that Tor has a new exit IP, just rerun the code from Part 1. For some reason unknown to me, you need to create a new session object in order to use the new IP.

session = get_tor_session()
print(session.get("http://httpbin.org/ip").text)