API design question - `Response.url`

Currently our Response.url attribute exposes a URL instance.

This is a breaking change from the requests API where it just exposes a plain string.

It’s feasible that we should instead only be exposing plain string URLs, in order to aim for drop-in replacement API compatibility w/ requests, and in order to keep the API surface area low.

Options here are:

• Expose request.url as a URL instance. (Richer information, URL class is also useful in its own right.)
• Expose request.url as a str. (Better API compat. Lower API surface area to maintain.)
• Expose request.url as a str, and request.urlinfo as a URL instance. (Better API compat. High API surface area.)

[tomchristie]

If we do keep it as a URL instance, then one option to keep closer API compat would be to allow string comparisons, eg URL(“https://www.encode.io/“) == “https://www.encode.io/“

That has the advantage of being string-like, and far less likely to introduce any API breakage.

[tomchristie]

Seems like it’s probably the best all round option yeah.