title: Should I use .text or .content when parsing a Requests response?
body: <p>I occasionally use <code>res.content</code> or <code>res.text</code> to parse a response from <a href="http://docs.python-requests.org/" rel="noreferrer">Requests</a>. In the use cases I have had, it didn't seem to matter which option I used.</p>
  
  <p>What is the main difference in parsing HTML with <code>.content</code> or <code>.text</code>? For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import requests 
  from lxml import html
  res = requests.get(...)
  node = html.fromstring(res.content)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In the above situation, should I be using <code>res.content</code> or <code>res.text</code>? What is a good rule of thumb for when to use each?</p>