This module defines classes which implement the client side of the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It is normally not used directly — the module urllib.request uses it to handle URLs that use HTTP and HTTPS.
Note
HTTPS support is only available if the socket module was compiled with SSL support.
The module provides the following classes:
An HTTPConnection instance represents one transaction with an HTTP server. It should be instantiated passing it a host and optional port number. If no port number is passed, the port is extracted from the host string if it has the form host:port, else the default HTTP port (80) is used. When True, the optional parameter strict (which defaults to a false value) causes BadStatusLine to be raised if the status line can’t be parsed as a valid HTTP/1.0 or 1.1 status line. If the optional timeout parameter is given, blocking operations (like connection attempts) will timeout after that many seconds (if it is not given, the global default timeout setting is used).
For example, the following calls all create instances that connect to the server at the same host and port:
>>> h1 = http.client.HTTPConnection('www.cwi.nl')
>>> h2 = http.client.HTTPConnection('www.cwi.nl:80')
>>> h3 = http.client.HTTPConnection('www.cwi.nl', 80)
>>> h3 = http.client.HTTPConnection('www.cwi.nl', 80, timeout=10)
A subclass of HTTPConnection that uses SSL for communication with secure servers. Default port is 443. key_file is the name of a PEM formatted file that contains your private key. cert_file is a PEM formatted certificate chain file.
Note
This does not do any certificate verification.
The following exceptions are raised as appropriate:
The constants defined in this module are:
and also the following constants for integer status codes:
Constant | Value | Definition |
---|---|---|
CONTINUE | 100 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.1.1 |
SWITCHING_PROTOCOLS | 101 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.1.2 |
PROCESSING | 102 | WEBDAV, RFC 2518, Section 10.1 |
OK | 200 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.2.1 |
CREATED | 201 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.2.2 |
ACCEPTED | 202 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.2.3 |
NON_AUTHORITATIVE_INFORMATION | 203 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.2.4 |
NO_CONTENT | 204 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.2.5 |
RESET_CONTENT | 205 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.2.6 |
PARTIAL_CONTENT | 206 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.2.7 |
MULTI_STATUS | 207 | WEBDAV RFC 2518, Section 10.2 |
IM_USED | 226 | Delta encoding in HTTP, RFC 3229, Section 10.4.1 |
MULTIPLE_CHOICES | 300 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.3.1 |
MOVED_PERMANENTLY | 301 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.3.2 |
FOUND | 302 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.3.3 |
SEE_OTHER | 303 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.3.4 |
NOT_MODIFIED | 304 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.3.5 |
USE_PROXY | 305 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.3.6 |
TEMPORARY_REDIRECT | 307 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.3.8 |
BAD_REQUEST | 400 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.1 |
UNAUTHORIZED | 401 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.2 |
PAYMENT_REQUIRED | 402 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.3 |
FORBIDDEN | 403 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.4 |
NOT_FOUND | 404 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.5 |
METHOD_NOT_ALLOWED | 405 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.6 |
NOT_ACCEPTABLE | 406 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.7 |
PROXY_AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED | 407 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.8 |
REQUEST_TIMEOUT | 408 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.9 |
CONFLICT | 409 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.10 |
GONE | 410 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.11 |
LENGTH_REQUIRED | 411 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.12 |
PRECONDITION_FAILED | 412 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.13 |
REQUEST_ENTITY_TOO_LARGE | 413 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.14 |
REQUEST_URI_TOO_LONG | 414 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.15 |
UNSUPPORTED_MEDIA_TYPE | 415 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.16 |
REQUESTED_RANGE_NOT_SATISFIABLE | 416 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.17 |
EXPECTATION_FAILED | 417 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.4.18 |
UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY | 422 | WEBDAV, RFC 2518, Section 10.3 |
LOCKED | 423 | WEBDAV RFC 2518, Section 10.4 |
FAILED_DEPENDENCY | 424 | WEBDAV, RFC 2518, Section 10.5 |
UPGRADE_REQUIRED | 426 | HTTP Upgrade to TLS, RFC 2817, Section 6 |
INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR | 500 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.5.1 |
NOT_IMPLEMENTED | 501 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.5.2 |
BAD_GATEWAY | 502 | HTTP/1.1 RFC 2616, Section 10.5.3 |
SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE | 503 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.5.4 |
GATEWAY_TIMEOUT | 504 | HTTP/1.1 RFC 2616, Section 10.5.5 |
HTTP_VERSION_NOT_SUPPORTED | 505 | HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616, Section 10.5.6 |
INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE | 507 | WEBDAV, RFC 2518, Section 10.6 |
NOT_EXTENDED | 510 | An HTTP Extension Framework, RFC 2774, Section 7 |
This dictionary maps the HTTP 1.1 status codes to the W3C names.
Example: http.client.responses[http.client.NOT_FOUND] is 'Not Found'.
HTTPConnection instances have the following methods:
This will send a request to the server using the HTTP request method method and the selector url. If the body argument is present, it should be string or bytes object of data to send after the headers are finished. Strings are encoded as ISO-8859-1, the default charset for HTTP. To use other encodings, pass a bytes object. The Content-Length header is set to the length of the string.
The body may also be an open file object, in which case the contents of the file is sent; this file object should support fileno() and read() methods. The header Content-Length is automatically set to the length of the file as reported by stat.
The headers argument should be a mapping of extra HTTP headers to send with the request.
Should be called after a request is sent to get the response from the server. Returns an HTTPResponse instance.
Note
Note that you must have read the whole response before you can send a new request to the server.
Set the debugging level (the amount of debugging output printed). The default debug level is 0, meaning no debugging output is printed.
New in version 3.1.
As an alternative to using the request() method described above, you can also send your request step by step, by using the four functions below.
An HTTPResponse instance wraps the HTTP response from the server. It provides access to the request headers and the entity body. The response is an iterable object and can be used in a with statement.
Here is an example session that uses the GET method:
>>> import http.client
>>> conn = http.client.HTTPConnection("www.python.org")
>>> conn.request("GET", "/index.html")
>>> r1 = conn.getresponse()
>>> print(r1.status, r1.reason)
200 OK
>>> data1 = r1.read()
>>> conn.request("GET", "/parrot.spam")
>>> r2 = conn.getresponse()
>>> print(r2.status, r2.reason)
404 Not Found
>>> data2 = r2.read()
>>> conn.close()
Here is an example session that uses HEAD method. Note that HEAD method never returns any data.
>>> import http.client
>>> conn = http.client.HTTPConnection("www.python.org")
>>> conn.request("HEAD","/index.html")
>>> res = conn.getresponse()
>>> print(res.status, res.reason)
200 OK
>>> data = res.read()
>>> print(len(data))
0
>>> data == b''
True
Here is an example session that shows how to POST requests:
>>> import http.client, urllib.parse
>>> params = urllib.parse.urlencode({'spam': 1, 'eggs': 2, 'bacon': 0})
>>> headers = {"Content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
... "Accept": "text/plain"}
>>> conn = http.client.HTTPConnection("musi-cal.mojam.com:80")
>>> conn.request("POST", "/cgi-bin/query", params, headers)
>>> response = conn.getresponse()
>>> print(response.status, response.reason)
200 OK
>>> data = response.read()
>>> conn.close()
An http.client.HTTPMessage instance holds the headers from an HTTP response. It is implemented using the email.message.Message class.