21.12.1. HTTPConnection Objects

HTTPConnection instances have the following methods:

HTTPConnection.request(method, url, body=None, headers={})

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 body argument may also be an iterable and Content-Length header should be explicitly provided when the body is an iterable.

The headers argument should be a mapping of extra HTTP headers to send with the request.

New in version 3.2: body can now be an iterable.

HTTPConnection.getresponse()

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.

HTTPConnection.set_debuglevel(level)

Set the debugging level. The default debug level is 0, meaning no debugging output is printed. Any value greater than 0 will cause all currently defined debug output to be printed to stdout. The debuglevel is passed to any new HTTPResponse objects that are created.

New in version 3.1.

HTTPConnection.set_tunnel(host, port=None, headers=None)

Set the host and the port for HTTP Connect Tunnelling. Normally used when it is required to a HTTPS Connection through a proxy server.

The headers argument should be a mapping of extra HTTP headers to send with the CONNECT request.

New in version 3.2.

HTTPConnection.connect()

Connect to the server specified when the object was created.

HTTPConnection.close()

Close the connection to the server.

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.

HTTPConnection.putrequest(request, selector, skip_host=False, skip_accept_encoding=False)

This should be the first call after the connection to the server has been made. It sends a line to the server consisting of the request string, the selector string, and the HTTP version (HTTP/1.1). To disable automatic sending of Host: or Accept-Encoding: headers (for example to accept additional content encodings), specify skip_host or skip_accept_encoding with non-False values.

HTTPConnection.putheader(header, argument[, ...])

Send an RFC 822-style header to the server. It sends a line to the server consisting of the header, a colon and a space, and the first argument. If more arguments are given, continuation lines are sent, each consisting of a tab and an argument.

HTTPConnection.endheaders(message_body=None)

Send a blank line to the server, signalling the end of the headers. The optional message_body argument can be used to pass a message body associated with the request. The message body will be sent in the same packet as the message headers if it is string, otherwise it is sent in a separate packet.

HTTPConnection.send(data)

Send data to the server. This should be used directly only after the endheaders() method has been called and before getresponse() is called.

21.12.2. HTTPResponse Objects

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.

HTTPResponse.read([amt])

Reads and returns the response body, or up to the next amt bytes.

HTTPResponse.readinto(b)

Reads up to the next len(b) bytes of the response body into the buffer b. Returns the number of bytes read.

New in version 3.3.

HTTPResponse.getheader(name, default=None)

Return the value of the header name, or default if there is no header matching name. If there is more than one header with the name name, return all of the values joined by ‘, ‘. If ‘default’ is any iterable other than a single string, its elements are similarly returned joined by commas.

HTTPResponse.getheaders()

Return a list of (header, value) tuples.

HTTPResponse.fileno()

Return the fileno of the underlying socket.

HTTPResponse.msg

A http.client.HTTPMessage instance containing the response headers. http.client.HTTPMessage is a subclass of email.message.Message.

HTTPResponse.version

HTTP protocol version used by server. 10 for HTTP/1.0, 11 for HTTP/1.1.

HTTPResponse.status

Status code returned by server.

HTTPResponse.reason

Reason phrase returned by server.

HTTPResponse.debuglevel

A debugging hook. If debuglevel is greater than zero, messages will be printed to stdout as the response is read and parsed.

HTTPResponse.closed

Is True if the stream is closed.

21.12.3. Examples

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()  # This will return entire content.
>>> # The following example demonstrates reading data in chunks.
>>> conn.request("GET", "/index.html")
>>> r1 = conn.getresponse()
>>> while not r1.closed:
...     print(r1.read(200)) # 200 bytes
b'<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"...
...
>>> # Example of an invalid request
>>> 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 the HEAD method. Note that the 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({'@number': 12524, '@type': 'issue', '@action': 'show'})
>>> headers = {"Content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
...            "Accept": "text/plain"}
>>> conn = http.client.HTTPConnection("bugs.python.org")
>>> conn.request("POST", "", params, headers)
>>> response = conn.getresponse()
>>> print(response.status, response.reason)
302 Found
>>> data = response.read()
>>> data
b'Redirecting to <a href="http://bugs.python.org/issue12524">http://bugs.python.org/issue12524</a>'
>>> conn.close()

Client side HTTP PUT requests are very similar to POST requests. The difference lies only the server side where HTTP server will allow resources to be created via PUT request. It should be noted that custom HTTP methods +are also handled in urllib.request.Request by sending the appropriate +method attribute.Here is an example session that shows how to do PUT request using http.client:

>>> # This creates an HTTP message
>>> # with the content of BODY as the enclosed representation
>>> # for the resource http://localhost:8080/foobar
...
>>> import http.client
>>> BODY = "***filecontents***"
>>> conn = http.client.HTTPConnection("localhost", 8080)
>>> conn.request("PUT", "/file", BODY)
>>> response = conn.getresponse()
>>> print(response.status, response.reason)
200, OK

21.12.4. HTTPMessage Objects

An http.client.HTTPMessage instance holds the headers from an HTTP response. It is implemented using the email.message.Message class.