11.6 httplib -- HTTP protocol client
Keywords: lib

# 11.6 `httplib` -- HTTP protocol client

This module defines classes which implement the client side of the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It is normally not used directly -- the module `urllib` 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 constants defined in this module are:

`HTTP_PORT`
  The default port for the HTTP protocol (always `80`).

`HTTPS_PORT`
  The default port for the HTTPS protocol (always `443`).

The module provides the following classes:

class `HTTPConnection`(host[, port])
  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. For example, the following calls all create instances that connect to the server at the same host and port:

        >>> h1 = httplib.HTTPConnection('www.cwi.nl')
        >>> h2 = httplib.HTTPConnection('www.cwi.nl:80')
        >>> h3 = httplib.HTTPConnection('www.cwi.nl', 80)

class `HTTPSConnection`(host[, port, key_file, cert_file])
  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.

  Warning: This does not do any certificate verification!

The following exceptions are raised as appropriate:

exception `HTTPException`
  The base class of the other exceptions in this module. It is a subclass of `Exception`.

exception `NotConnected`
  A subclass of `HTTPException`.

exception `UnknownProtocol`
  A subclass of `HTTPException`.

exception `UnknownTransferEncoding`
  A subclass of `HTTPException`.

exception `IllegalKeywordArgument`
  A subclass of `HTTPException`.

exception `UnimplementedFileMode`
  A subclass of `HTTPException`.

exception `IncompleteRead`
  A subclass of `HTTPException`.

exception `ImproperConnectionState`
  A subclass of `HTTPException`.

exception `CannotSendRequest`
  A subclass of `ImproperConnectionState`.

exception `CannotSendHeader`
  A subclass of `ImproperConnectionState`.

exception `ResponseNotReady`
  A subclass of `ImproperConnectionState`.

exception `BadStatusLine`
  A subclass of `HTTPException`. Raised if a server responds with a HTTP status code that we don't understand.

Subsections

- 11.6.1 HTTPConnection Objects
- 11.6.2 HTTPResponse Objects
- 11.6.3 Examples