Httplib2

Introduction

A comprehensive HTTP client library, httplib2.py supports many features left out of other HTTP libraries.

HTTP and HTTPS HTTPS support is only available if the socket module was compiled with SSL support. Keep-Alive Supports HTTP 1.1 Keep-Alive, keeping the socket open and performing multiple requests over the same connection if possible. Authentication The following three types of HTTP Authentication are supported. These can be used over both HTTP and HTTPS.

    * Digest
    * Basic
    * WSSE

Caching The module can optionally operate with a private cache that understands the Cache-Control: header and uses both the ETag and Last-Modified cache validators. All Methods The module can handle any HTTP request method, not just GET and POST. Redirects Automatically follows 3XX redirects on GETs. Compression Handles both 'deflate' and 'gzip' types of compression. Lost update support Automatically adds back ETags into PUT requests to resources we have already cached. This implements Section 3.2 of Detecting the Lost Update Problem Using Unreserved Checkout. Unit Tested A large and growing set of unit tests.

For more information on this module, see:

http://bitworking.org/projects/httplib2/

Installation

The httplib2 module is shipped as a distutils package. To install the library, unpack the distribution archive, and issue the following command:

$ python setup.py install

Usage A simple retrieval:

import httplib2 h = httplib2.Http(".cache") (resp_headers, content) = h.request("http://example.org/", "GET")

The 'content' is the content retrieved from the URL. The content is already decompressed or unzipped if necessary.

To PUT some content to a server that uses SSL and Basic authentication:

import httplib2 h = httplib2.Http(".cache") h.add_credentials('name', 'password') (resp, content) = h.request("https://example.org/chapter/2", "PUT", body="This is text", headers={'content-type':'text/plain'} )

Use the Cache-Control: header to control how the caching operates.

import httplib2 h = httplib2.Http(".cache") (resp, content) = h.request("http://bitworking.org/", "GET") ... (resp, content) = h.request("http://bitworking.org/", "GET", headers={'cache-control':'no-cache'})

The first request will be cached and since this is a request to bitworking.org it will be set to be cached for two hours, because that is how I have my server configured. Any subsequent GET to that URI will return the value from the on-disk cache and no request will be made to the server. You can use the Cache-Control: header to change the caches behavior and in this example the second request adds the Cache-Control: header with a value of 'no-cache' which tells the library that the cached copy must not be used when handling this request.

Httplib2 Software License

Copyright (c) 2006 by Joe Gregorio

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.