urllib

Learn basic HTTP requests with urllib.request.

urllib

urllib.request is Python's standard-library module for making HTTP requests. The urlopen function opens a URL and returns a response object.

import urllib.request

resp = urllib.request.urlopen("data:text/plain,merhaba")
print(resp.read().decode())  # merhaba

URLs of the form data:text/plain,... return local data; no network access is needed. resp.read() gives the body as bytes; .decode() turns it into a string.

read and decode

The response object's read() method returns the body as bytes. To turn the byte string into a human-readable string, call .decode().

resp = urllib.request.urlopen("data:text/plain,merhaba")
body = resp.read()        # b'merhaba'
text = body.decode()      # 'merhaba'

Spaces and Turkish characters decode correctly because UTF-8 is the default encoding.

Exercise Read local data with urllib

Start with import urllib.request. Call urllib.request.urlopen("data:text/plain,merhaba dünya") to get a response. Decode the body with resp.read().decode() and print it.

Show example solution

import urllib.request

resp = urllib.request.urlopen("data:text/plain,merhaba dünya")
print(resp.read().decode())

Test yourself

What kind of object does urllib.request.urlopen return?
- A list
- An HTML string
- A dict
- A response object
Show answer

A response object — urlopen returns a response object; read() reads the body.

Complete the urlopen call

import urllib.request

resp = urllib.request.____("data:text/plain,merhaba")

Show answer

import urllib.request

resp = urllib.request.urlopen("data:text/plain,merhaba")

Match the urllib concepts

urlopen

Opens a URL
read

Reads body as bytes
decode

Turns into string
data: URL

Gives local data

Next lesson: aiohttp.ClientSession

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