Httplib2
A comprehensive HTTP client library that supports many features left out of other HTTP libraries.
Requirements
Requires Python 2.3 or later. Version 0.5.0 and later includes Python 3 support.
Documentation
There is New Python library style documentation and more detailed Examples and ExamplesPython3 for how to use httplib2 in specific situations.
There are also two articles about httplib2 on XML.com, Doing HTTP Caching Right: Introducing httplib2 and httplib2: HTTP Persistence and Authentication.
Download/Installation
Httplib2 is a standard distutils package. See the downloading and installation instructions.
Features
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 types of HTTP Authentication are supported. These can be used over both HTTP and HTTPS.
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.
Project Goal
To become a worthy addition to the standard Python library.
Contributors
- Thomas Broyer (t.broyer@ltgt.net)
- James Antill
- Xavier Verges Farrero
- Jonathan Feinberg
- Blair Zajac
- Sam Ruby
- Louis Nyffenegger
- Corey Goldberg
- Mark Pilgrim
- (Your Name Here)
