HTTPS connection Python

Question

I am trying to verify the that target exposes a https web service. I have code to connect via HTTP but I am not sure how to connect via HTTPS. I have read you use SSL but I have also read that it did not support certificate errors. The code I have got is from the python docs:

import httplib
conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("www.python.org")
conn.request("GET", "/index.html")
r1 = conn.getresponse()
print r1.status, r1.reason

Does anyone know how to connect to HTTPS?

I already tried the HTTPSConenction but it responds with an error code claiming httplib does not have attribute HTTPSConnection. I also don't have socket.ssl available.

I have installed Python 2.6.4 and I don't think it has SSL support compiled into it. Is there a way to integrate this suppot into the newer python without having to install it again.

I have installed OpenSSL and pyOpenSsl and I have tried the below code from one of the answers:

import urllib2
from OpenSSL import SSL
try: 
    response = urllib2.urlopen('https://example.com')  
    print 'response headers: "%s"' % response.info() 
except IOError, e: 
    if hasattr(e, 'code'): # HTTPError 
        print 'http error code: ', e.code 
    elif hasattr(e, 'reason'): # URLError 
        print "can't connect, reason: ", e.reason 
    else: 
        raise

I have got an error:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
  File "/home/build/workspace/downloads/Python-2.6.4/Lib/urllib.py", line 87, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url)
  File "/home/build/workspace/downloads/Python-2.6.4/Lib/urllib.py", line 203, in open
    return self.open_unknown(fullurl, data)
  File "/home/build/workspace/downloads/Python-2.6.4/Lib/urllib.py", line 215, in open_unknown
    raise IOError, ('url error', 'unknown url type', type)
IOError: [Errno url error] unknown url type: 'https'

Does anyone know how to get this working?

-- UPDATE

I have found out what the problem was, the Python version I was using did not have support for SSL. I have found this solution currently at: http://www.webtop.com.au/compiling-python-with-ssl-support.

The code will now work after this solution which is very good. When I import ssl and HTTPSConnection I know don't get an error.

Thanks for the help all.

Answer 1

import requests
r = requests.get("https://stackoverflow.com") 
data = r.content  # Content of response

print r.status_code  # Status code of response
print data

Answer 2

Why haven't you tried httplib.HTTPSConnection? It doesn't do SSL validation but this isn't required to connect over https. Your code works fine with https connection:

>>> import httplib
>>> conn = httplib.HTTPSConnection("mail.google.com")
>>> conn.request("GET", "/")
>>> r1 = conn.getresponse()
>>> print r1.status, r1.reason
200 OK

Answer 3

I had some code that was failing with an HTTPConnection (MOVED_PERMANENTLY error), but as soon as I switched to HTTPS it worked perfectly again with no other changes needed. That's a very simple fix!

Answer 4

using

class httplib.HTTPSConnection

http://docs.python.org/library/httplib.html#httplib.HTTPSConnection

Answer 5

To check for ssl support in Python 2.6+:

try:
    import ssl
except ImportError:
    print "error: no ssl support"

To connect via https:

import urllib2

try:
    response = urllib2.urlopen('https://example.com') 
    print 'response headers: "%s"' % response.info()
except IOError, e:
    if hasattr(e, 'code'): # HTTPError
        print 'http error code: ', e.code
    elif hasattr(e, 'reason'): # URLError
        print "can't connect, reason: ", e.reason
    else:
        raise

Answer 6

Assuming SSL support is enabled for the socket module.

connection1 = httplib.HTTPSConnection('www.somesecuresite.com')