CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonauthenticationrequestauthorizationurllib2
user3818650
user3818650

Reputation: 571

Python - urllib2 how to know if our authorization is successful

When you would normally login to a website we can use urllib2.Request as so.

import urllib2, base64
req = urllib2.Request("http://www.facebook.com/")
base64string = base64.encodestring("%s:%s" % ("username", "password")).replace("\n", "")
req.add_header("Authorization", "Basic %s" % base64string)
requested = urllib2.urlopen(req)

But how do we know if the authorization was successful? Because you could of just opened a URL of a wrong authorization.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 999

Answers (1)

Martijn Pieters
Martijn Pieters

Reputation: 1122382

A urllib2.HTTPError exception is raised when you are not authorised and a 401 status is returned:

>>> import urllib2, base64
>>> req = urllib2.Request('http://httpbin.org/basic-auth/foouser/barpw')
>>> base64string = base64.encodestring("%s:%s" % ("username", "password")).replace("\n", "")
>>> req.add_header("Authorization", "Basic %s" % base64string)
>>> urllib2.urlopen(req)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/mpietre/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 127, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/Users/mpietre/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 410, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
  File "/Users/mpietre/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 523, in http_response
    'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
  File "/Users/mpietre/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 448, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
  File "/Users/mpietre/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 382, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/Users/mpietre/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 531, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs, fp)
urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 401: UNAUTHORIZED

On successful authorisation you'll get a response object instead:

>>> req = urllib2.Request('http://httpbin.org/basic-auth/foouser/barpw')
>>> base64string = base64.encodestring("%s:%s" % ("foouser", "barpw")).replace("\n", "")
>>> req.add_header("Authorization", "Basic %s" % base64string)
>>> response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
>>> response.getcode()
200

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions