CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonhttpurllib2google-compute-engine
Rorschach
Rorschach

Reputation: 3812

Python urllib2 code returns "HTTP error 503" on one machine but not another

I can open a webpage such as nike's page with Python 2.7's urllib2 library on my ubuntu desktop. But, when I move that code to a google compute engine server (with the same O.S.), it starts returning a HTTP Error 503: Service Unavailable.

What could be causing this error from one place and not another and, if possible, how would I go about making my machines behave consistently?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1055

Answers (2)

Alex Martelli
Alex Martelli

Reputation: 882481

HTTP Status 503 means, and I quote RFC 2612: "The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. If known, the length of the delay MAY be indicated in a Retry-After header."

So, it's not at all about where the request comes from: it's all about the server being temporarily overloaded, or, in maintenance. Check for a Retry-After header in the response and apply it; or, if missing, "retry later" more generically.

If persistent (it shouldn't be: 503 means the server is suffering a temporary condition), contact the web site system administrators and get an explanation of what's going on. To repeat, this is strictly about the web server you're contacting, and should be a temporary condition; not at all about your client.

Upvotes: 1

Michelle Welcks
Michelle Welcks

Reputation: 3914

That server returns urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden unless you pass an 'Accept' header. Using only the 'User-Agent' header failed when I tried. Here is the working code; I've commented out the unnecessary 'User-Agent' and 'Connection' headers, but left them for reference:

import urllib2
user_agent = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'}
req_headers = {
    # 'User-Agent': user_agent,
    # 'Connection': 'Keep-Alive',
    'Accept': 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8'
}
request = urllib2.Request('http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/men', headers=req_headers)
response = urllib2.urlopen(request)
data = response.read()
print data

Also see this other Stackoverflow answer, which I used as a reference for the 'Accept' string.

Upvotes: 2

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