What errors/exceptions do I need to handle with urllib2.Request / urlopen?

Question

I have the following code to do a postback to a remote URL:

request = urllib2.Request(\'http://www.example.com\', postBackData, { \'User-Agent\' : \'My User          


        

Answer 1

$ grep "raise" /usr/lib64/python/urllib2.py
IOError); for HTTP errors, raises an HTTPError, which can also be
        raise AttributeError, attr
                raise ValueError, "unknown url type: %s" % self.__original
        # XXX raise an exception if no one else should try to handle
        raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs, fp)
        perform the redirect.  Otherwise, raise HTTPError if no-one
            raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, headers, fp)
                raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code,
            raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), 401, "digest auth failed",
                raise ValueError("AbstractDigestAuthHandler doesn't know "
            raise URLError('no host given')
            raise URLError('no host given')
            raise URLError(err)
        raise URLError('unknown url type: %s' % type)
        raise URLError('file not on local host')
            raise IOError, ('ftp error', 'no host given')
            raise URLError(msg)
            raise IOError, ('ftp error', msg), sys.exc_info()[2]
            raise GopherError('no host given')

There is also the possibility of exceptions in urllib2 dependencies, or of exceptions caused by genuine bugs.

You are best off logging all uncaught exceptions in a file via a custom sys.excepthook. The key rule of thumb here is to never catch exceptions you aren't planning to correct, and logging is not a correction. So don't catch them just to log them.