Does Python have a module for parsing HTTP requests and responses?

Question

httplib (now http.client) and friends all have conn.getresponse() and an HTTPResponse class, but the server-side operations of conn.getrequest() and an HTTPRequest class see

Answer 1

Jeff, to enable parsing I create a small nine-line subclass of the base HTTP request handler:

from BaseHTTPServer import BaseHTTPRequestHandler
from StringIO import StringIO

class HTTPRequest(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def __init__(self, request_text):
        self.rfile = StringIO(request_text)
        self.raw_requestline = self.rfile.readline()
        self.error_code = self.error_message = None
        self.parse_request()

    def send_error(self, code, message):
        self.error_code = code
        self.error_message = message

You can now take a string with the text of an HTTP request inside and parse it by instantiating this class:

# Simply instantiate this class with the request text

request = HTTPRequest(request_text)

print request.error_code       # None  (check this first)
print request.command          # "GET"
print request.path             # "/who/ken/trust.html"
print request.request_version  # "HTTP/1.1"
print len(request.headers)     # 3
print request.headers.keys()   # ['accept-charset', 'host', 'accept']
print request.headers['host']  # "cm.bell-labs.com"

# Parsing can result in an error code and message

request = HTTPRequest('GET\r\nHeader: Value\r\n\r\n')

print request.error_code     # 400
print request.error_message  # "Bad request syntax ('GET')"