How can I split a url string up into separate parts in Python?

Question

I decided that I\'ll learn python tonight :) I know C pretty well (wrote an OS in it) so I\'m not a noob in programming so everything in python seems pretty easy, but I don\

Answer 1

The urlparse module in python 2.x (or urllib.parse in python 3.x) would be the way to do it.

>>> from urllib.parse import urlparse
>>> url = 'http://example.com/random/folder/path.html'
>>> parse_object = urlparse(url)
>>> parse_object.netloc
'example.com'
>>> parse_object.path
'/random/folder/path.html'
>>> parse_object.scheme
'http'
>>>

If you wanted to do more work on the path of the file under the url, you can use the posixpath module :

>>> from posixpath import basename, dirname
>>> basename(parse_object.path)
'path.html'
>>> dirname(parse_object.path)
'/random/folder'

After that, you can use posixpath.join to glue the parts together.

EDIT: I totally forgot that windows users will choke on the path separator in os.path. I read the posixpath module docs, and it has a special reference to URL manipulation, so all's good.