ValueError: unknown url type in urllib2, though the url is fine if opened in a browser

Question

Basically, I am trying to download a URL using urllib2 in python.

the code is the following:

import urllib2
req = urllib2.Request(\'www.tattoo-cover.         


        

Answer 1

You can use the method urlparse from urllib (Python 3) to check the presence of an addressing scheme (http, https, ftp) and concatenate the scheme in case it is not present:

In [1]: from urllib.parse import urlparse
    ..: 
    ..: url = 'www.myurl.com'
    ..: if not urlparse(url).scheme:
    ..:     url = 'http://' + url
    ..: 
    ..: url
Out[1]: 'http://www.myurl.com'