In my python app I try to open a https url, but I get:
File \"C:\\Python26\\lib\\urllib.py\", line 215, in open_unknown
raise IOError, (\'url error\', \
urllib and Python 2.6 have SSL support and your code example works fine for me. Probably your Python is built without SSL support? Try to reinstall Python 2.6 (or better, 2.7) and use the original build from python.org.
On Google App Engine, try to use the API directly:
from google.appengine.api import urlfetch
url = "https://www.google.com/"
result = urlfetch.fetch(url)
if result.status_code == 200:
doSomethingWithResult(result.content)