urllib cannot read https

Question

(Python 3.4.2) Would anyone be able to help me fetch https pages with urllib? I've spent hours trying to figure this out.

Here's what I'm trying to do (pretty basic):

import urllib.request
url = "".join((baseurl, other_string, midurl, query))
response = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
html = response.read()

Here's my error output when I run it:

File "./script.py", line 124, in <module>
    response = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 153, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 455, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 478, in _open
    'unknown_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 433, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 1244, in unknown_open
    raise URLError('unknown url type: %s' % type)
urllib.error.URLError: <urlopen error unknown url type: 'https>

I've also tried using data=None to no avail:

response = urllib.request.urlopen(url, data=None)

I've also tried this:

import urllib.request, ssl
https_sslv3_handler = urllib.request.HTTPSHandler(context=ssl.SSLContext(ssl.PROTOCOL_SSLv3))
opener = urllib.request.build_opener(https_sslv3_handler)
urllib.request.install_opener(opener)
resp = opener.open(url)
html = resp.read().decode('utf-8')
print(html)

A similar error occurs with this^ script, where the error is found on the "resp = ..." line and complains that 'https' is an unknown url type.

Python was compiled with SSL support on my computer (Arch Linux). I've tried reinstalling python3 and openssl a few times, but that doesn't help. I haven't tried to uninstall python completely and then reinstall because I would also need to uninstall a lot of other programs on my computer.

Anyone know what's going on?

-----EDIT-----

I figured it out, thanks to help from Andrew Stevlov's answer. My url had a ":" in it, and I guess urllib didn't like that. I replaced it with "%3A" and now it's working. Thanks so much guys!!!

Answer 1

Double check your compilation options, looks like something is wrong with your box.

At least the following code works for me:

from urllib.request import urlopen
resp = urlopen('https://github.com')
print(resp.read())

Answer 2

this may help

Ignore SSL certificate errors

ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE

url = input('Enter - ')
html = urllib.request.urlopen(url, context=ctx).read()

Answer 3

urllib.error.URLError: <urlopen error unknown url type: 'https>

The 'https and not https in the error message indicates that you did not try a http:// request but instead a 'https:// request which of course does not exist. Check how you construct your URL.

Answer 4

I had the same error when I tried to open a url with https, but no errors with http.

>>> from urllib.request import urlopen
>>> urlopen('http://google.com')
<http.client.HTTPResponse object at 0xb770252c>
>>> urlopen('https://google.com')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/urllib/request.py", line 222, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/urllib/request.py", line 525, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/urllib/request.py", line 548, in _open
    'unknown_open', req)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/urllib/request.py", line 503, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/urllib/request.py", line 1387, in unknown_open
    raise URLError('unknown url type: %s' % type)
urllib.error.URLError: <urlopen error unknown url type: https>

This was done on Ubuntu 16.04 using Python 3.7. The native Ubuntu defaults to Python 3.5 in /usr/bin and previously I had source downloaded and upgraded to 3.7 in /usr/local/bin. The fact that there was no error for 3.5 pointed to the executable /usr/bin/openssl not being installed correctly in 3.7 which is also evident below:

>>> import ssl
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/ssl.py", line 98, in <module>
    import _ssl             # if we can't import it, let the error propagate
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_ssl'

By consulting this link, I changed SSL=/usr/local/ssl to SSL=/usr in 3.7 source dir's Modules/Setup.dist and also cp it into Setup and then rebuilt Python 3.7.

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

Now it is fixed:

>>> import ssl
>>> ssl.OPENSSL_VERSION
'OpenSSL 1.0.2g  1 Mar 2016'
>>> urlopen('https://www.google.com') 
<http.client.HTTPResponse object at 0xb74c4ecc>
>>> urlopen('https://www.google.com').read()
b'<!doctype html>...

and 3.7 has been complied with OpenSSL support successfully. Note that the Ubuntu command "openssl version" is not complete until you load it into Python.