DeadLink exception from Python2 to Python3

Question

I found this code written in Python 2.7 to bypass a deadlink while reading a list of urls and retrieving their content:

for i in xrange(lines):
    try:
        t = urllib2.urlopen(urllib2.Request(lines[i]))
        deadlinkfound = False
    except:
        deadlinkfound = True
    if not(deadlinkfound):
        urllib.urlretrieve(lines[i], "Images/imag" + "-%s" % i)

It worked fine in Python2 but I can't find the equivalent in Python3 because of the urllib2 merging.

Answer 1

You can do the exact same thing with urllib.request here. Don't catch every conceivable exception, only catch what is reasonably going to be thrown:

from urllib import request, error
from http.client import HTTPException

for i, url in enumerate(lines):
    try:
        t = request.urlopen(request.Request(url, method='HEAD'))
    except (HTTPException, error.HTTPError):
        continue
    request.urlretrieve(url, 'Images/imag-{}'.format(i))

This code does the same, but more efficiently.