Any way to set request headers when doing a request using urllib in Python 2.x?

Question

I am trying to make an HTTP request in Python 2.6.4, using the urllib module. Is there any way to set the request headers?

I am sure that this is possible using urllib2, but I would prefer to use urllib since it seems simpler.

Answer 1

There isn't any way to do that, which is precisely the reason urllib is deprecated in favour of urllib2 . So just use urllib2 rather than writing new code to a deprecated interface.

Answer 2

I don't think so, but urllib2 can. Check out the documentation of urllib2.Request .

Answer 3

You could actually overwrite methods in FancyURLopener , but that does not seem right (see http://docs.python.org/library/urllib.html#urllib._urlopener ). You could also use httplib which basically is the backend for urllib .

But anyhow, using urllib2 might be the best idea. It is not difficult to use. (I use it all the time.)