How to get raw request headers in django?

Question

How can I get raw request headers in django? I am aware of HttpRequest.META dictionary, this is not what I want, I just want the raw headers as string. Is there any way to get it?

Answer 1

AFAIK, as of the existing django releases (tagged <=1.2.5), there isn't a way to get at the raw HTTP headers from the request object.

However, looking at the source in the dev trunk (R15523) for django.http.HttpRequests , the base class for the request object exposes a file-like interface which would suggest that one would be able to get the raw headers using something like:

def dump_request_headers(request):
    dump = "".join(request.xreadlines())
    return HttpResponse("<pre>%s</pre>" % dump)

I have never tried this and have never seen this done before so, chances are, there may be more to it than that. Hope this points you in the right direction.