Python: POST XML over HTTP

Jul

Gabriel Gonzalez Programming 2010-07-22

Short post to remind myself how to do HTTP requests using python, really easy stuff that I quickly forget.

Straight forward example using httplib and urllib from python. In the example I just perform some kind of login request retrieve the session id and then other request sending XML data using POST.

Code! Feel free to send improvements

import httplib, urllib
import re
params = urllib.urlencode({‘q’: ‘login’, ‘email’: ‘juasjuas@lol.com’, ‘pwd’: ‘lala’})
conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("my.lolizator.com:80")
conn.request("GET", "/cmd.php?"+params)
response = conn.getresponse()
print response.status, response.reason
#data = response.read()
#print data
cookies = response.getheader("set-cookie")
m = re.search(‘.*PHPSESSID=([a-zA-Z0-9]+);.*’, cookies)
session = m.group(1)
print "session %s" % session
XML=‘<tag1 name="testgroup"><tag2 id="12" type="3"><tag3 id="1">aaa</tag3></tag2></tag1>’
params = urllib.urlencode({‘q’: ’set’})
headers = { "Cookie": "PHPSESSID=" + session, "Content-type": "text/xml",
"Content-Length": "%d" % len(XML)}
conn.request("POST", "/cmd.php?"+params, "", headers)
conn.send(XML)
response = conn.getresponse()
print response.status, response.reason
print response.read()
conn.close()