One of the most common tasks when programming is retrieving data from the internet. Thankfully, Python has a built-in module called urllib that makes this easy.
Urllib is part of Python's standard library, meaning it comes pre-installed with Python without needing to download anything separately. This makes it extremely convenient for fetching data from the web.
Why Use Urllib?
There are other third-party modules like Requests that can retrieve data from the web. However, urllib has some advantages:
This makes urllib a great starting point for basic HTTP requests before graduating to more full-featured libraries.
Making Requests with Urllib
The basic usage is simple. For example, to retrieve a web page:
import urllib.request
with urllib.request.urlopen('http://www.example.com') as response:
html = response.read()We import urllib.request, open the URL, send the request and read the response. We can then process the html string further.
urllib also allows handling:
And more. So while basic, urllib is quite versatile.
When to Use Something Else
urllib is showing its age and lacks some conveniences of modern solutions like Requests. For production applications, you may eventually outgrow urllib and migrate to Requests or aiohttp.
But for learning or simple scripts, urllib is built-in and gets the job done! Over time you can level up to more full-featured libraries.
So in summary, urllib is Python's no-frills, built-in URL retrieval library. It's simple yet surprisingly capable for basic HTTP requests.