system.net.httpGet

Description

Retrieves the document at the given URL using the HTTP GET protocol. The document is returned as a string. For example, if you use the URL of a website, you'll get the same thing you'd get by going to that website in a browser and using the browser's "View Source" function.

Syntax

system.net.httpGet(url, connectTimeout, readTimeout, username, password, headerValues, bypassCertValidation)

Parameters

String url - The URL to retrieve.

Integer connectTimeout - The timeout for connecting to the url. In millis. Default is 10,000.

Integer readTimeout - The read timeout for the get operation. In millis. Default is 60,000.

String username - If specified, the call will attempt to authenticate with basic HTTP authentication.

String password - The password used for basic http authentication, if the username parameter is also present.

PyDictionary headerValues - Optional - A dictionary of name/value pairs that will be set in the http header.

Boolean bypassCertValidation - Optional - If the target address is an HTTPS address, and this parameter is True, the system will bypass all SSL certificate validation. This is not recommended, though is sometimes necessary for self-signed certificates.

Returns

String - The content found at the given URL.

Scope

All

Examples

Example 1:

# This code would return the source for Google's homepage

source = system.net.httpGet("http://www.google.com")

print source

Example 2:

# This code would query Yahoo Weather for the temperature in Sacramento, CA

# and then find the current temperature using a regular expression

response = system.net.httpGet("http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=95818")

# import Python's regular expression library

import re

# NOTE - if you've never seen regular expressions before, don't worry, they look

# confusing even to people who use them frequently.

pattern = re.compile('.*?<yweather:condition (.*?)/>', re.DOTALL)

match = pattern.match(response)

if match:

   subText = match.group(1)

   condition = re.compile('.*?text="(.*?)"').match(subText).group(1)

   temp = re.compile('.*?temp="(.*?)"').match(subText).group(1)

   print "Condition: ", condition

   print "Temperature (F): ", temp

else:

   print 'Weather service format changed'