Question

I am relatively new (as in a few days) to Python – I am looking for an example that would show me how to post a form to a website (say http://www.example.com).

I already know how to use Curl. Infact, I have written C+++ code that does exactly the same thing (i.e. POST a form using Curl), but I would like some starting point (a few lines from which I can build on), which will show me how to do this using Python.

Answer 1

Here is an example using urllib and urllib2 for both POST and GET:

POST – If urlopen() has a second parameter then it is a POST request.

import urllib
import urllib2

url = 'http://www.example.com'
values = {'var' : 500}

data = urllib.urlencode(values)
response = urllib2.urlopen(url, data)
page = response.read()

GET – If urlopen() has a single parameter then it is a GET request.

import urllib
import urllib2

url = 'http://www.example.com'
values = {'var' : 500}

data = urllib.urlencode(values)
fullurl = url + '?' + data
response = urllib2.urlopen(fullurl)
page = response.read()

You could also use curl if you call it using os.system().

Here are some helpful links:
http://docs.python.org/library/urllib2.html#urllib2.urlopen
http://docs.python.org/library/os.html#os.system