Question

I can pull a any page from wikipedia with

import httplib
conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("en.wikipedia.org")
conn.debuglevel = 1
conn.request("GET","/wiki/Normal_Distribution",headers={'User-Agent':'Python httplib'})
r1 = conn.getresponse()
r1.read()

The normal response will be

reply: 'HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n'
header: Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:49:36 GMT
header: Server: Apache
header: Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate
header: Content-Language: en
header: Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
header: Last-Modified: Sun, 03 Apr 2011 17:23:50 GMT
header: Content-Length: 263638
header: Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
header: Age: 1280309
header: X-Cache: HIT from sq77.wikimedia.org
header: X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from sq77.wikimedia.org:3128
header: X-Cache: MISS from sq66.wikimedia.org
header: X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from sq66.wikimedia.org:80
header: Connection: close

But if I try to pull a random page with /wiki/Special:Random I get a 302 response and an empty page

reply: 'HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily\r\n'
header: Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:25:52 GMT
header: Server: Apache
header: Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate
header: Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
header: Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
header: Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuticorin_Port_Trust
header: Content-Length: 0
header: Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
header: X-Cache: MISS from sq60.wikimedia.org
header: X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from sq60.wikimedia.org:3128
header: X-Cache: MISS from sq62.wikimedia.org
header: X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from sq62.wikimedia.org:80
header: Connection: close

How do I get a non-empty random page?

Answer 1

The 302 is a redirect. It’s telling you where to go in the following line:

header: Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tuticorin_port_trust 

You just need to follow the redirect.