Question

I created a python server on port 8000 using python -m SimpleHTTPServer.

When I visit this url from my web browser it shows the below content

Now, I want to get the above content using python. So, for that what I did is

>>> import socket
>>> s = socket.socket(
...     socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
>>> s.connect(("localhost", 8000))
>>> s.recv(1024)

But after s.recv(1024) nothing happens it just wait there and prints nothing.

So, my question is how to get above directory content output using python. Also can someone suggest me a tutorial on socket programming with python. I didn’t liked the official tutorial that much.

I also observed a strange thing when I try to receive contents using python and nothing happens at that time I cannot access localhost:8000 from my web browser but as soon as I kill my python program I can access it.

Answer 1

Arguably the simplest way to get content over http in python is to use the urllib2 module. For example:

from urllib2 import urlopen
f = urlopen('http://localhost:8000')
for line in f:
    print line

This will print out the file hosted by SimpleHTTPServer.