How can I perform a HEAD request with the mechanize library?

Question

I know how to do a HEAD request with httplib, but I have to use mechanize for this site.

Essentially, what I need to do is grab a value from the header (filename) without actually downloading the file.

Any suggestions how I could accomplish this?

Answer 1

Mechanize itself only sends GETs and POSTs, but you can easily extend the Request class to send HEAD. Example:

import mechanize

class HeadRequest(mechanize.Request):
    def get_method(self):
        return "HEAD"

request = HeadRequest("http://www.example.com/")
response = mechanize.urlopen(request)

print response.info()

Answer 2

In mechanize there is no need to do HeadRequest class etc.

Simply

import mechanize

br = mechanize.Browser()

r = br.open("http://www.example.com/")

print r.info()

That's all.