Python: Checking if you can connect to a given url (urllib2)

Question

Is there a way beyond catching exceptions(HTTPError,URLError), to check if access to a url is permitted.

I have to constantly(every 30 secs) ping a url (using urllib2.open)(which might or might not be valid). And throwing and catching exceptions each time seems excessive. I couldn't find anything in the documentation.

Answer 1

There's nothing wrong with using try/except. That's the way to do such things in python.

it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission

Answer 2

import requests
r = requests.get('http://httpbin.org/get')
>>> r.status_code == requests.codes.ok
True
>>> r.status_code
200

requests