In Python, how do I use urllib to see if a website is 404 or 200?

Solution 1:

The getcode() method (Added in python2.6) returns the HTTP status code that was sent with the response, or None if the URL is no HTTP URL.

>>> a=urllib.urlopen('http://www.google.com/asdfsf')
>>> a.getcode()
404
>>> a=urllib.urlopen('http://www.google.com/')
>>> a.getcode()
200

Solution 2:

You can use urllib2 as well:

import urllib2

req = urllib2.Request('http://www.python.org/fish.html')
try:
    resp = urllib2.urlopen(req)
except urllib2.HTTPError as e:
    if e.code == 404:
        # do something...
    else:
        # ...
except urllib2.URLError as e:
    # Not an HTTP-specific error (e.g. connection refused)
    # ...
else:
    # 200
    body = resp.read()

Note that HTTPError is a subclass of URLError which stores the HTTP status code.