Add params to given URL in Python

Suppose I was given a URL.
It might already have GET parameters (e.g. http://example.com/search?q=question) or it might not (e.g. http://example.com/).

And now I need to add some parameters to it like {'lang':'en','tag':'python'}. In the first case I'm going to have http://example.com/search?q=question&lang=en&tag=python and in the second — http://example.com/search?lang=en&tag=python.

Is there any standard way to do this?

Solution 1:

There are a couple of quirks with the urllib and urlparse modules. Here's a working example:

try:
    import urlparse
    from urllib import urlencode
except: # For Python 3
    import urllib.parse as urlparse
    from urllib.parse import urlencode

url = "http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=question"
params = {'lang':'en','tag':'python'}

url_parts = list(urlparse.urlparse(url))
query = dict(urlparse.parse_qsl(url_parts[4]))
query.update(params)

url_parts[4] = urlencode(query)

print(urlparse.urlunparse(url_parts))

ParseResult, the result of urlparse(), is read-only and we need to convert it to a list before we can attempt to modify its data.

Solution 2:

Why

I've been not satisfied with all the solutions on this page (come on, where is our favorite copy-paste thing?) so I wrote my own based on answers here. It tries to be complete and more Pythonic. I've added a handler for dict and bool values in arguments to be more consumer-side (JS) friendly, but they are yet optional, you can drop them.

How it works

Test 1: Adding new arguments, handling Arrays and Bool values:

url = 'http://stackoverflow.com/test'
new_params = {'answers': False, 'data': ['some','values']}

add_url_params(url, new_params) == \
    'http://stackoverflow.com/test?data=some&data=values&answers=false'

Test 2: Rewriting existing args, handling DICT values:

url = 'http://stackoverflow.com/test/?question=false'
new_params = {'question': {'__X__':'__Y__'}}

add_url_params(url, new_params) == \
    'http://stackoverflow.com/test/?question=%7B%22__X__%22%3A+%22__Y__%22%7D'

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

Code itself. I've tried to describe it in details:

from json import dumps

try:
    from urllib import urlencode, unquote
    from urlparse import urlparse, parse_qsl, ParseResult
except ImportError:
    # Python 3 fallback
    from urllib.parse import (
        urlencode, unquote, urlparse, parse_qsl, ParseResult
    )


def add_url_params(url, params):
    """ Add GET params to provided URL being aware of existing.

    :param url: string of target URL
    :param params: dict containing requested params to be added
    :return: string with updated URL

    >> url = 'http://stackoverflow.com/test?answers=true'
    >> new_params = {'answers': False, 'data': ['some','values']}
    >> add_url_params(url, new_params)
    'http://stackoverflow.com/test?data=some&data=values&answers=false'
    """
    # Unquoting URL first so we don't loose existing args
    url = unquote(url)
    # Extracting url info
    parsed_url = urlparse(url)
    # Extracting URL arguments from parsed URL
    get_args = parsed_url.query
    # Converting URL arguments to dict
    parsed_get_args = dict(parse_qsl(get_args))
    # Merging URL arguments dict with new params
    parsed_get_args.update(params)

    # Bool and Dict values should be converted to json-friendly values
    # you may throw this part away if you don't like it :)
    parsed_get_args.update(
        {k: dumps(v) for k, v in parsed_get_args.items()
         if isinstance(v, (bool, dict))}
    )

    # Converting URL argument to proper query string
    encoded_get_args = urlencode(parsed_get_args, doseq=True)
    # Creating new parsed result object based on provided with new
    # URL arguments. Same thing happens inside of urlparse.
    new_url = ParseResult(
        parsed_url.scheme, parsed_url.netloc, parsed_url.path,
        parsed_url.params, encoded_get_args, parsed_url.fragment
    ).geturl()

    return new_url

Please be aware that there may be some issues, if you'll find one please let me know and we will make this thing better