Print HTTP Response Header: Python

When you make an HTTP request to retrieve a webpage you get an HTTP response back. This response includes the usual response body that we see in the web browsers and an HTTP header, which is usually not shown in the web browsers. But this HTTP header may give some useful insight about the web page, web server, cookies, etc. 

The following simple python script prints the HTTP response header for the URL passed as a command line parameter:

	import urllib2
	import sys
	def print_http_respose_header(url):
	try:
	response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
	for key, value in response.info().items():
	print key + ' => ' + value
	except:
	print 'error message'
	def main():
	print_http_respose_header(sys.argv[1])
	if __name__ == '__main__':
	main()

view raw http_response_header.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Output of the above script, with http://python.org as the command line parameter,  is shown below:

	content-length => 45495
	via => 1.1 varnish
	x-cache => HIT
	accept-ranges => bytes
	strict-transport-security => max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains
	vary => Cookie
	server => nginx
	connection => close
	x-served-by => cache-sv95-SJC3
	x-cache-hits => 19
	date => Wed, 18 Jun 2014 16:56:04 GMT
	x-frame-options => SAMEORIGIN
	content-type => text/html; charset=utf-8
	age => 863

view raw http_header_response_out.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub