How to determine if a page is being redirected

Question

I need to check whether a page is being redirected or not without actually downloading the content. I just need the final URL. What's the best way of doing this is Python? Thanks!

Answer 1

If you specifically want to avoid downloading the content, you'll need to use the HEAD request method. I believe the urllib and urllib2 libraries do not support HEAD requests, so you'll have to use the lower-level httplib library:

import httplib

h = httplib.HTTPConnection('www.example.com')
h.request('HEAD', '/')
response = h.getresponse()

// Check for 30x status code
if 300 <= response.status < 400:
    // It's a redirect
    location = response.getheader('Location')

Answer 2

When you open the URL with urllib2, and you're redirected, you get a status 30x for redirection. Check the info to see the location to which you're redirected. You don't need to read the page to read the info() that's part of the response.