Python: Importing urllib.quote

Question

In Python 3.x, you need to import urllib.parse.quote:

>>> import urllib.parse
>>> urllib.parse.quote("châteu", safe='')
'ch%C3%A2teu'

According to Python 2.x urllib module documentation:

NOTE

The urllib module has been split into parts and renamed in Python 3 to urllib.request, urllib.parse, and urllib.error.

If you need to handle both Python 2.x and 3.x you can catch the exception and load the alternative.

try:
    from urllib import quote  # Python 2.X
except ImportError:
    from urllib.parse import quote  # Python 3+

You could also use the python compatibility wrapper six to handle this.

from six.moves.urllib.parse import quote

urllib went through some changes in Python3 and can now be imported from the parse submodule

>>> from urllib.parse import quote  
>>> quote('"')                      
'%22'                               

This is how I handle this, without using exceptions.

import sys
if sys.version_info.major > 2:  # Python 3 or later
    from urllib.parse import quote
else:  # Python 2
    from urllib import quote

Use six:

from six.moves.urllib.parse import quote

six will simplify compatibility problems between Python 2 and Python 3, such as different import paths.