Making HTTP POST request

Question

I\'m trying to make a POST request to retrieve information about a book. Here is the code that returns HTTP code: 302, Moved

import httplib, urllib
params =          


        

Answer 1

Their server seems to want you to acquire the proper cookie. This works:

import urllib, urllib2, cookielib

cookie_jar = cookielib.CookieJar()
opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cookie_jar))
urllib2.install_opener(opener)

# acquire cookie
url_1 = 'http://www.bkstr.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/BuybackMaterialsView?langId=-1&catalogId=10001&storeId=10051&schoolStoreId=15828'
req = urllib2.Request(url_1)
rsp = urllib2.urlopen(req)

# do POST
url_2 = 'http://www.bkstr.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/BuybackSearch'
values = dict(isbn='9780131185838', schoolStoreId='15828', catalogId='10001')
data = urllib.urlencode(values)
req = urllib2.Request(url_2, data)
rsp = urllib2.urlopen(req)
content = rsp.read()

# print result
import re
pat = re.compile('Title:.*')
print pat.search(content).group()

# OUTPUT: Title:&nbsp;&nbsp;Statics & Strength of Materials for Arch (w/CD)<br />

Answer 2

1. Perhaps that's what the browser gets, and you'll just have to follow the 302 redirect.

2. If all else fails, you can monitor the dialogue between Firefox and the Web Server using FireBug or tcpdump or wireshark, and see which HTTP headers are different. Possibly it's just the User Agent: header.

Answer 3

You might want to use the urllib2 module which should handle redirects better. Here's an example of POSTING with urllib2.