Python error codes httplib httpexception

The module httplib

does not use exceptions to pass HTTP responses, just real errors (bad HTTP responses, broken headers, invalid status codes, prematurely broken connections, etc.). Most subclasses of httplib.HTTPException have an associated message string (stored in an attribute args

), if not even that. httplib.HTTPException

itself may have the value "errno" as the first entry in args

(when brought up via httplib.FakeSocket), but this is not an HTTP error code.

HTTP response codes are passed through the object httplib.HTTPConnection

; the method getresponse

will (usually) return an instance HTTPResponse

with the attribute status

set to the HTTP response code and the attribute reason

set to its text version. This includes error codes such as 404

and 500

. I say "usually" because you (or the library you are using) can override httplib.HTTPConnection.response_class

to return something else.