Python: Importing urllib.quote

Question

I would like to use urllib.quote(). But python (python3) is not finding the module. Suppose, I have this line of code:

print(urllib.quote("châteu", safe=''))

How do I import urllib.quote?

import urllib or import urllib.quote both give

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'quote'

What confuses me is that urllib.request is accessible via import urllib.request

Softcover

Answer 1

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.

Raconteur

what safe = '' indiicates? – Bodi

@ajinzrathod, I came from OP's code. According to documentation, The optional safe parameter specifies additional ASCII characters that should not be quoted — its default value is '/'. -> / is not quoted by default, but with safe='', / is quoted as '%2F'. – Raconteur

Answer 2

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

Profluent

You should be more forward looking. Assume python3 and except 2.7. try: import urllib.parse as urlparse except ImportError: from urlparse import urlparse # python 2.7.11 – Act

@LincolnRandallMcFarland What you are talking about is such a irrelevant micro optimization. It makes it no harder or easier to completely drop Python 2.X support in the project in the future. – Profluent

If you want to make throwing and catching an exception the standard import process of your most common use case just because ..., it is no cycles off of my clock but know what you are doing: exceptions should be exceptional. It is the difference between making it work and making it better. – Act

This is such a meaningless discussion. Both are valid... if you catch the the Python 3 exception then try to import the Python 2.7 library, but for some reason both are missing the exception thrown will say that it's missing the Python 2.7 library. Very confusing. In reality if you care that much about exceptions there are better ways to handle this, e.g. six or checking the Python version instead of relying on an exception. but in reality if you care that much about something so meaningless you shouldn't be keeping Python 2 backwards compatibility at all because it's EOL this year anyway. – Profluent

Answer 3

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

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

Apomixis

Answer 4

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

Curator

There's no advantage to not using exceptions. Quite the contrary: using exceptions if actually more performant. – Lindbergh

Answer 5

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.

Busk