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pythonurllib

should I call close() after urllib.urlopen()?

I'm new to Python and reading someone else's code:

should urllib.urlopen() be followed by urllib.close()? Otherwise, one would leak connections, correct?

Solution

  • The close method must be called on the result of urllib.urlopen, not on the urllib module itself as you're thinking about (as you mention urllib.close -- which doesn't exist).

    The best approach: instead of x = urllib.urlopen(u) etc, use:

    import contextlib

with contextlib.closing(urllib.urlopen(u)) as x:
   ...use x at will here...

    The with statement, and the closing context manager, will ensure proper closure even in presence of exceptions.