Http Redirection code 3XX in python requests

Question

I am trying to capture http status code 3XX/302 for a redirection url. But I cannot get it because it gives 200 status code.

Here is the code:

import requests
r = requests.get('http://goo.gl/NZek5')
print r.status_code

I suppose this should issue either 301 or 302 because it redirects to another page. I had tried few redirecting urls (for e.g. http://fb.com ) but again it is issuing the 200. What should be done to capture the redirection code properly?

Answer 1

requests handles redirects for you, see redirection and history.

Set allow_redirects=False if you don't want requests to handle redirections, or you can inspect the redirection responses contained in the r.history list.

Demo:

>>> import requests
>>> url = 'https://httpbin.org/redirect-to'
>>> params = {"status_code": 301, "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/q/22150023"}
>>> r = requests.get(url, params=params)
>>> r.history
[<Response [301]>, <Response [302]>]
>>> r.history[0].status_code
301
>>> r.history[0].headers['Location']
'https://stackoverflow.com/q/22150023'
>>> r.url
'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22150023/http-redirection-code-3xx-in-python-requests'
>>> r = requests.get(url, params=params, allow_redirects=False)
>>> r.status_code
301
>>> r.url
'https://httpbin.org/redirect-to?status_code=301&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstackoverflow.com%2Fq%2F22150023'

So if allow_redirects is True, the redirects have been followed and the final response returned is the final page after following redirects. If allow_redirects is False, the first response is returned, even if it is a redirect.