If statements returning wrong data

Question

I have some code similar to this: It goes though a list and queries an API to check if it returns a JSON object:

for one in many:   
    print "Checking "+one
    url = "http://an.api/"+one
    contents = urllib2.urlopen(url)
    print len(contents.read()) > 10
    if len(contents.read()) > 10:
        print "online"
    else:
        print "offline"

If JSON is returned, the user is online, if not he is offline. Running the script returns something similar to this:

Checking a
True
offline
Checking b
True
offline
Checking c
False
offline

It says "True", but why does it print "offline"?

Answer 1

You need to save off the read, if you are going to perform multiple operations on the output

for one in many:   
    print "Checking "+one
    url = "http://an.api/"+one
    contents = urllib2.urlopen(url)
    myData = contents.read()
    print len(myData) > 10
    if len(myData) > 10:
        print "online"
    else:
        print "offline"