python requests/urllib3 connection pooling not catching HTTP errors

Question

python requests (urllib3) with connection pooling is not catching http errors. Is this a bug? Or am I doing something wrong?

#!/usr/bin/env python

import contextlib
import requests
import sys

connection_pool_size = 2
adapter = requests.adapters.HTTPAdapter(pool_connections=connection_pool_size,
                                        pool_maxsize=connection_pool_size)
r_session = requests.Session()
r_session.mount('http', adapter)

try:
    with contextlib.closing(r_session.get(sys.argv[1], timeout=30, allow_redirects=True)) as r:
        print 'success %r' % r
except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as e:
    print 'HTTPError %r' % e
except Exception as e:
    print 'Exception %r' % e

output:

$ ./test.py https://github.com
success <Response [200]>
$ ./test.py https://github.com/sithlordyoyoma
success <Response [404]>

I was expecting HTTPError . Am I doing something wrong?

Closing with contextlib I got from this thread should I call close() after urllib.urlopen()?. As suggested by Alex Martelli.

actually running requests without connection also showing this behaviour

#!/usr/bin/env python

import contextlib
import requests
import sys


try:
    with contextlib.closing(requests.get(sys.argv[1], timeout=30, allow_redirects=True)) as r:
        print 'success %r' % r
except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as e:
    print 'HTTPError %r' % e
except Exception as e:
    print 'Exception %r' % e

output:

$ ./test.py https://github.com
success <Response [200]>
$ ./test.py https://github.com/sithlordyoyoma
success <Response [404]>

urllib2 does this correctly

#!/usr/bin/env python

import contextlib
import urllib2
import sys


try:
    with contextlib.closing(urllib2.urlopen(sys.argv[1], timeout=30)) as r:
        print 'success %r' % r
except urllib2.HTTPError as e:
    print 'HTTPError %r' % e
except Exception as e:
    print 'Exception %r' % e

output:

$ ./test.py https://github.com
success <addinfourl at 4338734792 whose fp = <socket._fileobject object at 0x1025a5c50>>
$ ./test.py https://github.com/sithlordyoyoma
HTTPError HTTPError()

Answer 1

Regardless of connection pooling, requests.post (and other HTTP methods) does not raise HTTPError on a 404. HTTPError is raised by calling .raise_for_status(), like this example demonstrates:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import requests

r = requests.post(
    'https://github.com/sithlordyoyoma',
    timeout=30,
    allow_redirects=True
)
print 'success %r' % r
r.raise_for_status()