With the Python httplib "HTTPConnection" object, how do you send a header without a value?

Question

I have the following code but httplib still treats the header 'emptyheader' as key:value pair.

h = httplib.HTTPConnection("somewhere:5000")
headers = {}
headers['emptyheader'] = None
h.request('POST', '/somewhere', '', headers)

How do I send the sane request but with a valueless header 'emptyheader'?

Martijn Pieters · Answer 1 · 2013-03-01T21:15:46.037

1

Set the header value to '':

headers['emptyheader'] = ''

would output:

emptyheader: \r\n

edited Mar 01 '13 at 21:15

answered Mar 01 '13 at 19:52

Martijn Pieters

httplib still treats the header as having a value when formatting the request. – Will Mar 01 '13 at 20:11
1

@Will: It is *not* clear what output you are expecting, and how that compares to what you are seeing. – Martijn Pieters Mar 01 '13 at 21:17

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 01 '13 at 21:12

0

No way to do it using httplib. 'headers' parameter must be a dictionary. httplib then constructs headers as colon-separated name-value pairs.

And I think requests module does the same thing.

So, as an option, try curl:

subprocess.call(['curl', '-i', '-H', '"emptyheader"', '"http://somewhere:5000/somewhere"'])

But, I'm not sure why do you need it: http headers are key:value pairs by design.

answered Mar 01 '13 at 21:12

alecxe

This doesn't work at all for me. (To many nested quotes/no header is sent at all) – t-8ch Mar 01 '13 at 21:19
Thanks, I wanted to avoid doing it this way but it looks like I may have to. – Will Mar 01 '13 at 21:47

2 Answers2