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When I use:

import requests
r = requests.get("https://example.com")

I get the following exception:

requests.exceptions.SSLError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:645)

However, If i use following code:

url = "https://www.example.com"
request = urllib.request.urlopen(url)

It gives me the correct response[200] code. Why is it so? What is the difference between these two methods and which one should be preferred?

Carl
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Anmol Bhatia
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2 Answers2

9

Use the former one: I will add the source of why it's better. Anyways you need to set verify as False to prevent requests from verifying SSL certificates for HTTPS requests:

import requests
r = requests.get("https://example.com", verify=False)

Edit:

Difference between requests.get() and urllib.request.urlopen() python

What are the differences between the urllib, urllib2, and requests module?

Carl
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Devi Prasad Khatua
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  • So correct me if i am wrong,request.get() [with default verify=true] will try to verify the certificate and urllib.request.urlopen() does not do that. – Anmol Bhatia Jun 30 '16 at 05:52
  • it's done explicity by using https connection https://docs.python.org/2/library/httplib.html#httplib.HTTPSConnection – Devi Prasad Khatua Jun 30 '16 at 05:58
  • Thanks, i got it now. Its always better to use request.get/post so that it will perform ssl verification for you. Thanks for the clarification! – Anmol Bhatia Jun 30 '16 at 06:01
1

This is happening because example.com does not have a valid certificate. So requests warns you that the https connection won't be trusted. If you trust the server then you should do what wolframalpha suggested.

Kroustou
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