Python: How to get the Content-Type of an URL?

Question

I need to get the content-type of an internet(intranet) resource not a local file. How can I get the MIME type from a resource behind an URL:

I tried this:

res = urllib.urlopen("http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry")
http_message = res.info()
message = http_message.getplist()

I get: ['charset=UTF-8']

How can I get the Content-Type, can be done using urllib and how or if not what is the other way?

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/843392/python-get-http-headers-from-urllib-call — sqrtsben, Sep 18 '12 at 09:48

DomTomCat · Answer 1 · 2016-05-04T06:12:38.537

29

A Python3 solution to this:

import urllib.request
with urllib.request.urlopen('http://www.google.com') as response:
    info = response.info()
    print(info.get_content_type())      # -> text/html
    print(info.get_content_maintype())  # -> text
    print(info.get_content_subtype())   # -> html

edited May 04 '16 at 06:12

answered Apr 27 '16 at 07:07

DomTomCat

8,189
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score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 18 '12 at 10:03

20

res = urllib.urlopen("http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry" )
http_message = res.info()
full = http_message.type # 'text/plain'
main = http_message.maintype # 'text'

answered Sep 18 '12 at 10:03

Mikhail Karavashkin

1,365
10
16

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 23 '22 at 10:46

Update: since info() function is deprecated in Python 3.9, you can read about the preferred type called headers here

import urllib

r = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
header = r.headers                              # type is email.message.EmailMessage
contentType = header.get_content_type()         # or header.get('content-type')
contentLength = header.get('content-length')
filename = header.get_filename()

also, a good way to quickly get the mimetype without actually loading the url

import mimetypes
contentType, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(url)

The second method does not guarantee an answer but is a quick and dirty trick since it's just looking at the URL string rather than actually opening the URL.

Python: How to get the Content-Type of an URL?

3 Answers3