Python

There are 16 posts filed in Python (this is page 1 of 2).

Pascal Triangle Generator in Python, and then in Haskell – The Gubatron Method

Here’s in python, imperatively, and then in functional style without the need for loops.


def pascal(n):
if n == 1:
return [ 1 ]
if n == 2:
return [ 1, 1 ]
prev = pascal(n–1)
results = []
for i in range(n):
if i == 0:
continue
if i == n–1:
break
results.append(prev[i] + prev[i–1])
return [1] + results + [1]
# functional style, no loops
def pascal_fp(n):
if n == 1:
return [ 1 ]
prev = pascal_fp(n–1)
return list(map(lambda x,y:x+y, [0] + prev, prev + [0]))

view raw

pascal.py

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Here’s in Haskell, I call it the gubatron’s method, explained in the comments.
Saw it by looking at a pattern while trying to solve it in paper, it just clicked.
Not sure if this is how other people code this solution.


— Gubatron's method
— n=3 [1, 2, 1]
— copy the list and append a 0 on the left of the first
— and append a 0 at the end of the second
— [0, 1, 2, 1]
— [1, 2, 1, 0]
— add them up!
— n=4 [1, 3, 3, 1]
—
— append 0s to both sides and add them up
— n=4 [1, 3, 3, 1]
— [0, 1, 3, 3, 1]
— [1, 3, 3, 1, 0]
— n=5 [1, 4, 6, 4, 1]
— and so on
— add two lists, for clarity
addLists :: Num c => [c] -> [c] -> [c]
addLists l1 l2 = zipWith (+) l1 l2
pascal :: (Eq a1, Num a1, Num a2) => a1 -> [a2]
pascal 1 = [ 1 ]
pascal n =
let prev = pascal(n–1)
zero_prev = [0] ++ prev
prev_zero = prev ++ [0]
in
addLists zero_prev prev_zero
— [1,2,3] -> "1 2 3"
listToString = unwords. map show
— mapM_ -> map monadic so no weird IO errors are triggered
printTriangle n = mapM_ putStrLn (map listToString (map pascal [1..n]))
main = do
input <- getLine
printTriangle . (read :: String -> Int) $ input

view raw

pascal.hs

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Using a linear array as a bidimensional matrix

Often times I find the need to use a list or linear array as if it was a table.

Everytime I need to do so, I always end up coding functions to convert a (x,y) coordinate to the real index n in the array.

Let me illustrate, with an example. You have a string that defines the elements of a game board, and you want to work using (x,y) coordinates.

[python]
s="xxxxx@xx@xxx@@xx"
[/python]

If you were to look at it as a matrix (width=4), it’d be something like this
[python]
s="xxxx
x@xx
@xxx
@@xx"
[/python]

However, I can’t do
s[x,y], since it’s a linear array, it’s a string.

You need to convert from (x,y) to a number that represents an index in the array.

This is very simple:
[python]
width=4
def getNforXY(x,y):
return x + width*y
[/python]

What if you want to do it backwards. What if you need to know what’s the X and Y for a given index N in the string?

[python]
def getXYforN(n):
y = int(n/width)
x = n – width/y
return (x,y)
[/python]

Cheers

Python Script to Update WordPress in One Step

During the past week, I think I had to update all my wordpress instances twice, and it’s become really annoying doing this manually. I’ve written a python script which I’ll share with you.

How I keep my wordpress updated by hand
I tend to keep my wp-content folder outside of my wordpress installation for 2 reasons:

1. I don’t like to loose my themes, plugins and customizations
2. I like to keep all my customization changes under subversion

So, if I had my wordpress installation say at:
/home/user/public_html/blog

I’d keep my wp-content folder for that here:

/home/user/public_html/wp-content-for-blog

So when I upgrade my blog, I always remove the original wp-content folder that comes along wordpress, and I symlink my hard worked on wp-content folder that lives outside to the freshly unzipped wordpress folder.

[bash]
user@machine:~/public_html/blog$ ls -l
…
lrwxrwxr-x 1 user www 54 2008-11-26 09:29 wp-content -> /home/user/public_html/wp-content-for-blog
…
[/bash]

So what I endup doing all the time, is downloading the latest.zip to ~/public_html/, it will unzip under ~/public_html/wordpress, and then I’ll copy the current ~/public_html/blog/wp-config.php to ~/public_html/wordpress, then I’ll remove the default ~/public_html/wordpress/wp-content and symlink the outer wp-content with all my customizations, themes and plugins to it. Once done, I’ll make a backup of the old wordpress folder, and then I’ll rename wordpress folder to the name of the blog folder, and it’s all done.

It’s simple, but when you have to do it for 5 blogs, every week, it’s not fun anymore.

The Update Script

So here’s a script to do it in one step. If you’re not using my symlinked technique, this will do it for you, you only need to specify the full path to the folder where you want to keep your current wp-content folder outside the new installation before you apply the update, and the name of the folder where your current blog lives. The script below will have its configuration variables towards the beginning set so that they are in line with the example I’ve been talking about.

[python]
#!/usr/bin/python
#########################################################################################
#
# upgrade_wordpress.py – Script to automatically upgrade your wordpress installation.
#
# Requirements:
# – Python 2.4 or older
# – WordPress should already be installed
# – CURL (sudo apt-get install curl)
#
# Author: Angel (Gubatron) Leon
# LICENSE: See the GPL2 license.
# 2008
#########################################################################################
import os

#########################################################################################
#Config (relative to the folder where this script will be run from)
#########################################################################################

#The current folder where the blog lives
BLOG_FOLDER=’blog’

#
# The first time you run the script, it will try to make a copy of your
# current wp-content folder outside. Copy here the location of where
# the wp-content folder with your themes and plugins should exist.
#
# After it unzips, it will remove the default wp-content folder from
# the new installation, and it will symlink the external wp-content
# That way you don’t ever have to worry about loosing your customizations
# and plugins.
#
WP_CONTENT_OUTSIDE_COPY_FOLDER="/home/user/public_html/wp-content-for-blog"

#This is where a backup of your current blog will be
BLOG_FOLDER_BACKUP_FOLDER=BLOG_FOLDER+’.old’

#Where to download the wordpress latest.zip from
WORDPRESS_LATEST_ZIP_URL=’http://wordpress.org/latest.zip’

#### DO NOT MODIFY AFTER THESE LINES ####

def downloadWordpress(url=WORDPRESS_LATEST_ZIP_URL):
if os.path.exists(‘latest.zip’):
print "Removing old latest.zip"
os.remove(‘latest.zip’)

#Try to download with CURL
print "Attempting to download latest.zip from wordpress.org"
os.system(‘curl %s -o latest.zip’ % url)

if not os.path.exists(‘latest.zip’):
os.system(‘wget ‘ + url)

return os.path.exists(‘latest.zip’)

def dirExists(dirName):
return os.path.exists(dirName) and os.path.isdir(dirName)

def backupBlog(currentBlogFolder=BLOG_FOLDER,
wpContentOriginalFolder=WP_CONTENT_OUTSIDE_COPY_FOLDER,
backupFolder=BLOG_FOLDER_BACKUP_FOLDER):

#Remove any previous backups
if os.path.exists(backupFolder) and os.path.isdir(backupFolder):
print "Removing previous backup folder"
os.system(‘rm -fr ‘ + backupFolder)

#Copy the current blog folder into a backup folder just in case.
#We won’t do any database backups for now.
print "Creating new backup folder"
os.system(‘cp -r %s %s’ % (currentBlogFolder,backupFolder))

#Check for the copy of wp-content outside the blog, if it doesn’t exist
#we’ll make it for the first time.
if not dirExists(wpContentOriginalFolder):
print "Creating outside copy of wp-content"
os.system(‘cp -r %s %s’ % (os.path.join(currentBlogFolder,’wp-content’),
wpContentOriginalFolder))

#Copy the latest wp-config.php outside to the current folder
print "Copying your latest wp-config.php outside"
os.system(‘cp %s .’ % (os.path.join(currentBlogFolder,’wp-config.php’)))

backupFolderExists = dirExists(backupFolder)
wpContentFolderExists = dirExists(wpContentOriginalFolder)
configFileExists = os.path.exists(‘wp-config.php’)

return backupFolderExists and wpContentOriginalFolder and configFileExists

def upgradeBlog(currentBlogFolder=BLOG_FOLDER,
backupFolder=BLOG_FOLDER_BACKUP_FOLDER,
url=WORDPRESS_LATEST_ZIP_URL,
wpContentOriginalFolder=WP_CONTENT_OUTSIDE_COPY_FOLDER):

if not downloadWordpress(url):
print "Could not download latest.zip, aborting."
return False

if not backupBlog(currentBlogFolder,wpContentOriginalFolder,backupFolder):
print "Could not backup blog or wp-config.ph, aborting."
return False

if currentBlogFolder == ‘wordpress’:
print "The current blog folder cannot be ‘wordpress, aborting."
return False

#1. If a wordpress/ folder exists, wipe it.
if dirExists(‘wordpress’):
print "Removing old wordpress folder"
os.system(‘rm -fr wordpress’)

if dirExists(‘%s.delete’ % currentBlogFolder):
print "Removing old %s.delete folder" % currentBlogFolder
os.system(‘rm -fr %s.delete folder’ % currentBlogFolder)

#2. Unzip new copy
os.system(‘unzip latest.zip’)

if not dirExists(‘wordpress’):
print "Could not unzip the wordpress installation, aborting."
return False

#1. Copy wp-config.php into the new installation
os.system(‘cp wp-config.php wordpress/’)

#2. Remove the default wp-content folder
os.system(‘rm -fr wordpress/wp-content’)

#3. Symlink the original wp-content that lives outside
os.system(‘ln -s %s wordpress/wp-content’ % (wpContentOriginalFolder))

#4. Verify symlink was created
if not (os.path.exists(‘wordpress/wp-content’) and os.path.islink(‘wordpress/wp-content’)):
print "Could not create symlink to wp-content, aborting."
return False

#5. Move original folder to folder.delete, and make this wordpress folder the current folder.
os.system(‘mv %s %s.delete’ % (currentBlogFolder,currentBlogFolder))

if not dirExists(currentBlogFolder + ".delete"):
print "Could not rename current folder for later deletion, aborting."
return False

#6. Rename the new installation as the current blog
os.system(‘mv %s %s’ % (‘wordpress’,currentBlogFolder))

if dirExists(‘wordpress’):
print "ALERT: The wordpress folder still exists."
return False

if not dirExists(currentBlogFolder):
print "ALERT: The blog doesn’t exist, recover from the backup folder %s please" % (backupFolder)
return False

#7 Cleanup
os.system(‘rm -fr %s.delete’ % (currentBlogFolder))

return True

if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
upgradeBlog()
[/python]

Requirements

  • shell access to the machine where you have your wordpress installed
  • a python interpreter installed
  • curl (sudo apt-get install curl) to download the zip. If you don’t have it it’ll attempt to use wget

    • Installation

  • Right outside your wordpress installation folder, create a new file called upgrade_wordpress.py
  • Copy and paste the script inside that file
  • Edit the configuration variables to point to the name of your wordpress installation folder, and give it a full path to where you want to keep your wp-content folder (including the name of the folder, so if you want to name it the same way, you could do for example /home/user/wp-content and it’ll be saved right under your home)

    • Usage:
    [bash]python upgrade_wordpress.py[/bash]

    The script is very fault proof, it will always try to abort in case something is not going the way it’s expected. At the end of the day it’ll also leave a backup copy of your current blog in case something goes bad, you can always recover.

    Script to automatically detect and ban malicious IPs that try to brute force SSH accounts

    We’ve noticed that most of our servers have been under heavy attack from random IP addresses to break via SSH.

    With the help of the last post on how to ban an IP, and the following python script, you’ll be able to have a cronjob that runs once or twice a day and automagically bans all the offending ips from ever trying to brute force their way in ever again.

    touch and make executable a file called “detect_ssh_hostiles”

    touch detect_ssh_hostiles
chmod +x detect_ssh_hostiles

    Then copy the following code inside:

    # Usage:
# python detect_ssh_hostiles [auth.log file path]
#
# Requirement: There should be "ban_ip" and "unban_ip" command availability on the path
#
# Note: you gotta have read permissions on the auth.log file and sudo
#       permissions for the script to ban the ips.

#If an IP meets this number of failed login attemmpts it will be banned
BAN_THRESHOLD = 7
SUSPECTS = {}

#Put here IP addresses you trust, could be making genuine login errors
SAFE_IPS = ['81.73.111.49','101.73.111.160','72.31.171.235','72.36.23.234','82.36.180.210','202.132.82.16']

import os
import sys
import re

BANNED = {}
def loadBanned():
  '''
  This function will load all the banned IPS into the BANNED Dict.
  It will also count how many times (by mistake) the same IP has
  been banned, and it will unban it, so that it will appear only once.
  '''
  global BANNED
  command = 'sudo iptables --list --numeric'
  try:
    p = os.popen(command,'rb')
  except Exception,e:
    print e
    sys.exit(1)

  line = '-'

  while line != '':
    line = p.readline().strip()

    if line.startswith("DROP"):
      parts = line.split()
      ip = parts[3]

      #add hit or register banned ip
      if BANNED.has_key(ip):
        BANNED[ip]+=1
      else:
        BANNED[ip]=1

  #Make sure banned IPs are banned only once
  for ip in BANNED:
    if BANNED[ip] > 1:
      print "IP %s has been banned %d times" % (ip, BANNED[ip])
      n=BANNED[ip]-1
      while n > 0:
        os.system("unban_ip %s" % ip)
        print ("unban_ip %s" % ip)
        n=n-1

  p.close()

# ---- here we go ----
loadBanned()

#read auth log
logfile = '/var/log/auth.log'

if len(sys.argv)==2:
  logfile = sys.argv[1]

command = 'grep "Failed password for " %s' % logfile
#print command

try:
  p = os.popen(command,'rb')
except Exception,e:
  print e
  sys.exit(1)

line = "123"

while line != '':
  line = p.readline()

  #Sample line:
  # May 25 03:29:49 main sshd[6933]: Failed password for root from 202.118.236.132 port 54863 ssh2
  pattern = "(.*)(froms)(d+.d+.d+.d+)(.*)"
  matchObject = re.match(pattern, line)

  suspect = None
  if matchObject is not None:
    suspect = matchObject.groups()[2]

    #skip safe IPs
    if suspect in SAFE_IPS:
      continue

    if SUSPECTS.has_key(suspect):
      #add a hit
      SUSPECTS[suspect] += 1
    else:
      #add first hit
      SUSPECTS[suspect] = 1

p.close() #close the pipe

print "=="*30

import time
t = time.localtime()
#(2008, 6, 6, 9, 35, 21, 4, 158, 1)

timestr = "%d-%d-%d@%d:%d:%d" % (t[0],t[1],t[2],t[3],t[4],t[5])
print timestr
print "--"*30
if len(SUSPECTS) > 0:
  for suspect in SUSPECTS:
    if SUSPECTS[suspect] >= BAN_THRESHOLD and not BANNED.has_key(suspect):
      print "Banning %s with %d attempts" % (suspect,SUSPECTS[suspect])
      BANNED[suspect]=1
      os.system("ban_ip %s" % suspect)
    elif BANNED.has_key(suspect):
      print "Ip %s has already been banned" % (suspect)
    else:
      print "Suspect candidate? %s with %d attempts" % (suspect,SUSPECTS[suspect])
else:
  print "Found no suspects to ban"

print "=="*30

    Then add this as a cronjob of your root user, and it will automatically ban all those IPs that have tried to break in. See the script for configuration. You can always make some IPs immune to banning by adding them on the SAFE_IPS list.

    [Python] PyCon 2008 attendance jumped 70%!

    Chicago, IL (PRWEB) March 27, 2008 — PyCon 2008, the annual community conference for Python developers, business leaders, and fans showcased the tremendous increase in growth among the community last week in Chicago. Attendance jumped 70 percent from 2007.

    Over 1,000 people gathered at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel for PyCon 2008. The influx of proposals was so great this year that organizers could only accept half the proposals received, simply due to lack of space. Demand for tutorials, in particular, rose so high that organizers added an extra timeslot full of new sessions. Twenty-five of the 28 tutorials were sold out and there were 22 open source development sprint projects available for attendees to participate in, up from 13 in 2007. More than 270 people took part in the development sprints, which is more than attended the entire first PyCon in 2003.

    The best part about PyCon is the people you get to meet
    “As jam-packed as the week’s events were, a number of attendees and speakers remarked to me that they felt the conference this year was the best yet,” said PyCon 2008 chair David Goodger. “It’s great to see months of work come together and have people really enjoy it.”

    PyCon 2008 is organized and run entirely by volunteers. A true grassroots movement, it is a community conference put on by the community for the community. Many attendees enjoy the numerous sessions, but more importantly, they believe the real value of the conference is the community all being there together.

    “The best part about PyCon is the people you get to meet,” said Chris McAvoy, founder and president of the Chicago Python Users Group, which hosted PyCon 2008. “That, coupled with more than 1,000 attendees, compared to the 600 last year, says to me that Python is really building a market here in Chicago and elsewhere. It’s an exciting time to be a Python developer.”

    PyCon 2009 will also be held in Chicago. For more information about PyCon, please visit http://us.pycon.org.

    About PyCon

    Presented by the Python Software Foundation, the world’s largest Python conference brings together a diverse group of developers, enthusiasts, and organizations to explore new challenges, launch new businesses and forge new connections within the Python community. PyCon provides attendees with the opportunity to delve into the dynamic programming language employed by well-known companies such as Google, Cisco, and the New York Times. PyCon helps people learn new tools and techniques, showcase projects, and meet other Python fans.

    Source: PRWeb.com

    [Python] ip2num / num2ip – Store an IP string as a 4 byte int.

    This is probably everywhere, maybe python also comes with it, but I wanted to have my own implementation, and I’ll leave it here for future reference.

    Basically, sometimes you don’t want to store IPs in Strings cause they take too much space, instead you want to be a good programmer and store them as 4 bytes (IPv4 that is).

    So here’s a couple of functions in python to illustrate the conversion process between string to 4 byte integer, or viceversa:

    def ip2num(ipString):
    if ipString is None:
        raise Exception("Invalid IP")

    try:
       octets = [octet.strip() for octet in ipString.split('.')]
    except Exception,e:
        raise e

    num = (int(octets[0])<<24) + (int(octets[1])<<16) + (int(octets[2])<<8) + int(octets[3])
    return num

def num2ip(numericIp):
    if numericIp is None or type(numericIp) != int:
        raise Exception("Invalid numeric IP. Must be an integer")
    return str(numericIp >> 24) + '.' + str((numericIp >> 16) & 255) + '.' + str((numericIp >> 8) & 255) + '.' + str(numericIp & 255)

    PyQt4: Using QMutex vs QMutexLocker.

    Here’s some code for my future reference on how to use QMutex or QMutexLocker.

    Lessons Learned:
    * Use QMutex to protect data, not code. Try not to lock hughe amounts of code within a function with mutex.lock(), mutex.unlock(), if for any reason you forget to release the lock you’ll be in trouble. Use the mutex directly only when you know what it is that you want to protect concurrent access from.
    * When you have a complex function and you don’t want to worry about what to protect and when to release the lock (on exceptions thrown, before returns,etc), you can create an instance of QMutexLocker and it should release the mutex lock upon destruction… this takes us to the next lesson
    * When using a QMutexLocker, DO NOT make the QMutexLocker an attribute of your class, otherwise, the reference will live after the method finishes and the lock won’t be released.

    Here’s some code.

    from PyQt4.Qt import QObject, QMutex, QApplication, QThread, QMutexLocker
import sys

class MutexTestSubject(QObject):
	'''
	Class that uses a QMutex to synchronize
        access to its add(),substract() methods.

        This works perfectly fine.
	'''
	def __init__(self):
		QObject.__init__(self)
		self.MAX_LIMIT = 100
		self.MIN_LIMIT = 0
		self.counter = 50
		self.mutex = QMutex()

	def add(self):
		self.mutex.lock()
		if self.counter < self.MAX_LIMIT:
			self.counter = self.counter + 1
		self.mutex.unlock()

	def substract(self):
		self.mutex.lock()
		if self.counter > self.MIN_LIMIT:
			self.counter = self.counter - 1
		self.mutex.unlock()

	def printStatus(self,thread):
		print "Counter:",self.counter," - Thread:",id(thread)

		if self.counter > self.MAX_LIMIT+1 or self.counter < self.MIN_LIMIT:
			print "Stopping Threads, Max Surpassed, Not Thread Safe. Last Thread:",id(thread)
			sys.exit()
	

class MutexLockerTestSubject(QObject):
	'''
	Class that attemps to synchronize thread
 	access to its add(),substract() methods with
	the QMutexLocker object.
	'''
	def __init__(self):
		QObject.__init__(self)
		self.MAX_LIMIT = 100
		self.MIN_LIMIT = 0
		self.counter = 50
		self.mutex = QMutex()

	def add(self):
		#VIP: DO NOT MAKE mutexLocker an attribute of your class.
		#other wise it won't be destroyed and the lock will never be released.
		mutexLocker = QMutexLocker(self.mutex)
		if self.counter < self.MAX_LIMIT:
			self.counter = self.counter + 1

	def substract(self):
		mutexLocker = QMutexLocker(self.mutex)
		if self.counter > self.MIN_LIMIT:
			self.counter = self.counter - 1

	def printStatus(self,thread):
		print "Counter:",self.counter," - Thread:",id(thread)

		if self.counter > self.MAX_LIMIT+1 or self.counter < self.MIN_LIMIT:
			print "Stopping Threads, Max Surpassed, Not Thread Safe. Last Thread:",id(thread)
			sys.exit()


class AdderWorker(QThread):
	def __init__(self, mutexTestObject):
		self.mutexTestObject = mutexTestObject
		QThread.__init__(self)

	def run(self):
		while(True):
			self.mutexTestObject.add()
			self.mutexTestObject.printStatus(self)

class SubstractorWorker(QThread):
	def __init__(self, mutexTestObject):
		self.mutexTestObject = mutexTestObject
		QThread.__init__(self,mutexTestObject)

	def run(self):
		while(True):
			self.mutexTestObject.substract()
			self.mutexTestObject.printStatus(self)

if __name__ == "__main__":
	USE_MUTEX_LOCKER = True #switch this to use regular mutexes vd QMutexLocker
	app = QApplication(sys.argv)
	mutexTestObject = MutexTestSubject() if not USE_MUTEX_LOCKER else MutexLockerTestSubject()

	adderThread  = AdderWorker(mutexTestObject)
	substracterThread = SubstractorWorker(mutexTestObject)

	adderThread.start()
	substracterThread.start()

	sys.exit(app.exec_())

    Python Reference: Binary Operators

    Python binary operators are pretty much the same as in any other language, however I notice most programmers tend to waste a lot of memory by creating lots and lots of properties say in DB tables, or Objects and using the wrong datatypes. I think its elegant to use the concept of binary flags, for example, if you have an object that has around 8 or 16 boolean properties, you can store their state in 1 byte or 2 bytes (1 char or 2 char fields), and turn on/off the bits on those fields.

    Usually, if you have a binary field, and you want to, turn on bits, toggle bits, and check bits, you do the following.

    Suppose “config” is an 8 bit number, and you want to modify this bits individually, say config=4 (0b100) and you want to turn on the rightmost bit to have 0b101 (which is a 5) you could do the following

    >>> #Uses the | operator
... def turnBitOn(config, binaryFlag):
...   return config | binaryFlag
... 
>>> config = 4
>>> config = turnBitOn(config,1)
>>> print config
5

    If you want to check if a Bit is turned on, just use the “&” operator, if the result is the same as the bit you’re comparing, then its turned on.

    >>> def checkBit(config,binaryFlag):
...   return binaryFlag == config & binaryFlag
... 
>>> print checkBit(config,1)
True
>>> print checkBit(config,2) #checks 0b010 in 0b101
False

    What if you just want to toggle a bit, no matter what’s in there?
    Just use binary XOR, the “^” operator.

    >>> def toggleBit(config,binaryFlag):
...   return config ^ binaryFlag
... 
>>> print config
5
>>> config = toggleBit(config,1)
>>> print config
4
>>> config = toggleBit(config,1)
>>> print config
5

    And now, the last basic operation would be to turn off a bit. For this, you should do a NAND operation. The Binary Not in python as in most programming languages is the “~” operator. This is how you can use it to turn off bits.

    You have to do it in conjunction with the & operator, sort of doing a NAND

    >>> 5 & (~1)
4
>>> 5 &~ 1
4

    So we could define our turnOffBit function as follows:

    >>> def turnOffBit(config,binaryFlag):
...   return config & (~binaryFlag)
... 
>>> print config
5
>>> config = turnOffBit(config,1)
>>> print config
4
>>> config = turnOffBit(config,1)
>>> print config
4

    Hope this makes a good reference for those trying to make the most out of their bytes.

    Python: How to debug HTTP while using urllib2 

    ...
import urllib
import urllib2


#this is just to prepare a dynamic uri (this is actual code from a system I'm building, sorry)
fileDownloadServiceURL = '%s://%s:%s/%s' % (transport,server,port,pathToController)
postData = {'URI':fileUri} #add more post stuff here
postData = urllib.urlencode(postData) #make sure you encode your post data

#add some custom headers if you need them
headers={"Host": server+':'+port,"Cookie":"JSESSIONID="+sessionId,"User-Agent":"Name of your User-Agent Here"}

#prepare your request, with headers and post data
req = urllib2.Request(fileDownloadServiceURL,postData,headers)


#and this is the magic. Create a HTTPHandler object and put its debug level to 1
httpHandler = urllib2.HTTPHandler()
httpHandler.set_http_debuglevel(1)
        
#Instead of using urllib2.urlopen, create an opener, and pass the HTTPHandler
#and any other handlers... to it.
opener = urllib2.build_opener(httpHandler)

#User your opener to open the Request.
urlHandle = opener.open(req)
 
#you'll end up with a file-like object... which I called urlHandle
...

    The ouput will have useful debugging info about the HTTP connection.

    connect: (localhost, 8080)
send: u'POST /arcturus-web/fileVariableDownload.service HTTP/1.1rnAccept-Encoding: identityrnContent-Length: 57rnConnection: closernUser-Agent: Temboo Twyla/Arcturus HTTP DownloaderrnHost: localhost:8080rnCookie: JSESSIONID=1b8xl8nozb2irnContent-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencodedrnrn'
send: 'URI=temboo%3A%2F%2Fwww.one.com%2Ffiles.f%2Fmapping1.m.var'
reply: 'HTTP/1.1 200 OKrn'
header: Content-Language: en-US
header: Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
header: Connection: close
header: Server: Jetty(6.0.2)